GOLDEN BOUGH MAGIC RELEGION
"The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion" by James George Frazer is a comparative study first published in 1890. Frazer explores mythology and religion across cultures, examining fertility rites, human sacrifice, dying gods, and sacred kingship. His controversial thesis traces humanity's intellectual evolution from magic through religion to science, centered on ancient fertility cults and seasonal rituals. Drawing from the priest-kings of Lake Nemi to global mythologies, this sweeping work ... Read More
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3623
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gonds according to victorians https://victorianweb.org/history/empire/india/116.html
Set among the Khonds of northern India: the scene is as described in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica as follows: "The Khonds became notorious, on the British occupation of their district about 1835, from the prevalence and cruelty of the human sacrifices they practised. These Meriah sacrifices, as they were called, were intended to further the fertilization of the earth. It was incumbent on the Khonds to purchase their victims. Unless bought with a price they were not deemed acceptable. They seldom sacrificed Khonds, though in hard times Khonds were obliged to sell their children and they could then be purchased as Meriahs. Persons of any race, age or sex, were acceptable if purchased. Numbers were bought and kept and well treated; and Meriah women were encouraged to become mothers. Ten or twelve days before the sacrifice the victims hair was cut off, and the villagers having bathed, went with the priest to the sacred grove to forewarn the goddess. The festival lasted three days, and the wildest orgies were indulged in."
the Meriah ritual of the colonial times and the contemporary Kedu festival. the Meriah ritual, a human sacrifice which is believed to have taken place until the colonial government began to suppress it, i.e., in 1836 BCE. Since the British permitted the Kandha to use a substitute, i.e., a buffalo for the human being, the ritual continued for a long time even after independence, but now a trend has set in to give up the animal sacrifice, too. The article describes the Kedu festival based on repeated observation by the researcher. In the course of examining various interpretations of these rituals, it is argued that these rituals/festivals are basically related to agriculture and the productivity of soil that sustains life. The festival brings together deified nature, land and Kandha, and provides a unique cultural identity to the Kandha tribe.
the Kondhmal region of highland Odisha, the Kondhs would openly kill a human with a belief for yields of good crops from their slash and burn hill slope fields.
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mori clan peacock worship https://asianethnology.org/article/1738/download
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Nobanno (Bengali: নবান্ন, Nobānno; lit: New Feast) is a Bengali harvest celebration usually celebrated with food and dance and music in Bangladesh and in the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura, Assam's Barak Valley and Eastern parts of Jharkhand. It is a festival of food; many local preparations of Bengali cuisine like pitha are cooked.
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