Note 20 — RELIGION

For the ceremonies where a mithan is sacrificed a black hybrid or black bull may be substituted, but the substitute is invariably spoken of as a mithan. The following defects20 make an animal unfit for sacrifice—a hole in the horn, one horn deformed or shorter than the other, one horn missing, teeth missing or broken, white marks on the body, white on the tail or forehead (though an animal with white both on the tail and forehead may be sacrificed), deformed hoof and white on the leg unless all four legs are white. It is believed that were a man to sacrifice an animal with one of these defects he would almost certainly die. Under no circumstances may the flesh of an animal which has been sacrificed be eaten either by the sacrificer or any of his household. It is believed that anyone who broke this rule would go mad. There is a man in Pangti who is supposed to have become insane for this reason. Whatever may be the real cause he is certainly afflicted with madness, and of a kind particularly obnoxious to the writer, for it takes the form of making interminable complaints about imaginary wrongs. Again in Humtso the writer came across a case in which a woman tried to poison her husband by scraping shavings off the horns of a mithan he had sacrificed and mixing them with his “madhu.”