Note 39 — Chapter IV · ANIMAL-WORSHIP.

“A melancholy instance of this,” said Colonel Sleeman’s informant, “occurred in my own father’s family when I was an infant. His washerman Raghu was, like all washermen, a great drunkard. Being seized with a violent desire to ascertain what a man felt like in the state of a tiger, he went one day to the jungle and brought back two of these roots, and desired his wife to stand by with one of them, and the instant she saw him assume the tiger’s shape to thrust the root she held into his mouth. She consented, and the washerman ate his root and instantly became a tiger, whereupon she was so terrified that she ran off with the antidote in her hand. Poor old Raghu took to the woods, and there ate a good many of his friends from the neighbouring villages; but he was at last shot, and recognized from his having no tail. You may be quite sure when you hear of a tiger having no tail that it is some unfortunate man who has eaten of that root, and of all the tigers he will be found the most mischievous.”39