of Tamuri, the name of the most exalted family of the Nair caste.”
96
Francis Buchanan, “Journey from Madras through the Countries of Mysore, Canara, and Malabar,” in Pinkerton's Voyages and Travels, viii. 735.
97
Alex. Hamilton, “A New Account of the East Indies,” in Pinkerton's Voyages and Travels, viii. 374.
98
The sidereal revolution of Jupiter is completed in 11 years 314.92 days (Encyclopaedia Britannica, Ninth Edition, s. v. “Astronomy,” ii. 808). The twelve-years revolution of Jupiter was known to the Greek astronomers, from whom the knowledge may perhaps have penetrated into India. See Geminus, Eisagoge, I, p. 10, ed. Halma.
99
W. Logan, Malabar (Madras, 1887), i. 162-169. The writer describes in particular the festival of 1683, when fifty-five men perished in the manner described.
100
Sir H. M. Elliot, The History of India as told by its own Historians, iv. 260. I have to thank Mr. R. S. Whiteway, of Brownscombe, Shottermill, Surrey, for kindly calling my attention to this and the following instance of the custom of regicide.
101
De Barros, Da Asia, dos feitos, que os Portuguezes fizeram no descubrimento e conquista dos mares e terras do Oriente, Decada Terceira, Liv. V. cap. i. pp. 512 sq. (Lisbon, 1777).
102
Saxo Grammaticus,Historia Danica, viii. pp. 410 sq., ed. P. E. Müller (p. 334 of Mr. Oliver Elton's English translation).
103
T. K. Gopal Panikkar (of the Madras Registration Department), Malabar and its Folk (Madras, N. D., preface dated Chowghaut, 8th October 1900), pp. 120 sq. I have to thank my friend Mr. W. Crooke for calling my attention to this account.
104
Voyage d'Ibn Batoutah, texte arabe, accompagné d'une traduction par C. Deffrémery et B. R. Sanguinetti (Paris, 1853-58), iv. 246 sq.
105
The Wonders of the East, by Friar Jordanus, translated by Col. Henry Yule (London, 1863, Hakluyt Society), pp. 32 sq.
106
India in the Fifteenth Century, being a Collection of Voyages to India in the century preceding the Portuguese discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, edited by R. H. Major (Hakluyt Society, London, 1857), “The Travels of Nicolo Conti in the East,” pp. 27 sq. An instrument of the sort described in the text (a crescent-shaped knife with chains and stirrups attached to it for the convenience of the suicide) used to be preserved at Kshira, a village of Bengal near Nadiya: it was called a karavat. See The Book of Ser Marco Polo, newly translated and edited by Colonel Henry Yule, Second Edition (London, 1875), ii. 334.
107
Major P. R. T. Gurdon, The Khasis (London, 1907), pp. 102 sq., quoting Mr. Gait in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for 1898.
108
E. T. Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal (Calcutta, 1872), p. 146.
109
F. T. Valdez, Six Years of a Traveller's Life in Western Africa (London, 1861), ii. 158-160. I have translated the title Maquita by “chief”; the writer does not explain it.
110
Ynglinga Saga, 29 (The Heimskringla, translated by S. Laing, i. 239 sq.). Compare H. M. Chadwick, The Cult of Othin (London, 1899), p. 4. According to Messrs. Laing and Chadwick the sacrifice took place every tenth year. But I follow Prof. K. Weinhold who translates “hit tiunda hvert ár” by “alle neun Jahre” (“Die mystische Neunzahl bei den Deutschen,” Abhandlungen der könig. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1897, p. 6). So in Latin decimo quoque anno should be translated “every ninth year.”
111
Saxo Grammaticus, Historia Danica, iii. pp. 129-131, ed. P. E. Müller (pp. 98 sq. of Oliver Elton's English translation).
112
Adam of Bremen, Descriptio insularum Aquilonis, 27 (Migne's Patrologia Latina, cxlvi. col. 644). See The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, vol. ii. pp. 364 sq.
113
Plutarch, Agis, II. Plutarch says that the custom was observed “at intervals of nine years” (δι᾽ ἐτῶν ἐννέα), but the expression is equivalent to our “at intervals of eight years.” In reckoning intervals of time numerically the Greeks included both the terms which are separated by the interval, whereas we include only one of them. For example, our phrase “every second day” would be rendered in Greek διὰ τρίτης ἡμέρας, literally “every third day.” Again, a cycle of two years is in Greek trieteris, literally “a period of three years”; a cycle of eight years is ennaeteris, literally “a period of nine years”; and so forth. See Censorinus, De die natali, 18. The Latin use of the ordinal numbers is similar, e. g. our “every second year” would be tertio quoque anno in Latin. However, the Greeks and Romans were not always consistent in this matter, for they occasionally reckoned in our fashion. The resulting ambiguity is not only puzzling to moderns; it sometimes confused the ancients themselves. For example, it led to a derangement of the newly instituted Julian calendar, which escaped detection for more than thirty years. See Macrobius, Saturn. i. 14. 13 sq.; Solinus, i. 45-47. On the ancient modes of counting in such cases see A. Schmidt, Handbuch der griechischen Chronologie (Jena, 1888), pp. 95 sqq. According to Schmidt, the practice of adding both terms to the sum of the intervening units was not extended by the Greeks to numbers above nine.
114
Die Dorier,2 ii. 96.
115
E. Man, Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, pp. 84 sq.
116
W. E. Roth, North Queensland Bulletin, No. 5, Superstition, Magic, and Medicine (Brisbane, 1903), p. 8.
117
A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 429.
118
A. W. Howitt, op. cit. p. 430. One of the earliest writers on New South Wales reports that the natives attributed great importance to the falling of a star (D. Collins,Account of the English Colony in New South Wales (London, 1804), p. 383).
119
Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 627.
120
Spencer and Gillen, op. cit. pp. 488, 627 sq.
121
G. Thilenius, Ethnographische Ergebnisse aus Melanesien, ii. (Halle, 1903) p. 129.
122
H. A. Junod, Les Ba-ronga (Neuchatel, 1898), p. 470.
123
A. C. Hollis, The Masai (Oxford, 1905), p. 316.
124
J. Campbell, Travels in South Africa (London, 1815), pp. 428 sq.
125
Id., Travels in South Africa, Second Journey (London, 1822), ii. 204.
126
G. Zündel, “Land und Volk der Eweer auf der Sclavenküste in Westafrika,” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, xii. (1877)
