Tari Pennu, the Earth-goddess (also Bera Pennu, and in many districts Dharni or Tana Penu), is the consort of the Sun-god Bura Pennu and, in the myth recorded by Macpherson, the being who rebelled against him and introduced evil, disease and death into a world that had been wholly good. She was the most feared of Kondh deities: her favour was sought through the notorious meriah rite, in which a purchased or specially-born human victim was sacrificed and the flesh and blood distributed to the fields to fertilise the soil and bring out the red of the turmeric crop. The rite, described by British officers from the 1830s and suppressed in the 1850s, made the Kondh and their Earth-goddess a central case in the comparative study of agricultural sacrifice by Frazer and later by Boal and Padel; buffalo sacrifice replaced the human meriah after suppression.