“A great number of women, employed in reaping the extensive corn-fields through which we passed were raising their hoes and voices to heaven, and, yelling furiously, cursed ‘Morimo’ (God), as the terrific thunder-claps succeeded each vivid flash of lightning.  On inquiry I was informed by ‘Old Booy’ that they were indignant at the interruption of their labors, and that they therefore cursed and menaced the cause.  Such blasphemy was awful, even among heathens, and I fully expected to see the wrath of God fall upon them.”

If any pious reader of such details—­which might he multiplied a thousand-fold—­still believes that religious emotion (like love!) is the same everywhere, let him compare his own devoted feelings during worship in a Christian church with the emotions which must sway those who participate in a religious ceremony like that described in the following passage taken from Rowney’s Wild Tribes of India (105).  It refers to the sacrifices made by the Khonds to the God of War, the victims of which, both male and female, are often bought young and brought up for this special purpose: 

“For a month prior to the sacrifice there was much feasting and intoxication, with dancing round the Meriah, or victim ... and on the day before the rite he was stupefied with toddy and bound at the bottom of a post.  The assembled multitude then danced around the post to music, singing hymns of invocation to some such effect as follows:  ’O God, we offer a sacrifice to you!  Give us good crops in return, good seasons, and health.’  On the next day the victim was again intoxicated, and anointed with oil, which was wiped from his body by those present, and put on their heads as a blessing.  The victim was then carried, in procession round the village, preceded by music, and on returning to the post a hog was sacrificed to ... the village deity ... the blood from the carcass being allowed to flow into a pit prepared to receive it.  The victim, made senseless by intoxication, was now thrown into the pit, and his face pressed down till he died from suffocation in the blood and mire, a deafening noise with instruments being kept up all the time.  The priest then cut a piece of flesh from the body and buried it with ceremony near the village idol, all the rest of the people going through the same form after him.”

Still more horrible details of these sacrifices are supplied by Dalton (288): 

“Major Macpherson notes that the Meriah in some districts is put to death slowly by fire, the great object being to draw from the victim as many tears as possible, in the belief that the cruel Tari will proportionately increase the supply of rain.”

“Colonel Campbell thus describes the modus operandi in Chinna Kimedy:  ’The miserable Meriah is dragged along the fields, surrounded by a crowd of half-intoxicated Kandhs, who, shouting and screaming, rush upon him, and