Observations on the Mussulmauns of India

LETTER XXVI

Su­per­sti­tion of the Na­tives.--Fair an­nu­al­ly kept by Hin­doos.--Sup­posed prac­tice of witchcraft by an old wom­an.--As­sault­ed by an in­fu­ri­at­ed pop­ulace.--Res­cued by a Na­tive gen­tle­man.--He in­quires their rea­sons for per­se­cut­ing her.--Is in­stru­men­tal in ap­peas­ing their ma­lig­ni­ty.--En­deav­ours to re­move their prej­udice.--Prone­ness of Asi­at­ics to su­per­sti­tion.--Opin­ion of a Mus­sul­maun on the in­flu­ence of evil spir­its.--Ac­count of a wom­an pos­sessed by an evil spir­it.--Di­alogue with her dur­ing the parox­ysms of her af­flic­tion.--Means used for her re­cov­ery.--Fur­ther al­lu­sions to the false no­tions of the Na­tives re­spect­ing su­per­nat­ural agen­cy...Page 387

All the Na­tives of Hin­doost­aun ap­pear to me to be, more or less, tinc­tured with su­per­sti­tious no­tions, which, in many in­stances, are so graft­ed in their na­ture as to re­sist ev­ery at­tempt made to root out by ar­gu­ments the fol­ly of this great weak­ness.

I hope to be for­giv­en for in­tro­duc­ing in this Let­ter a few anec­dotes and oc­cur­rences, which may il­lus­trate that faulty side of the char­ac­ter of a peo­ple who have not de­rived those ad­van­tages which are cal­cu­lat­ed to dis­place su­per­sti­tion from the mind of man;--in a word, they are strangers to that Holy vol­ume which teach­es bet­ter things.

A fair had been held at Luc­know one af­ter­noon, not im­me­di­ate­ly with­in our view, but the hol­iday folks passed our house on the road to and from the scene of ac­tion. This fair or mayl­lah is vis­it­ed by all ranks and class­es of Na­tives; but it is strict­ly a Hin­doo fes­ti­val an­nu­al­ly kept up in re­mem­brance of the cel­ebrat­ed Ko­rnea,[1] of Hin­doo mytho­log­ic celebri­ty, who ac­cord­ing to their tra­di­tion, when but a child, on a cer­tain day killed with his slen­der arm a great tyrant, the gi­ant Khaunce. Had there ev­er ex­ist­ed a sus­pi­cion that the Hin­doos sprang from any of the tribes of Is­rael, I should have imag­ined the event they cel­ebrate might have ref­er­ence to the act of David, who with his sin­gle arm de­stroyed Go­liath of Gath. This, how­ev­er, can hard­ly be sup­posed, al­though the sim­ilar­ity is re­mark­ably strik­ing.

The fig­ure of Khaunce is made up of bam­boo and pa­per, rep­re­sent­ing a hu­man be­ing of gi­gan­tic stature, and bear­ing a most fierce coun­te­nance, with some cer­tain ap­pendages, as horns, tail, &c., to ren­der the fig­ure more dis­gust­ing. It is placed near the bank of the riv­er Goomtie, in a con­spic­uous sit­ua­tion, for the won­der and ad­mi­ra­tion of some, the ter­ror of the weak, and the sat­is­fac­tion of the be­liev­ers in the fa­bled sto­ry of Ko­rnea and his sup­posed su­per­nat­ural pow­er.

Ko­rnea is rep­re­sent­ed by a lit­tle boy, dressed in cost­ly ap­par­el, who is con­veyed in grand pro­ces­sion, seat­ed on an ele­phant, and sur­round­ed by at­ten­dants on horse­back, with bands of mu­sic and a mul­ti­tude of fol­low­ers, through the prin­ci­pal streets of the city to the cho­sen spot where Khaunce is placed to be at­tacked by the child.

When the farce is prop­er­ly pre­pared for the at­tack, the child, I am told,--for I have nev­er seen the cer­emo­ny,--takes aim from his well-​or­na­ment­ed bow, and with a sin­gle ar­row sends the mon­strous gi­ant in­to the riv­er, whilst the shouts of the mul­ti­tude de­clare the vic­to­ry of Ko­rnea, and the de­struc­tion of the en­emy to the re­pose of mankind. The fig­ure, I should have re­marked, is made up of parts mere­ly placed on each oth­er, so that the force of an ar­row is suf­fi­cient to dis­lodge the lofty erec­tion as read­ily as a pack of cards in a mim­ic cas­tle may be lev­elled by a breath. The mayl­lah con­cludes when the float­ing mem­bers of the fig­ure have glid­ed with the stream out of sight.

A par­ty of poor weak-​mind­ed mor­tals, pedes­tri­ans, but by their dress re­spectable peo­ple, re­turn­ing from this day's mayl­lah when the evening was well ad­vanced, sud­den­ly halt­ed near my house; my at­ten­tion was soon aroused by vi­olent screams, and ex­cla­ma­tions of 'Seize her! seize her! she is eat­ing my heart!' ac­com­pa­nied by all those in­di­ca­tions of fear and pain, that did not fail to ex­cite my sym­pa­thy; for I could not com­pre­hend what was the mat­ter and imag­ined the poor man had been wound­ed by the hand of an as­sas­sin.

A crowd quick­ly as­sem­bled, and a great bus­tle en­sued; I was re­al­ly alarmed, and the tu­mult of voic­es con­tin­uing for some min­utes, we dis­tinct­ly heard the loud cries of a coarse fe­male voice who seemed to be in great dan­ger of los­ing her life by the rough treat­ment of a law­less rab­ble; this in­duced a Na­tive gen­tle­man of our fam­ily to ven­ture out, to as­cer­tain if pos­si­ble the cause of the ex­cite­ment, and al­so to en­deav­our to as­suage the an­gry feel­ings of the tur­bu­lent par­ty. His ap­pear­ance amongst them pro­duced the de­sired ef­fect, they were si­lenced by his com­mand; and when the man whose alarm­ing screams had first as­sailed us, was brought be­fore him, he found that he was a man of great re­spectabil­ity amongst the shop-​keep­ers of the city, with a child of four years old in his arms, or rather I should say the child was seat­ed astride on his fa­ther's hip, the arm en­cir­cling the child's body, as is the gen­er­al man­ner of nurs­ing amongst all class­es of the Na­tives.

On be­ing ques­tioned as to the cause of his rais­ing the tu­mult, he de­clared that he was walk­ing qui­et­ly on the road­way with his par­ty, when the old wom­an (who was in cus­tody) had touched him as he passed, when im­me­di­ate­ly his heart sick­ened, and he was sen­si­ble she had be­witched him, for she was still de­vour­ing his heart and feast­ing on his vi­tals.[2] 'I will cer­tain­ly kill her!' he added, 'if she does not re­store me to my­self and my child like­wise!'--'When was your child at­tacked?'--'About four days since,' an­swered the an­gry fa­ther.

'Good man!' replied my friend; 'you must be un­der the in­flu­ence of delu­sion, since you told me just now, the wom­an is a stranger to you, and that you nev­er saw her be­fore; how could she have be­witched your child then four days ago? I am sure weak­en­ing fears or ill­ness has tak­en pos­ses­sion of your bet­ter feel­ings; the poor crea­ture looks not like one who pos­sess­es the pow­er you as­cribe to her.'

The old wom­an threw her­self at the feet of my friend, and im­plored his pro­tec­tion, re­it­er­at­ing her grat­itude to him as her pre­serv­er from the fury of an an­gry pop­ulace, who had al­ready beat­en her with slip­pers on her head, as a pre­lude to their fu­ture harsh in­ten­tions to­wards her. She stretched out her hands to touch him and bless him, as is the cus­tom with the low­er or­ders of wom­en to their su­pe­ri­or of ei­ther sex, but the mul­ti­tude in­sist­ed she should not be al­lowed to let her un­hal­lowed hands fall on the good Mus­sul­maun gen­tle­man; in a sec­ond was to be heard the in­vo­ca­tions of Hin­doos and Mus­sul­mauns, on their sev­er­al sources of supreme aid, to save the gen­tle­man from her pow­er, for all the mob felt per­suad­ed the old wom­an was a witch.

'Be as­sured you are mis­tak­en, I, at least, have no fears that her touch can harm me;' re­spond­ed my friend. 'Ex­er­cise your rea­son--is she not a hu­man be­ing like our­selves? True she is old and ug­ly, but you are re­al­ly wicked in ac­cus­ing and ill-​treat­ing the poor wretch.' They were si­lenced for a few min­utes, then de­clared she must be a witch, for her feet were crooked, she was de­sired to ex­hib­it them, and they were found to be per­fect­ly good straight feet.

My friend in­quired of the old wom­an who she was; she an­swered, 'A poor ma­zoorie[3] (corn-​grinder), my hus­band and my sons are grass-​cut­ters, our abode is in the serai (inn for trav­ellers), we are poor, but hon­est peo­ple.' 'You see, Sir,' said my friend to the ac­cus­ing per­son, 'your own weak fears have im­posed up­on your mind. This wom­an can­not have done you any in­jury; let her de­part qui­et­ly to her home with­out far­ther an­noy­ance.'

'No!' replied the ac­cus­er, 'she must sat­is­fy me she is not a witch, or worse than that, by al­low­ing me to pluck a few hairs from her head.'--' What ben­efit do you pro­pose to your­self by this mea­sure?'--'Why I shall re­lieve my­self from her pow­er over me, by pos­sess­ing hairs plucked from her head, on which my friends will ex­er­cise cer­tain prayers, and thus the craft she has used to be­witch me will be dis­solved, and I shall be re­stored to my­self again.'[4]

Will­ing as my friend was to get the poor wom­an re­leased from the hands of the ac­cus­ing par­ty, and find­ing rea­son or ar­gu­ment of no avail in turn­ing them from their pur­pose to de­tain her, the terms were ac­ced­ed to on the one part, pro­vid­ed the wom­an her­self was will­ing to com­ply, to which, when she was asked, she replied, 'I am not the wretched crea­ture my ac­cus­er imag­ines, and there­fore can have no ob­jec­tion, on con­di­tion that I may be al­lowed af­ter­wards to re­turn to my home in peace.'

The poor old head was now in dan­ger of be­ing plucked of its white hairs by the sur­round­ing crowd, whose ex­trav­agant de­sire to pos­sess the, to them, in­valu­able spe­cif­ic against witchcraft--for they still be­lieved she was ac­tu­al­ly a witch--led them to over­look hu­man­ity and feel­ing; but the peace­mak­er's voice was again heard, com­mand­ing the crowd to de­sist, and they should all be grat­ified, when the scis­sors he had sent a ser­vant to fetch, might en­able them to pos­sess the prize with­out in­flict­ing pain on the poor per­se­cut­ed wom­an.

Whilst this was in ag­ita­tion, and be­fore the scis­sors were used, sev­er­al well-​armed sol­diers, at­tract­ed by the ap­pear­ance of a ri­ot, had made their way to the scene of con­tention, who rec­og­niz­ing the old wom­an as the moth­er and wife of their three grass-​cut­ters, im­me­di­ate­ly took the poor old soul un­der their pro­tec­tion, and con­veyed her safe­ly from her tor­men­tors. My friend was very well sat­is­fied to re­sign his charge to their guardian­ship, and not a lit­tle pleased that he had been in­stru­men­tal in pre­serv­ing a fel­low-​crea­ture from the law­less hands of the fool­ish­ly su­per­sti­tious of his coun­try­men.

It is lamentable to wit­ness how pow­er­ful an as­cen­dan­cy su­per­sti­tion sways over the minds of Asi­at­ics gen­er­al­ly. The very wis­est, most learned, most re­li­gious, even, are more or less tinc­tured with this weak­ness; and, I may add, that I have hard­ly met with one per­son en­tire­ly free from the opin­ion that witchcraft and evil agen­cy are in the hands of some, and of­ten per­mit­ted to be ex­er­cised on their neigh­bours. The tru­ly re­li­gious peo­ple de­clare to me, that they on­ly are pre­served from such calami­ties who can place their whole re­liance on the pow­er and good­ness of God alone; Who, they are per­suad­ed, will nev­er suf­fer His faith­ful ser­vants to be per­se­cut­ed by the evil one in any shape, or un­der any mys­te­ri­ous agen­cy. Per­fect de­pen­dance on Di­vine Prov­idence is the Mus­sul­maun's on­ly safe­guard, for they de­clare it to be their be­lief that evil agen­cy ex­ists still, as it did in the first ages of the world. Faith and trust in God can alone pre­serve them; when that fails, or if they have nev­er learned to re­ly on Him for pro­tec­tion, they are nec­es­sar­ily ex­posed to the in­flu­ence of that evil agen­cy by which so many have suf­fered both in body and soul amongst their coun­try-​peo­ple.

The re­turn of our friend, with the ex­pla­na­tion of the scene I had wit­nessed from my win­dow, led me to in­quire very minute­ly in­to the opin­ion and gen­er­al be­lief of the Mus­sul­mauns on such sub­jects. A sen­si­ble, clever gen­tle­man of that per­sua­sion then present, told me that there could be no doubt witchcraft was of­ten prac­tised in Luc­know, de­tail­ing things he had of­ten heard, about the wicked amongst hu­man be­ings who prac­tised muntah[5] (in­can­ta­tions); and per­haps would have ex­plained the mo­tives and the ac­quired pow­er if I had been dis­posed to lis­ten. I in­quired of my friend, as he had al­ways ap­peared a re­li­gious per­son, whether he re­al­ly be­lieved in mag­ic, genii, evil agen­cy, &c. He told me, that he did be­lieve cer­tain­ly that such things still ex­ist­ed; but he added, 'such pow­er can on­ly work on the weak or the wicked, for that heart whose de­pen­dance is whol­ly fixed on God, has a sure pro­tec­tion from ev­ery evil, whether of man or spir­it. You have in your sa­cred book a full and am­ple de­lin­eation of the works of mag­ic, in the pe­ri­od of Moses, and al­so of Saul. In lat­er pe­ri­ods you have proofs of greater weight with you, where Christ cast out dev­ils and gave the same pow­er to His dis­ci­ples. My opin­ion,' he added, 'will not al­ter yours, nor do I wish it; nei­ther would I ar­gue or dis­pute with you on sub­jects be­come ob­so­lete in the en­light­ened world of which you are a mem­ber, but as far as my own in­di­vid­ual opin­ion is con­cerned, it is my be­lief that all things are pos­si­ble to the Almighty pow­er and will of God. And I see no right we have ei­ther to in­quire why, or to dis­pute about the mo­tives by which His wis­dom per­mits the weak to be af­flict­ed for a sea­son, or the wicked to be pun­ished in this life.'

I in­quired if he had ev­er wit­nessed any of the strange events I con­tin­ual­ly heard his peo­ple speak of, as hav­ing oc­curred in their neigh­bour­hood, such as peo­ple pos­sessed with un­clean spir­its, suf­fi­cient to con­firm his be­lief in their prob­abil­ity. He replied, 'I have not on­ly wit­nessed but have, un­der Di­vine Prov­idence, been the in­stru­ment to con­vey re­lief to sev­er­al dif­fer­ent wom­en, who suf­fered from be­ing pos­sessed by evil spir­its.' He then re­lat­ed the fol­low­ing, which I copy from the notes I took at the time of his re­la­tion:--

'When I was a very young man, my mind was bent on in­quir­ing in­to the truth of the gen­er­al­ly be­lieved opin­ion, that some righ­teous men of our faith had pow­er grant­ed to them to re­move evil spir­its from their vic­tims. I took the ad­vice of a cer­tain ven­er­able per­son, who was will­ing to im­part his knowl­edge to me. Prepara­to­ry to my own prac­tice, I was in­struct­ed to for­sake the haunts of man, and give my­self whol­ly to prayer. Ac­cord­ing­ly I ab­sent­ed my­self from my home, fam­ily, and friends, and led the life you would call a her­mit's; my food was sim­ply herbs and fruits, and oc­ca­sion­al­ly an un­leav­ened cake of my own prepar­ing, whilst the near­est tank of wa­ter sup­plied me with the on­ly bev­er­age I re­quired; my cloth­ing a sin­gle wrap­per of cal­ico; my house a soli­tary chupha (a thatch of coarse grass tied over a frame of bam­boo), and this placed on the mar­gin of a wood, where sel­dom the feet of man strayed to in­ter­fere with, or dis­turb my de­vo­tion. My days and nights were giv­en to earnest prayer; seek­ing God and of­fer­ing prais­es with my mouth to Him, con­sti­tut­ed my busi­ness and my de­light for near­ly two whole years, dur­ing which time my friends had sought me in vain, and many a tear I fear was shed at the un­cer­tain fate of one they loved so well in my fa­ther's house.'

'The sim­plic­ity of my mode of life, added to the ven­er­ation and re­spect al­ways paid to the Dur­weish's char­ac­ter, raised me in the opin­ion of the few who from time to time had in­trud­ed on my pri­va­cy, to ask some boon with­in my lim­its to give as a taa­wise[6] (tal­is­man), which is in fact a prayer, or else one of the names or at­tributes of God, in such a char­ac­ter as best suit­ed the ser­vice they re­quired; for you must be told, in the Mus­sul­maun faith, we count nine­ty-​nine dif­fer­ent names or ti­tles to the great mer­ci­ful Cre­ator and on­ly true God. In many cas­es the taa­wise I had so giv­en, had been sup­posed by the par­ty re­ceiv­ing them, to have been in­stru­men­tal in draw­ing down up­on them the favour of God, and thus hav­ing their dif­fi­cul­ties re­moved; this in­duced oth­ers in­flu­enced by their re­port, to ap­ply to me, and at last my re­tire­ment was no longer the her­mit's cell, but thronged as the court­yard of a king's palace. My own fam­ily in this way dis­cov­ered my re­treat, they urged and pre­vailed on me to re­turn amongst them, and by de­grees to give up my ab­stemious course of life.

'The fame of my de­vo­tion, how­ev­er, was soon con­veyed to the world; it was a task to shake off the en­treaties of my poor fel­low-​mor­tals who gave me more cred­it for ho­li­ness of life than I felt my­self de­serv­ing of. Yet sym­pa­thy pre­vailed on me to com­fort when I could, al­though I nev­er dared to think my­self de­serv­ing the im­plic­it con­fi­dence they placed in me.

'On one oc­ca­sion I was in­duced, at the ur­gent en­treaties of an old and val­ued friend, to try the ef­fects of my ac­quired knowl­edge in favour of a re­spectable fe­male, whose fam­ily, and her hus­band in par­tic­ular, were in great dis­tress at the vi­olence of her suf­fer­ings. They fan­cied she was trou­bled by a de­mon, who vis­it­ed her reg­ular­ly ev­ery eighth day; her rav­ings when so pos­sessed en­dan­gered her health, and de­stroyed the do­mes­tic har­mo­ny of the house.

'The day was fixed for my vis­it, and the first ex­er­cise of my ac­quire­ments; even then I had doubts on my mind whether the demons so of­ten quot­ed did re­al­ly ex­ist, or were but the dis­or­dered wan­der­ings of imag­ina­tion; and if they did ex­ist, I still was doubt­ful as to the ex­tent of my knowl­edge be­ing suf­fi­cient to en­able me to be the in­stru­ment for ef­fect­ing the de­sired ben­efit. Trust­ing faith­ful­ly, how­ev­er, in God's help, and de­sir­ing noth­ing but His glo­ry, I com­menced my op­er­ations. The wom­an was seat­ed on a char­poy (bed­stead) be­hind a wadded cur­tain, which hid her from my view. Re­spectable fe­males, you are aware, are not al­lowed to be seen by any males ex­cept very near rel­atives. I took my seat op­po­site the cur­tain with the hus­band of the suf­fer­ing wom­an, and en­tered in­to con­ver­sa­tion with him on gen­er­al sub­jects.

'I soon heard the wild speech­es of the wom­an, and my heart ful­ly sym­pa­thized in her suf­fer­ings. Af­ter prepar­ing the sweet-​scent­ed flow­ers for my pur­pose (it is be­lieved all aeri­al be­ings feed on the scent of flow­ers), fire was brought in a chaf­ing-​dish, at my re­quest, and a cop­per plate was placed on this fire, on which I strewed my pre­pared flow­ers mixed up with drugs. In­stant­ly the de­mon be­came fu­ri­ous in the wom­an, call­ing out to me, “Spare me! spare me!”

'I should re­mark that the wom­an was so en­tire­ly hid­den by the cur­tain as to leave it be­yond a doubt that she could not see what I was do­ing on the oth­er side, but she seemed, by the in­stinct of the evil spir­it which pos­sessed her, to be thor­ough­ly ac­quaint­ed with the na­ture of my vis­it, and the ex­er­tion I was mak­ing by prayer, for her re­lease from the in­trud­er. The wom­en at­tend­ing her, her friends and rel­atives, had no pow­er to re­strain her in the vi­olence of her parox­ysms; she tore the cur­tain with more than hu­man force, and it gave way, leav­ing her and the oth­er wom­en ex­posed to my gaze.

'I would, from mod­esty, have re­tired, but her hus­band, hav­ing con­fi­dence in my abil­ity to help his af­flict­ed wife, whom he loved most ten­der­ly, en­treat­ed me not to re­tire, but to think of the wom­an as my own sis­ter. The wom­an, or rather the de­mon in the wom­an, told me what I was go­ing to do was not with­held from her knowl­edge, de­sir­ing me im­me­di­ate­ly to leave the place.

'“Who are you?” I in­quired.--“I am the spir­it of an old wom­an, who once in­hab­it­ed this house;” was an­swered by a coarse harsh voice.--“Why have you dared to pos­sess your­self of this poor fe­male? she nev­er could have done you any in­jury.”--“No,” was an­swered, “not the fe­male, but her hus­band has tak­en pos­ses­sion of this house, and I am here to tor­ment him for it, by vis­it­ing his wife.”

'“Do you know that I am per­mit­ted to have pow­er to de­stroy you in this fire?”--“Yes, but I hope you will shew mer­cy; let me es­cape and I will flee to the for­est.”--“I can­not agree to this, you would then, be­ing at lib­er­ty, fas­ten your­self on some oth­er poor mor­tal, who may not find one to re­lease him from your tyran­ny; I shall de­stroy you now;” and I was ac­tu­al­ly prepar­ing my meth­ods for this pur­pose, when the scream­ing be­came so vi­olent, the poor wom­an's agony so ter­rif­ic, that I dread­ed her in­stant death from the present agony of her rav­ings.

'“How am I to know you are what you rep­re­sent your­self to be?” said I, try­ing the soft­est man­ner of speech; (the poor vic­tim ap­peared at ease im­me­di­ate­ly).--“Ask me any ques­tion you please,” was replied, ap­par­ent­ly by the wom­an, “and I will an­swer you.” I rose and went in­to the front en­trance of the house, which is di­vid­ed from the zeenah­nah by a high wall, as are all our Mus­sul­maun hous­es, and re­turned with some­thing close­ly con­cealed in my hand. I asked, “What is en­closed in my clenched hand?”--“A piece of char­coal,” was the prompt re­ply. It was so in truth; I could no longer doubt.

'An­oth­er of the par­ty was sent to the out­er house; and, again I in­quired, “What is in this per­son's hand?”--“Grains of corn.”--“Of what na­ture?”--“Wheat.” The hand was opened, and the con­tents were re­al­ly as was said;--con­firm­ing to all present, if they had ev­er doubt­ed, that the poor wom­an was pos­sessed by the de­mon, as I have be­fore rep­re­sent­ed. Near­ly two hours were spent in the most sin­gu­lar con­ver­sa­tions, which, whilst they amused me ex­ceed­ing­ly, con­vinced me by my own ob­ser­va­tions of the truth of that which I had but im­per­fect­ly be­lieved be­fore these tri­als.

'“I will cer­tain­ly de­stroy you in this fire, un­less you give me am­ple as­sur­ances that you will nev­er again an­noy or tor­ment this poor in­of­fen­sive wom­an;” and, as I pre­sent­ed my prepa­ra­tion, the screams, the cries of “Spare me! oh, spare me this fiery tor­ment!” were re­peat­ed with re­dou­bled force. I asked, “What is your be­lief?”--“I be­lieve in one God, the Cre­ator of all things;” was prompt­ly an­swered.--“Then away to the for­est, the boon you first craved from me, nor again ven­ture to re­turn to this house.”

'The in­stant my com­mand was giv­en, the wom­an was calm, her rea­son re­stored im­me­di­ate­ly; her shame and con­fu­sion were be­yond ex­press­ing by words, as she awoke from what she termed a dream of heavy ter­ror that had over­pow­ered her. The ap­pear­ance of a strange man,--her­self but half clad, for in the mo­ments of rav­ing she had torn off parts of her cloth­ing, leav­ing the up­per part of her per­son en­tire­ly un­cov­ered--near­ly de­prived her again of re­turn­ing rea­son; her hus­band's pres­ence, how­ev­er, soothed her mind; but it was some time be­fore her con­fu­sion was suf­fi­cient­ly ban­ished to en­able her to con­verse freely with me. In an­swer to the ques­tions I asked of her, she replied that she had not the least rec­ol­lec­tion of what had oc­curred. She fan­cied her­self over­pow­ered by a dread­ful dream which had ag­itat­ed her great­ly, though she could not rec­ol­lect what was the na­ture of that dream. I or­dered some cool­ing bev­er­age to be pre­pared for my pa­tient, and rec­om­mend­ing rest and qui­et, took my leave, promis­ing to vis­it her again in my pro­fes­sion­al char­ac­ter, should any re­turn of the calami­ty ren­der my vis­it nec­es­sary. The whole fam­ily heaped bless­ings and prayers on my head for the ben­efit they be­lieved I had been the in­stru­ment of Prov­idence in ren­der­ing to their house.

'This was my first at­tempt at the prac­tice I had been in­struct­ed in; and, you may be­lieve, I was grat­ified with the suc­cess with which my en­deav­ours had been crowned. For sev­er­al months the la­dy con­tin­ued quite well, when some symp­toms of ir­ri­tabil­ity of tem­per and ab­sence of mind warned her hus­band and fam­ily of ap­proach­ing dan­ger up­on which, they urged and en­treat­ed my sec­ond vis­it. I went ac­com­pa­nied by sev­er­al friends who were cu­ri­ous to wit­ness the ef­fect ex­pect­ed to be pro­duced by my prayer. It ap­peared the poor wom­an was more calm on my first en­trance, than when _I_ had pre­vi­ous­ly vis­it­ed her; but af­ter re­peat­ing my form of prayer, the most vi­olent rav­ings fol­lowed ev­ery ques­tion I put to her.

'Many hours were spent in this way. The replies to my ques­tions were re­mark­able; she al­ways an­swered, as if by the spir­it with which she was pos­sessed. I de­mand­ed, “Why have you dared to re­turn to this poor crea­ture? do you doubt my abil­ity to de­stroy you?” The re­ply was, “had no pow­er to fix my­self again on the wom­an, un­til you en­tered the house, but I have hov­ered over her.”--I said, “I do not be­lieve that you are the soul of a de­ceased old wom­an as you rep­re­sent your­self to be; per­haps you may wish to con­vince me, by an­swer­ing the ques­tions that will be made by me and my friends.” The sev­er­al ques­tions were then put and an­swered in a way that sur­prised all present.

Af­ter­wards, I said, “You pro­fessed when here on a for­mer oc­ca­sion, to be­lieve in God. An­swer me now, to what sect of peo­ple did you be­long?”--“Sheikh,” was the re­ply, “and I be­lieve in one God of mer­cy and of truth,”'--“Then you are my broth­er,'” I said, ris­ing, and hold­ing out my hand to the wom­an, “we will shake hands.”---“No, No!” replied the wom­an, with great ag­ita­tion and ter­ror, “I be­seech you not to touch me; the fire which I dread would then tor­ment me more than I could bear. I would will­ing­ly shake hands with all here present, that would give me no pain, but with you the case is dif­fer­ent; one touch of yours would de­stroy me im­me­di­ate­ly. Not to pro­long my sto­ry, at the hus­band's earnest en­treaty, the evil soul was de­stroyed by the prac­tice I had learned, and the poor wom­an, re­stored to health and peace, was no more trou­bled by her en­emy.”

When this sto­ry was re­lat­ed, I fan­cied it a mere fa­ble of the re­la­tor's brain to amuse his au­di­ence; but on a more in­ti­mate ac­quain­tance with him, I find it to be his re­al opin­ion that he had been in­stru­men­tal in the way de­scribed, in re­mov­ing evil spir­its from the pos­sessed; nor could I ev­er shake his con­fi­dence by any ar­gu­ment brought for­ward for that pur­pose dur­ing many years of in­ti­mate ac­quain­tance; which is the more to be re­gret­ted as in all oth­er re­spects he pos­sess­es a very su­pe­ri­or and in­tel­li­gent mind, and as far as _I_ could judge of his heart by his life, al­ways ap­peared to be a re­al­ly de­vout ser­vant of God.

It is not sur­pris­ing that the strong­ly ground­ed per­sua­sion should be too deeply root­ed to give way to my fee­ble ef­forts; time, but more es­pe­cial­ly the mer­cy of Di­vine good­ness ex­tend­ed to them, will dis­solve the delu­sion they are as yet fast bound by, as it has in more en­light­ened coun­tries, where su­per­sti­tion once con­trolled both the ig­no­rant and the schol­ar, in near­ly as great a de­gree as it is ev­ident it does at this day the peo­ple of In­dia gen­er­al­ly. Here the en­light­ened and the un­en­light­ened are so strong­ly per­suad­ed of the in­flu­ence of su­per­nat­ural evil agen­cy, that if any one is af­flict­ed with fits, it is af­firmed by the look­ers on, of what­ev­er de­gree, that the sick per­son is pos­sessed by an un­clean spir­it.

If any one is tak­en sud­den­ly ill, and the doc­tor can­not dis­cov­er the com­plaint, the opin­ion is that some evil spir­it has vis­it­ed the pa­tient, and the holy men of the city are then ap­plied to, who by prayer may draw down re­lief for the beloved and suf­fer­ing ob­ject. Hence aris­es the num­ber of ap­pli­ca­tions to the holy men for a writ­ten prayer, called taa­wise ( tal­is­man) which the peo­ple of that faith de­clare will not on­ly pre­serve the wear­er from the at­tacks of un­clean spir­its, genii, &c., but these prayers will oblige such spir­its to quit the af­flict­ed im­me­di­ate­ly on their be­ing placed on the per­son. The chil­dren are armed from their birth with tal­is­mans; and if any one should have the temer­ity to laugh at the prac­tice, he would be judged by these su­per­sti­tious peo­ple as worse than a hea­then.

[1] Kan­haiya, a name of the demigod Kr­ish­na, whom Kansa, the wicked King of Mathu­ra, tried to de­stroy. For the mir­acle-​play of the de­struc­tion of Kansa by Kr­ish­na and his broth­er Balara­ma, see Prof. W. Ridge­way, _The Ori­gin of Tragedy_, 140, 157, 190. The au­thor seems to re­fer to the Ramlila fes­ti­val.

[2] For cas­es of witch­es suck­ing out the vi­tals of their vic­tims, see W. Crooke, _Pop­ular Re­li­gion and Folk­lore of N. In­dia_, ii. 268 ff.

[3] _Maz­durni_, a day labour­er.

[4] On the ef­fi­ca­cy of shav­ing or pluck­ing out hair from a witch in or­der to make her in­ca­pable of be­witch­ing peo­ple, see W. Crooke, _Pop­ular Re­li­gion and Folk­lore of N. In­dia_[2], ii. 250 f.

[5] _Mantra_.

[6] _Ta'wiz_, see p. 214.