Every two years, parents who have vowed to bury their first-born if they are blessed with a child, take part in the Kuzhimattru Thiru Vizha ceremony.
The children are drugged to make them unconscious and placed in shallow "graves" in temple courtyards. The pits are covered with leaves and dirt and the children are pulled out after Hindu priests chant a brief prayer -- lasting up to a minute.
Update: I don't know anything about Hindu ceremonies, and therefore cannot state definitively what is really behind this ceremony, but it looks like a Molech child-sacrifice. After all, Hindu priests are involved, and they vow their first born, and symbolically offer their children to die (perhaps to a deity) in thanks for some granted wish (a child). Some accounts of the Molech ceremony also had the child passing symbolically through the fire, as opposed to actually being killed.
No comments:
Post a Comment