The ethnological section of the Madras Museum received a few years ago a very interesting relic in the shape of a human (Meriah) sacrifice post from Baligudu in Ganjam. This post, which was fast being reduced to a mere shell by white-ants, is, I believe, the only one now in existence. It was brought by Colonel Pickance, who was Assistant Superintendent of Police, and set up in the ground near the gate of the reserve Police barracks. The veteran members of a party of Kondhs, who were brought to Madras for the purpose of performing before the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1906, became wildly excited when they came across this relic of their former barbarous custom.
"The best known case," Mr. Frazer writes, [164] "of human sacrifices systematically offered to ensure good crops is supplied by the Khonds or Kandhs. Our knowledge of them is derived from the accounts written by British officers, who, forty or fifty years ago, were engaged in putting them down. The sacrifices were offered to the earth goddess, Tari Pennu or Bera Pennu, and were believed to ensure good crops, and immunity from all diseases and accidents. In particular, they were considered necessary in the cultivation of turmeric, the Khonds arguing that the turmeric could not have a deep red colour without the shedding of blood. The victim, a Meriah, was acceptable to the goddess only if he had been purchased, or had been born a victim, that is the son of a victim father, or had been devoted as a child by his father or guardian."