In some places
they took the victim in procession round the village, from door to
door, where some plucked hair from his head, and others begged for a
drop of his spittle, with which they anointed their heads. As the
victim might not be bound nor make any show of resistance, the bones
of his arms and, if necessary, his legs were broken; but often this
precaution was rendered unnecessary by stupefying him with opium.
The mode of putting him to death varied in different places. One of
the commonest modes seems to have been strangulation, or squeezing
to death. The branch of a green tree was cleft several feet down the
middle; the victim's neck (in other places, his chest) was inserted
in the cleft, which the priest, aided by his assistants, strove with
all his force to close. Then he wounded the victim slightly with his
axe, whereupon the crowd rushed at the wretch and hewed the flesh
from the bones, leaving the head and bowels untouched. Sometimes he
was cut up alive. In Chinna Kimedy he was dragged along the fields,
surrounded by the crowd, who, avoiding his head and intestines,
hacked the flesh from his body with their knives till he died.
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