Chapter V · THE BLACK ART.

Simulacraque cerea figit

Et miserum tenues in jecur urget acus.

Ovid, Heroides, vi. 91, 92.

The Witch.

Again, “The most primitive witchcraft looks very like medicine in the embryonic state; but as no one will give the aboriginal physician any credit for cures or chemical effects produced by simple human knowledge, he is soon forced back into occult and mystic devices, which belong neither to religion nor to destiny, but are a ridiculous mixture of both; whence the ordinary kind of witchcraft is generated.”

And he goes on to show how “the great plagues, cholera and the small-pox, belong to the gods; but a man cannot expect a great incarnation of Vishnu to cure his cow, or find his lost purse; nor will public opinion tolerate his going to any respectable shrine with a petition that his neighbour’s wife, his ox, or his ass may be smitten with some sore disease.” This, however, must be taken with the correction that, as we have seen already, the deities which rule disease are of a much lower grade than the divine cabinet which rules the world. The main difference then between the hedge priest and the witch is, as Sir A. Lyall shows, that the former serves his god or devil, whereas the latter makes the familiar demon, if one is kept, serve him.

Witchcraft: How Developed.

The belief in witchcraft is general among the lower and less advanced Indian races. Colonel Dalton’s assertion that the Juângs, who were quite recently in the stage of wearing leaf aprons, do not believe in witchcraft or sorcery, must be accepted with great caution. It is quite certain that all the allied Drâvidian races, even those at a somewhat higher state of culture than the Juângs, such as Kols, Kharwârs, and Cheros, firmly believe in witchcraft. But all these people observe the most extreme reticence on the subject. If you ask a Mirzapur Hill-man if there are any witches in his neighbourhood, he will look round furtively and suspiciously, and even if he admits that he has heard of such people, he will be very reluctant to give much information about them.

The belief that a certain person is a witch is probably generated in various ways. Many a one becomes reputed as a witch from the realization of some unlucky prophecy, or the fulfilment of some casual, passionate curse or imprecation upon an enemy or rival. The old Scottish rhymes exactly express this feeling:—

There dwelt a weaver in Moffat toun,

That said the minister would die sune;

The minister died, and the fouk o’ the toun

They brant the weaver wi’ the wadd o’ the lume,

With this is intimately connected the belief in the Evil Eye, and that certain persons have the power of calling down on their enemies the influence of evil spirits; and, as in Western lands, such a power is often attributed to persons afflicted with ugliness, deformity, crankiness of temper, liability to sudden fits of passion, epilepsy, and the like. Disease or death, famine, accident, or any form of trouble, never, in popular belief, come naturally. There is always behind calamity some malignant power which selects the victim, and the attribution of this faculty to any one naturally regarded as uncanny, or who practises rites or worship strange to orthodox belief, is in the opinion of the rustic only reasonable.

The Jigar Khor.

One particularly dreaded form of witch is the Jigar Khor or liver-eater, of whom Abul Fazl gives a description: “One of this class can steal away the liver of another by looks and incantations. Other accounts say that by looking at a person he deprives him of his senses, and then steals from him something resembling the seed of a pomegranate, which he hides in the calf of his leg; after being swelled by the fire, he distributes it among his fellows to be eaten, which ceremony concludes the life of the fascinated person. A Jigar Khor is able to communicate his art to another by teaching him incantations, and by making him eat a bit of the liver cake. These Jigar Khors are mostly women. It is said they can bring intelligence from a long distance in a short space of time, and if they are thrown into a river with a stone tied to them, they nevertheless will not sink. In order to deprive any one of this wicked power, they brand his temples and every joint of his body, cram his eyes with salt, suspend him for forty days in a subterraneous chamber, and repeat over him certain incantations.”

The Witch in Folk-lore.

Instruction in Witchcraft.

So, in Bombay, when a Guru, or teacher, wishes to initiate a candidate into the mysteries of the Black Art, he directs the candidate to watch a favourable opportunity for the commencement of the study, the opportunity being the death of a woman in childbirth. As soon as this event takes place, the candidate is instructed what to do. He watches the procession as the dead is being taken to the burning or burial ground, and takes care to see who the bearers are. He then takes a small tin box in his hand, and picking up a pinch of the earth out of the hind footsteps of the two rear bearers, he keeps the earth in the tin box. Then he watches where the dead body is being burnt, and goes home.

“Next day he goes to the spot, and taking a little of the ashes of the corpse, puts it in the tin box. Subsequently, on a suitable day, that is on a new moon or on an eclipse day, he goes to the burning ground at midnight, and taking off his clothes, he sits on the ground, and placing the tin box in front of him, lights a little incense, and repeats the incantations taught to him by his guru or teacher. When he has practised the repetition of the incantations, the spirit Hadal becomes subject to his control, and by her help he becomes able to annoy any one he pleases.

“Among the troubles which the witch or magician brings upon his enemies, the following are said to be the most common in the Dakkhin as well as in the Konkan. The witch causes star-shaped or cross-like marks of marking-nuts on the body of the person she has a grudge against. The peculiarity of these marks is that they appear in numbers in different parts of the body, and as suddenly disappear. The other troubles are the drying-up of the milk of milch cattle, or turning the milk into blood; stopping or retarding the growth of the foetus in cattle, and turning them into moles; stealing grain or other field produce from the farm-yards of the victim; letting loose wolves, jackals, or rats into the victim’s field; pricking needles or thorns into the victim’s eyes or body; applying turmeric to the eyes of a female victim, or putting lampblack into her eyes; or tearing the open end of her robe; and causing death to an enemy by means of a method of the Black Art, called Mûth, literally ‘a handful.’

We have here examples of the dread of the woman dying at her confinement, which we have already noticed in the case of the Churel, and the nudity charm is also familiar.

Witch Seasons.

In Central India, witches are supposed, by the aid of their familiars, who are known as Bîr, or “the hero,” to inflict pain, disease, and death upon human beings. Their power of witchcraft, like that of all Indian witches, exists on the fourteenth, fifteenth, and twenty-ninth of each month, and in particular at the Diwâlî or feast of lamps, and the Naurâtrî or nine days devoted to the worship of Durgâ.

Witches Taking the Form of Tigers.

Witches Extracting Substances from their Victims.

Another remedy is thus described by Abul Fazl: “The sorceress casts something out of her mouth like the grain of a pomegranate, which is believed to be part of the heart which she has eaten. The patient picks it up as part of his own intestine and greedily swallows it. By this means, as if his heart was replaced in his body, he recovers his health by degrees.”

General Sleeman gives the case of a trooper who had taken some milk from an old woman without payment, and was seized with severe internal pains, which he attributed to her witchcraft. She was sent for, but denied having bewitched him. She admitted, however, that “the household gods may have punished him for his wickedness.” She was ordered to cure him, and set about collecting materials for the purpose, but meanwhile the pains left him.

Another man took a cock from an old Gond woman and was similarly affected. “The old cock was actually heard crowing in his belly.” In spite of all the usual remedies he died, and the cock never ceased crowing at intervals till his death.

He tells of another witch who was known to be such by the juice of the sugar-cane she was eating turning into blood. A man saw her staring at him and left the district at once. “It is well known that these spells and curses can only reach a distance of ten or twelve miles, and if you offend one of these witches, the sooner you put that distance between you and them, the better.”

Witches and Cats.

Witch Ordeals.

All the ordeals for witches turn on the efficacy of certain things to which reference has been already made as scarers of evil spirits.

Santâl Witch Ordeals.

Witch Tests, Bilâspur.

Witch Tests, Bastar.

Miscellaneous Tests: Eggs.

There is another form of witch test in Chhatîsgarh, where a pole of a particular wood is erected on the banks of a stream, and each suspected person, after bathing, is required to touch the pole; it is supposed that if any witch does this her hand will swell.

The Rowan Tree.

Witch-finding among Kols.

Marks of Witches.

Charms Recited Backward.

Indian witches also resemble their European sisters in their habit of reciting their charms backward,—

He who’d read her aright must say her

Backwards like a witch’s prayer.

And in “Much ado about Nothing,” Hero says of Beatrice,—

“I never yet saw man

How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featured,

But she would spell him backward.”

Witchcraft by Means of Hair, Nail Parings, etc.

The idea is common in folk-lore that a witch can acquire power over her victim by getting possession of a lock of hair, the parings of his nails, or some other part of his body. In the “Comedy of Errors,” Dromio of Syracuse says,—

“Some devils ask but the parings of one’s nail,

A rush, a hair, a drop of blood, a pin,

A nut, a cherry stone.”

Witchcraft by Means of Images.

Another means which witches are supposed to adopt in order to injure those whom they dislike, is to make an image of wax, flour, or similar substances, and torture it, with the idea that the pain will be communicated to the person whom they desire to annoy.

It is almost unnecessary to say that similar ideas prevail in Europe. The wounded Melun in “King John” says:—

“Have I not hideous death within my view,

Retaining but a quantity of life,

Which bleeds away, even as a form of wax

Resolveth from his figure ’gainst the fire?”

Witchcraft through the Footsteps.

Punishment of Witches.

The method by which witches are punished displays a diabolical ingenuity. The Indian newspapers a short time ago recorded six out of nine murders in the Sambalpur District as due to “the superstition, which is so general, that the spread of cholera is due to the sorcery of some individual, whose evil influence can be nullified if he be beaten with rods of the castor-oil plant. The people who are thus suspected are so cruelly beaten that in the majority of cases they die under the infliction.”

Witchcraft Punishments among the Drâvidians.

Other Witchcraft Punishments.

Drawing Blood from a Witch.

“I’ll have a bout with thee;

Devil or devil’s dam, I’ll conjure thee;

Blood will I draw on thee, thou art a witch.”

And Hudibras says,—

“Till drawing blood o’ the Dames like witches,

They’re forthwith cur’d of their capriches.”

So at the present day in Mirzapur, when a woman is marked down as a witch, the Baiga or Ojha pricks her tongue with a needle, and the blood thus extracted is received on some rice, which she is compelled to eat. In another case she is pricked on the breast, tongue, and thighs, and given the blood to drink. The ceremony is most efficacious if performed on the banks of a running stream. This is probably a survival of the actual blood sacrifice of a witch.

Witch Haunts.

Nonâ Chamârin, the Witch.

At the present day the half-deified witch most dreaded in the Eastern Districts of the North-Western Provinces is Lonâ, or Nonâ, a Chamârin, or woman of the currier caste. Her legend is in this wise. The great physician Dhanwantara, who corresponds to Luqmân Hakîm of the Muhammadans, was once on his way to cure King Parikshit, and was deceived and bitten by the snake king Takshaka. He therefore desired his son to roast him and eat his flesh, and thus succeed to his magical powers. The snake king dissuaded them from eating the unholy meal, and they let the cauldron containing it float down the Ganges. A currier woman, named Lonâ, found it and ate the contents, and thus succeeded to the mystic powers of Dhanwantara. She became skilful in cures, particularly of snake-bite. Finally she was discovered to be a witch by the extraordinary rapidity with which she could plant out rice seedlings. One day the people watched her, and saw that when she believed herself unobserved, she stripped herself naked, and taking the bundle of the plants in her hands threw them into the air, reciting certain spells. When the seedlings forthwith arranged themselves in their proper places, the spectators called out in astonishment, and finding herself discovered, Nonâ rushed along over the country, and the channel which she made in her course is the Lonî river to this day. So a saint in Broach formed a new course for a river by dragging his clothes behind him. In Nonâ’s case we have the nudity charm, of which instances have been already given.

Pûtanâ, the Witch Fiend.

The Witch of the Palwârs.

The history of witchcraft in India, as in Europe, is one of the saddest pages in the annals of the people. Nowadays, the power of British law has almost entirely suppressed the horrible outrages which, under the native administration, were habitually practised. But particularly in the more remote and uncivilized parts of the country, this superstition still exists in the minds of the people, and occasional indications of it, which appear in our criminal records, are quite sufficient to show that any relaxation of the activity of our magistrates and police would undoubtedly lead to its revival in some of its more shocking forms.