Human Sacrifice - Peter Leeson

inhabitants, such as salt, salt …sh, and cloth. Indeed, Doms “manage[d] the whole commerce
of the hills”(Selections from the Government of India 1854: 50; see also, Bailey 1960: 134-
135). In the latter capacity, Doms handled, for instance, various Kond death rites that were
taboo for Konds.
Among the middleman functions for which the Konds employed Doms was the procurement
of victims for human sacri…ce. As Macpherson observed, meriahs were “provided by a
class of Hindu procurers, called ‘Panwas.’”The meriah trade was simple. Doms “purchase[d]
them without di¢ culty on false pretenses, or kidnap[ped] them from the poorer classes of
Hindus in the low country” (C.R. 1846a: 61). 22 Having done so, they traded their human
victims to Kond communities in the hill tracts for wealth in the forms described earlier.
While both Doms living inside and those living outside Kond society acted as meriah
traders, in general it seems to have been the latter, “the inhabitants of the low countries who
provided the means of carrying on the horrible practice” (C.R. 1846b: 54). As Campbell
observed, “the parties engaged in the barbarous tra¢ c of providing victims” were “from
all the information I can gather . . . for the most part inhabitants of the low country”
(Selections from the Government of India 1854: 12). Because these Doms lived outside
Kond society, when they received Kond wealth in exchange for meriahs, that wealth exited
Kond society with them.
Even when Konds relied on Doms who lived inside their communities to purchase meriahs,
much of the Kond wealth received as payment must have similarly exited Kond country. Dom
traders in Kond country relied on associates outside it in the plains to obtain meriahs that
the former could ultimately sell to Konds. As Macpherson put it, “it is certain, not only
that the other Panwas, besides those who are permanently associated and identi…ed with
the sacri…cing Khond tribes, provide victims, but that these are most generally procured in
the …rst instance, by Panwas of the low country” (C.R. 1847: 7). Unless the latter Doms
were performing this service for free, a signi…cant part of meriah receipts must have ‡owed
to these outsiders too.
6. Human sacri…ce ends when government protects property rights.
22 Doms also sometimes sold their own children for this purpose and, when they didn’t, sometimes represented
the persons they sold as such.
25