ars as well as the Dhimars make the breeding of pigs a
means of subsistence, and they sell these pigs for sacrifices at prices
varying from eight annas (8d.) to a rupee. The pigs are sacrificed by
the Gonds to their god Bura Deo and by Hindus to the deity Bhainsasur,
or the buffalo demon, for the protection of the crops. Bhainsasur is
represented by a stone in the fields, and when crops are beaten down
at night by the wind it is supposed that Bhainsasur has passed over
them and trampled them down. Hindus, usually of the lower castes, offer
pigs to Bhainsasur to propitiate him and preserve their crops from his
ravages, but they cannot touch the impure pig themselves. What they
have to do, therefore, is to pay the Kumhar the price of the pig and
get him to offer it to Bhainsasur on their behalf. The Kumhar goes
to the god and sacrifices the pig and then takes the body home and
eats it, so that his trade is a profitable one, while conversely to
sacrifice a pig without partaking of its flesh must necessarily be
bitter to the frugal Hindu mind, and this indicates the importance
of the deity who is to be propitiated by the offering. The first
question which arises in connection with this curious custom is
why pigs should be sacrificed for the preservation of the crops;
and the reason appears to be that the wild pig is the animal which,
at present, mainly damages the crops.

7. The goddess Demeter

In ancient Greece pigs were offered to Demeter, the corn-goddess,
for the protection of the crops, and there is good reason to suppose
that the conceptions of Demeter herself and the lovely Proserpine
grew out of the worship of the pig, and that both goddesses were
in the beginning merely the deified pig. The highly instructive
passage in which Sir J. G. Frazer advances this theory is reproduced
almost in full [7]: "Passing next to the corn-goddess Demeter, and
remembering that in European folklore the pig is a common embodiment
of the corn-spirit, we may now ask whether the pig, which was so
closely associated with Demeter, may not originally have been the
goddess herself in animal form? The pig was sacred to her; in art
she was portrayed carrying or accompanied by a pig; and the pig was
regularly sacrificed in her mysteries, the reason assigned being that
the pig injures the corn and is therefore an enemy of the goddess. But
after an animal has been conceived as a god, or a god as an animal,
it sometimes happens, as we hav