Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official Part 12

'Of course! Who ever heard of other people eating human beings?'

'And you really still think, in spite of all that we have done and said, that there are such things as witches?'

'Of course we do--do not we find instances of it every day? European gentlemen are too apt to believe that things like this are not to be found here, because they are not to be found in their own country.

Major Wardlow, when in charge of the Seoni district, denied the existence of witchcraft for a long time, but he was at last convinced.'

'How?'

'One of his troopers, one morning after a long march, took some milk for his master's breakfast from an old woman without paying for it.

Before the major had got over his breakfast the poor trooper was down upon his back, screaming from the agony of internal pains. We all knew immediately that he had been bewitched, and recommended the major to send for some one learned in these matters to find out the witch. He did so, and, after hearing from the trooper the story about the milk, this person at once declared that the woman from whom he got it was the criminal. She was searched for, found, and brought to the trooper, and commanded to cure him. She flatly denied that she had herself conjured him; but admitted that her household G.o.ds might, unknown to her, have punished him for his wickedness. This, however, would not do. She was commanded to cure the man, and she set about collecting materials for the "puja" (worship); and before she could get quite through the ceremonies, all his pains had left him. Had we not been resolute with her, the man must have died before evening, so violent were his torments.'

'Did not a similar case occur to Mr. Fraser at Jubbulpore?'

'A "chaprasi"[2] of his, while he had charge of the Jubbulpore district, was sent out to Mandla[3] with a message of some kind or other. He took a c.o.c.k from an old Gond woman without paying for it, and, being hungry after a long journey, ate the whole of it in a curry. He heard the woman mutter something, but being a raw, unsuspecting young man, he thought nothing of it, ate his c.o.c.k, and went to sleep. He had not been asleep three hours before he was seized with internal pains, and the old c.o.c.k was actually heard crowing in his belly. He made the best of his way back to Jubbulpore, several stages, and all the most skilful men were employed to charm away the effect of the old woman's spell, but in vain. He died, and the c.o.c.k never ceased crowing at intervals up to the hour of his death.'

'And was Mr. Fraser convinced?'

'I never heard, but suppose he must have been.'

'Who ate the livers of the victims? The witches themselves, or the evil spirits with whom they had dealings?'

'The evil spirits ate the livers; but they are set on to do so by the witches, who get them into their power by such accursed sacrifices and offerings. They will often dig up young children from their graves, bring them to life, and allow these devils to feed upon their livers, as falconers allow their hawks to feed on the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of pigeons. You "sahib log" (European gentlemen) will not believe all this, but it is, nevertheless, all very true.'[4]

The belief in sorcery among these people owes its origin, in a great measure, to the diseases of the liver and spleen to which the natives, and particularly the children, are much subject in the jungly parts of Central India. From these affections children pine away and die, without showing any external marks of disease. Their death is attributed to witchcraft, and any querulous old woman, who has been in the habit of murmuring at slights and ill treatment in the neighbourhood, is immediately set down as the cause. Men who practise medicine among them are very commonly supposed to be at the same time wizards. Seeking to inspire confidence in their prescriptions by repeating prayers and incantations over the patient, or over the medicine they give him, they make him believe that they derive aid from supernatural power; and the patient concludes that those who can command these powers to cure can, if they will, command them to destroy. He and his friends believe that the man who can command these powers to cure one individual can command them to cure any other; and, if he does not do so, they believe that it arises from a desire to destroy the patient. I have, in these territories, known a great many instances of medical pract.i.tioners having been put to death for not curing young people for whom they were required to prescribe. Several cases have come before me as a magistrate in which the father has stood over the doctor with a drawn sword by the side of the bed of his child, and cut him down and killed him the moment the child died, as he had sworn to do when he found the patient sinking under his prescriptions.[5]

The town of Jubbulpore contains a population of twenty thousand souls,[6] and they all believed in this story of the c.o.c.k. I one day asked a most respectable merchant in the town, Nadu Chaudhri, how the people could believe in such things, when he replied that he had no doubt witches were to be found in every part of India, though they abounded most, no doubt, in the central parts of it, and that we ought to consider ourselves very fortunate in having no such things in England. 'But', added he, 'of all countries that between Mandla and Katak (Cuttack)[7] is the worst for witches. I had once occasion to go to the city of Ratanpur[8] on business, and was one day, about noon, walking in the market-place and eating a very fine piece of sugar-cane. In the crowd I happened, by accident, to jostle an old woman as she pa.s.sed me. I looked back, intending to apologize for the accident, and heard her muttering indistinctly as she pa.s.sed on.

Knowing the propensities of these old ladies, I became somewhat uneasy, and on turning round to my cane I found, to my great terror, that the juice had been all _turned to blood_. Not a minute had elapsed, such were the fearful powers of this old woman. I collected my followers, and, leaving my agents there to settle my accounts, was beyond the boundaries of the old wretch's influence before dark; had I remained, nothing could have saved me. I should certainly have been a dead man before morning. It is well known', said the old gentleman, 'that their spells and curses can only reach a certain distance, ten or twelve miles; and, if you offend one of them, the sooner you place that distance between you the better.'

Jangbar Khan, the representative of the Shahgarh Raja,[9] as grave and reverend an old gentleman as ever sat in the senate of Venice, told me one day that he was himself an eye-witness of the powers of the women of Khilauti. He was with a great concourse of people at a fair held at the town of Raipur,[10] and, while sauntering with many other strangers in the fair, one of them began bargaining with two women of middle age for some very fine sugar-canes. They asked double the fair price for their canes. The man got angry, and took up one of them, when the women seized the other end, and a struggle ensued. The purchaser offered a fair price, seller demanded double. The crowd looked on, and a good deal of abuse of the female relations on both sides took place. At last a sepoy of the governor came up, armed to the teeth, and called out to the man, in a very imperious tone, to let go his hold of the cane. He refused, saying that 'when people came to the fair to sell, they should be made to sell at reasonable prices, or be turned out'. 'I', said Jangbar Khan, 'thought the man right, and told the sepoy that, if he took the part of this woman, we should take that of the other, and see fair play. Without further ceremony the functionary drew his sword, and cut the cane in two in the middle; and, pointing to both pieces, 'There', said he, 'you see the cause of my interference'. We looked down, and actually saw blood running from both pieces, and forming a little pool on the ground.

The fact was that the woman was a sorceress of the very worst kind, and was actually drawing the blood from the man through the cane, to feed the abominable devil from whom she derived her detestable powers. But for the timely interference of the sepoy he would have been dead in another minute; for he no sooner saw the real state of the case than he fainted. He had hardly any blood left in him, and I was afterwards told that he was not able to walk for ten days. We all went to the governor to demand justice, declaring that, unless the women were made an example of at once, the fair would be deserted, for no stranger's life would be safe. He consented, and they were both sewn up in sacks and thrown into the river; but they had conjured the water and would not sink. They ought to have been put to death, but the governor was himself afraid of this kind of people, and let them off. There is not', continued Jangbar, 'a village, or a single family, without its witch in that part of the country; indeed, no man will give his daughter in marriage to a family without one, saying, "If my daughter has children, what will become of them without a witch to protect them from the witches of other families in the neighbourhood?" It is a fearful country, though the cheapest and most fertile in India.'

We can easily understand how a man, impressed with the idea that his blood had all been drawn from him by a sorceress, should become faint, and remain many days in a languid state; but how the people around should believe that they saw the blood flowing from both parts of the cane at the place cut through, it is not so easy to conceive.

I am satisfied that old Jangbar believed the whole story to be true, and that at the time he thought the juice of the cane red; but the little pool of blood grew, no doubt, by degrees, as years rolled on and he related this tale of the fearful powers of the Khilauti witches.

Notes:

1. _Ante_, Chapter 9.

2. An orderly, or official messenger, who wears a 'chapras', or badge of office.

3. On the Nerbudda, fifty miles south-east of Jubbulpore.

4. Of the supposed powers and dispositions of witches among the Romans we have horrible pictures in the 5th Ode of the 6th Book of Horace, and in the 6th Book of Lucan's _Pharsalia_. [W. H. S.] The reference to Horace should be to the 5th Epode. The pa.s.sage in the _Pharsalia_, Book VI, lines 420-830, describes the proceedings of Thessalian witches.

5. Such awkward incidents of medical practice are not heard of nowadays.

6. The population of Jabalpur (including cantonments) has increased steadily, and in 1911 was 100,651, as compared with 84,556 in 1891, and 76,023 in 1881.

7. Katak, or Cuttack, a district, with town of same name, in Orissa.

8. In the Bilaspur district of the Central Provinces. The distance in a direct line between Mandla and Katak is about 400 miles.

9. Shahgarh was formerly a petty native state, with town of same name. The chief joined the rebels in 1857, with the result that his dominions were confiscated, and distributed between the districts of Sagar and Damoh in the Central Provinces, and Jhansi (formerly Lalitpur) in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. The town of Shahgarh is in the Sagar district.

10. Raipur is the chief town of the district of the same name in the Central Provinces, which was not finally annexed to the British dominions until 1854, when the Nagpur State lapsed.

CHAPTER 12

The Silver Tree, or 'Kalpa Briksha'--The Singhara or _Trapa bispinosa_, and the Guinea-Worm.

Poor old Salamat Ali wept bitterly at the last meeting in my tent, and his two nice boys, without exactly knowing why, began to do the same; and my little son Henry[1] caught the infection, and wept louder than any of them. I was obliged to hurry over the interview lest I should feel disposed to do the same. The poor old Rani,[2]

too, suffered a good deal in parting from my wife, whom, she says, she can never hope to see again. Her fine large eyes shed many a tear as she was getting into her palankeen to return.

Between Jabera and Hardua, the next stage, we find a great many of those large forest trees called 'kalap', or 'Kalpa Briksha' (the same which in the paradise of Indra grants what is desired), with a soft, silvery bark, and scarcely any leaves. We are told that the name of the G.o.d Ram (Rama) and his consort Sita will be found written by the hand of G.o.d upon all.[3]

I had the curiosity to examine a good many in the forest on both sides of the road, and found the name of this incarnation of Vishnu written on everyone in Sanskrit characters, apparently by some supernatural hand; that is, there was a softness in the impression, as if the finger of some supernatural being had traced the characters. Nathu, one of our belted attendants[4] told me that we might search as deeply as we would in the forest, but we should certainly find the name of G.o.d upon every one; 'for', said he, 'it is G.o.d himself who writes it'. I tried to argue him out of this notion; but, unfortunately, could find no tree without these characters--some high up, and some lower down in the trunk--some large and others small--but still to be found on every tree. I was almost in despair when we came to a part of the wood where we found one of these trees down in a hollow, under the road, and another upon the precipice above. I was ready to stake my credit upon the probability that no traveller would take the trouble to go up to the tree above, or down to the tree below, merely to write the name of the G.o.d upon them; and at once pledged myself to Nathu that he should find neither the G.o.d's name nor that of his wife. I sent one man up, and another man down, and they found no letters on the trees; but this did not alter their opinion on the point. 'G.o.d', said one, 'had no doubt put his name on these trees, but they had somehow or other got rubbed off. He would in good time renew them, that men's eyes might be blessed with the sight of His holy name, even in the deepest forest, and on the most leafless tree.'[5] 'But', said Nathu, 'he might not have thought it worth while to write his name upon those trees which no travellers go to see.' 'Cannot you see', said I, 'that these letters have been engraved by man? Are they not all to be found on the trunk within reach of a man's hand?' 'Of course they are', replied he, 'because people would not be able conveniently to distinguish them if G.o.d were to write them higher up.'

Shaikh Sadi has a very pretty couplet, 'Every leaf of the foliage of a green tree is, in the eye of a wise man, a library to teach him the wisdom of his Creator.'[6] I may remark that, where an Englishman would write his own name, a Hindoo would write that of his G.o.d, his parent, or his benefactor. This difference is traceable, of course, to the difference in their governments and inst.i.tutions. If a Hindoo built a town, he called it after his local governor; if a local governor built it, he called it after the favourite son of the Emperor. In well regulated Hindoo families, one cannot ask a younger brother after his children in presence of the elder brother who happens to be the head of the family; it would be disrespectful for him even to speak of his children as his own in such presence--the elder brother relieves his embarra.s.sment by answering for him.

On the 27th[7] we reached Damoh,[8] where our friends, the Browns, were to leave us on their return to Jubbulpore. Damoh is a pretty place. The town contains some five or six thousand people, and has some very handsome Hindoo temples. On a hill immediately above it is the shrine of a Muhammadan saint, which has a very picturesque appearance.

There are no manufactures at Damoh, except such as supply the wants of the immediate neighbourhood; and the town is supported by the residence of a few merchants, a few landholders, and agricultural capitalists, and the establishment of a native collector. The people here suffer much from the guinea-worm, and consider it to arise from drinking the water of the old tank, which is now very dirty and full of weeds. I have no doubt that it is occasioned either by drinking the water of this tank, or by wading in it: for I have known European gentlemen get the worm in their legs from wading in similar lakes or swamps after snipes, and the servants who followed them with their ammunition experience the same effect.[9] Here, as in most other parts of India, the tanks get spoiled by the water-chestnut, 'singhara' (_Trapa bispinosa_), which is everywhere as regularly planted and cultivated _in fields_ under a large surface of water, as wheat or barley is on the dry plains. It is cultivated by a cla.s.s of men called Dhimars, who are everywhere fishermen and palankeen bearers; and they keep boats for the planting, weeding, and gathering the 'singhara'.[10] The holdings or tenements of each cultivator are marked out carefully on the surface of the water by long bamboos stuck up in it; and they pay so much the acre for the portion they till. The long straws of the plants reach up to the surface of the waters, upon which float their green leaves; and their pure white flowers expand beautifully among them in the latter part of the afternoon. The nut grows under the water after the flowers decay, and is of a triangular shape, and covered with a tough brown integument adhering strongly to the kernel, which is white, esculent, and of a fine cartilaginous texture. The people are very fond of these nuts, and they are carried often upon bullocks' backs two or three hundred miles to market. They ripen in the latter end of the rains, or in September, and are eatable till the end of November. The rent paid for an ordinary tank by the cultivator is about one hundred rupees a year. I have known two hundred rupees to be paid for a very large one, and even three hundred, or thirty pounds a year.[11] But the mud increases so rapidly from this cultivation that it soon destroys all reservoirs in which it is permitted; and, where it is thought desirable to keep up the tank for the sake of the water, it should be carefully prohibited. This is done by stipulating with the renter of the village, at the renewal of the lease, that no 'singhara' shall be planted in the tank; otherwise, he will never forgo the advantage to himself of the rent for the sake of the convenience, and that only prospective, of the village community in general.

Notes:

1. Afterwards Captain H. A. Sleeman, He died in 1905.

2. Of Garha, see _ante_, Chapter 9, prior to note 10.

3. The real 'kalpa', which now stands in the garden of the G.o.d Indra in the first heaven, was one of the fourteen varieties found at the churning of the ocean by the G.o.ds and demons. It fell to the share of Indra. [W. H. S.] The tree referred to in the text perhaps may be the _Erythrina arborescens_, or coral-tree, which sheds its leaves after the hot weather.

4. That is to say, orderlies, or 'chaprasis'.

5. Every Hindoo is thoroughly convinced that the names of Ram and his consort Sita are written on this tree by the hand of G.o.d, and nine- tenths of the Musalmans believe the same.

Happy the man who sees a G.o.d employed In all the good and ill that chequer life, Resolving all events, with their effects And manifold results, into the will And arbitration wise of the Supreme.

COWPER. [W. H. S.]

The quotation is from _The Task_, Book II, line 161.