Note 58 — B

Human sacrifice among the Banjâras of the Dakkhin. 7. Up to our own day the Banjâras of the Dakkhin practised human sacrifice. General Sleeman58 tells a story that the fort and part of the town of Sâgar stands on a wall said to have been built by a Banjâra. He was told that the lake would continue dry until he consented to sacrifice his daughter and her affianced husband. He built them up in a shrine and the waters rose, but no Banjâra will touch the water. Their women, even to the present day, are notorious for necromancy. They are, according to Sir Alfred Lyall,59 “terribly vexed by witchcraft, to which their wandering and precarious existence especially exposes them in the shape of fever, rheumatism, and dysentery. Solemn enquiries are still held in the wild jungles where these people camp out like gypsies, and many an unlucky hag has been strangled by the sentence of their secret tribunals.”