Harkness, Henry: A description of a singular aboriginal race inhabiting the summit of the Neilgherry Hills, or Blue Mountains of Coimbatoor, in the Southern Peninsula of India (London, 1832)

106 ANNUAL OFFERINGS.

empire. Flying hither as to a place of refuge from the
tyranny of a master, a man of the lowest caste, who was
set over them, and who wished forcibly to espouse one of
the most beautiful of their daughters, they were on their
first arrival in a state of destitution, which left them
quite at the mercy of those tribes whom they found
already located in the different parts of Goshen. Space,
however, was not wanting, and though they brought
little else, they brought with them the knowledge and
improvements resulting from a superior state of civiliza-
tion ; and these, with their careful industry, very soon
became the means of rendering them welcome visitors.
A sort of conventional arrangement was therefore entered
into between them and the other tribes, which was sanc-
tified by sacrifice and offering to their several deities.
Annual offerings, sacrifices to the great architect, were
made at the temples of the Cohatars, and appropriate
offerings were made to Ceres, as the peculiar Divinity
of the Curumbars. Excepting the Tudas, who could not
have understood these obscure refinements, or who must,
if they felt as they now seem to feel on this subject, have
despised them, corresponding offerings were made to the
Gods whom the Burghers had brought with them from
the plains. The principal of these were Hetty* and

* Hetty is the personification of the manes of women who have
sacrificed themselves on the funeral pile of their husbands ; the symbol
is the clothes which the wife casts off, on putting on those in which
she was to ascend the pile, and a part of the turban that had been ,