[27] This custom is noticed in the article on Khairwār.
[28] Cumberlege, p. 18.
[29] Mr. Hīra Lāl suggests that this custom may have something to do with the phrase Athāra jāt ke gāyi, or ‘She has gone to the eighteen castes,’ used of a woman who has been turned out of the community. This phrase seems, however, to be a euphemism, eighteen castes being a term of indefinite multitude for any or no caste. The number eighteen may be selected from the same unknown association which causes the goat to be cut into eighteen pieces.
[30] Ethnographic Notes in Southern India, p. 344, quoting from Moor’s Narrative of Little’s Detachment.
[31] Cumberlege, p. 35.
[32] Berār Census Report, 1881.
[33] Cumberlege, p. 21.
[34] The following instance is taken from Mr. Balfour’s article, ‘Migratory Tribes of Central India,’ in J. A. S. B., new series, vol. xiii., quoted in Mr. Crooke’s Tribes and Castes.
[35] From the Sanskrit Hātya-ādhya, meaning ‘That which it is most sinful to slay’ (Balfour).
[36] Monograph, p. 12.