Note 74 — Chapter III · THE GODLINGS OF DISEASE.

To return to the use of the scape animal as a means of expelling disease. In Berâr, if cholera is very severe, the people get a scapegoat or young buffalo, but in either case it must be a female and as black as possible, the latter condition being based on the fact that Yamarâja, the lord of death, uses such an animal as his vehicle. They then tie some grain, cloves and red lead (all demon scarers) on its back and turn it out of the village. A man of the gardener caste takes the goat outside the boundary, and it is not allowed to return.74 So among the Korwas of Mirzapur, when cholera begins, a black cock, and when it is severe, a black goat, is offered by the Baiga at the shrine of the village godling, and he then drives the animal off in the direction of some other village. After it has gone a little distance, the Baiga, who is protected from evil by virtue of his holy office, follows it, kills it and eats it. Among the Patâris in cholera epidemics the elders of the village and the Ojha wizard feed a black fowl with grain and drive it beyond the boundary, ordering it to take the plague with it. If the resident of another village finds such a fowl and eats it, cholera comes with it into his village. Hence, when disease prevails, people are very cautious about meddling with strange fowls. When these animals are sent off, a little oil, red lead, and a woman’s forehead spangle are put upon it, a decoration which, perhaps, points to a survival of an actual sacrifice to appease the demon of disease. When such an animal comes into a village, the Baiga takes it to the local shrine, worships it and then passes it on quietly outside the boundary. Among the Kharwârs, when rinderpest attacks the cattle, they take a black cock, put some red lead on its head, some antimony on its eyes, a spangle on its forehead, and fixing a pewter bangle to its leg, let it loose, calling to the disease—“Mount on the fowl and go elsewhere into the ravines and thickets; destroy the sin!” This dressing up of the scape animal in a woman’s ornaments and trinkets is almost certainly a relic of some grosser form of expiation in which a human being was sacrificed. We have another survival of the same practice in the Panjâb custom, which directs that when cholera prevails, a man of the Chamâr or currier caste, one of the hereditary menials, should be branded on the buttocks and turned out of the village.75