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Popular Witchcraft and Sorcery

The popular witchcraft and sorcery of India greatly resembles that of Europe. The Dravidian or aboriginal races of India have always been strong believers in witchcraft, and it is possible that here we have an example of the mythic influence of a conquered people. They are, however, extremely reticent regarding any knowledge they possess of it. It is practically confined to them, and this might lead to the hasty supposition that the Aryan races of India possess no witchcraft of their own. But this is highly unlikely, and the truth probably lies quite in the other direction; however, the extraordinarily high demands made upon the popular religious sense by Brahmanism probably crushed the superstitions of the lower cults of a very early period and confined the practice of minor sorcery to the lower castes, who were of course of Dravidian or aboriginal blood. We find witchcraft most prevalent among the more isolated and least advanced races, like the Kols, Bhils, and Santals. The nomadic peoples are also strong believers in sorcery, one of the most dreaded forms of which is the Jigar Khor, or liver-eater, of whom Abul Fazl says.

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, and 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 Jiger 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 figer Khors are mostly women. It is said they can bring intelligence from a long distance in a short period of time, and if they are thrown into a river with a stone tied to them, they will not sink. In order to derive anyone 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 subterranean chamber, and repeat over him certain incantations. The witch does not, however, devour the man’s liver for two and a half days, and even if she has eaten it, and is put under the hands of an exorciser, she can be forced to substitute a liver of some animal in the body of the man whom she victimized. We also hear tales of witches taking out the entrails of people, sucking them, and then replacing them. All this undoubtedly illustrates, as in ancient France and Germany and probably also in the Slavonic countries, the original combination of witch and vampire; how, in fact, the two were one and the same. In India the arch-witch Ralaretri, or “black night “ has the joined eyebrows of the Salvonic werewolf or vampire, large cheeks, widely-parted lips, projecting teeth, and is a veritable vampire. But she also possesses the powers of ordinary witchcraft—second-sight, the making of philters, the control of tempests, the evil eye, and so forth. Witches also take animal forms, especially those of tigers, and stories of trials are related at which natives gave evidence that they had tracked certain tigers to their lairs, which upon entering they had found tenanted by a a notorious witch or wizard. For such witch-tigers, the usual remedy is to knock out their teeth to prevent them from doing any more mischief. Strangely enough, the Indian witch, like her European prototype, is very often accompanied by a cat. The cat, say the jungle people, is aunt to the tiger, and taught him everything but how to climb a tree. Zalim Sinh, the famous regent of Kota, believed that cats were associated with witches, and imagining himself enchanted, ordered that every cat should be expelled from his province.

As in Europe, witches are known by certain marks. They are believed to learn the secrets of their craft by eating offal of all kinds. The popular belief concerning them is that they are often very handsome and neat, and invariably apply a clear line of red lead to the parting of their hair. They are popularly accused of exhuming dead children, and bringing them to life to serve occult purposes of their own. They cannot die so long as they are witches, and until, as in Italy, they can pass on their knowledge of witchcraft to someone else. They recite charms backwards, repeating two letters and a half from a verse in the Koran, If a certain charm is repeated “forwards,” the person employing it will become invisible to his neighbor, but if he repeats it backwards, he will assume whatever shape he chooses. A witch can acquire power over her victim by getting possession of a lock of hair, the paring of nails, or some other part of his body, such as a tooth. For thus reason natives of India are extremely careful about the disposal of such, burying them in the earth in a place covered with grass, or in the neighborhood of water, which witches universally dislike. Some people even fling the cuttings of their hair into running water. Like the witches of Europe, they are also in the practice of making images of persons out of wax, dough, or similar substances, and torturing them with the idea that the pain will be felt by the person whom they desire to injure. In India, the witches’ familiar is known as Bir or the “hero,” who aids her to inflict injury upon human beings. The power of the witch is greatest on the 4th, 5th and 29th of each month, and in particular on the Feast of Lamps and the Festival of Durga.

Witches are often severely punished amongst the isolated hillfolk and a diabolical ingenuity is shown in torturing them. To nullify their evil influence, they are beaten with rods of the castor-oil plant and usually die in the process. They are often forced to drink filthy water used by curriers in the process of their work, or their noses are cut off, or they are put to death. As has been said, their teeth are often knocked out, their heads shaved, and offal is thrown at them. In the case of women, their heads are shaved and their hair is attached to a tree in some public place. They are also branded, have a ploughshare tied to their legs, and made to drink the water of a tannery. During the Mutiny, when British authority was relaxed, the most atrocious horrors were inflicted upon witches and sorcerers by the Dravidian people. Pounded chilli peppers were placed in their eyes to see if they would bring tears, and the wretched beings were suspended from a tree head downwards, being swung violently from side to side. They were then forced to drink the blood of a goat and to exorcise the evil spirits that they had caused to enter the bodies of certain sick persons. The mutilations and cruelties practiced on them are such as will not bear repetition, but one of the favorite ways of counteracting the spells of a witch is to draw blood from her, and the local priest will often prick the tongue of the witch with a needle, and place the resulting blood on some rice and compel her to eat it.

In Bombay, the aboriginal Tharus are supposed to possess special powers of witchcraft so that the “ Land of Tharus” is a synonym for witchland. In Gorakhpur, witches are also very numerous, and the half-gypsy Ben­jares, or grain-carriers, are notorious believers in witchcraft. In his interesting "Popular Religion and Folh-lore of Northern India", Mr. W. Crooke, who has had exceptional opportunities for the study of the native character, and who has done much to clear up the dark places of Indian popular mythology, says regarding the various types of Indian witches:

At the present day the half-deified witch most dreaded in the Eastern Districts of the Northwestern Provinces is Lona, or Nona, a Chemariu or woman of the currier caste. Her legend is in this wise. The great physician Dhanwantara, who corresponds to Luqman Hakim 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’s 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 Lona, 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, Nona rushed along over the country, and the channel which she made in her curse is the Loni river to this day. So a saint in Broach formed a new course for a river by dragging his clothes behind him.    

Another terrible witch, whose legend is told at Mathura, is Putana, the daughter of Bali, king of the lower world. She found the infant Krishna asleep, and began to suckle him with her devil’s milk. The first drop would have poisoned a mortal child, but Krishna drew her breast with such strength that he drained her life-blood, and the fiend, terrifying the whole land of Braj with her cries of agony, fell lifeless on the ground. European witches suck the blood of children. Here the divine Krishna turns the tables on the witch.

The Palwar Rajputs of Oudh have a witch ancestress. Soon after the birth of her son she was engaged in baking cakes. Her infant began to cry, and she was obliged to perform a double duty. At this juncture her husband arrived just in time to see his demon wife assume gigantic and supernatural proportions, so as to allow both the baking and nursing to go on at the same time. But finding her secret discovered, the witch disappeared, leaving her son as a legacy to her astonished husband. Here, though the story is incomplete, we have almost certainly, as in the case of Nona Chamarin, one of the Melusina type of legend, where the supernatural wife leaves her husband and children, because he violated some taboo, by which he is forbidden to see her in a state of nudity, or the like.

 The history of witchcraft in India, as in Europe, is one of the saddest pages in the annals of the people. Today, the power of British law has almost entirely suppressed the horrible outrages which, under the native administration were habitually practiced. 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.

 The aborigines of In die live in great fear of ghosts and invisible spirits, and a considerable portion of their time is given up to averting the evil influences of these. Protective of every description litter their houses, and the approaches to them, and they wear numerous amulets for the purpose of averting evil influences, Regarding these, Mr. Crooks says Some of the Indian ghosts, like the Ifrit of the Arabian Nights, can grow to the length of ten yojanes or eighty miles. In one of the Bengal tales a ghost is identified because she can stretch out her hands several yards for a vessel. Some ghosts possess the very dangerous power of entering human corpses, like the Vetala, and swelling to an enormous size. The Kharwars of Mirzapur have a wild legend, which tells how long ago an unmarried girl of the tribe died, and was being cremated. While the relations were collecting wood for the pyre, a ghost entered the corpse. but, the friends managed to expel him. Since then great care is taken not to leave the bodies of women unwatched. So, in the Panjab, when a great person is cremated the bones and ashes are carefully watched till the fourth day, to prevent a magician interfering with them. If he has a chance, he can restore the deceased to life, and ever after retain him under hIs influence. This is the origin of the custom in Great Britain of waking the dead, a practice which ‘most probably originated from a silly superstition as to the danger of a corpse being carried off by some of the agents of the invisible world, or exposed to the ominous liberties of brute animals.’ But in India it is considered the best course, if the corpse cannot be immediately disposed of, to measure it carefully, and then no malignant Bhut can occupy it.

Most of the ghosts whom we have been as yet considering are malignant. There are, however, others which are friendly. Such are the German Elves, the Robin Good-fellow, Puck, Brownie and the Cauld Lad of Hilton of England, the Glasban of the Isle of Man, the Phouka or Leprehann of Ireland. Such, in one of his many forms, is the Brahmadaitya, or ghost of a Brahman who has died unmarried. In Bengal, he is believed to be more neat and less mischievous than other ghosts. The Bbuts carry him in a palanquin, and he wears wooden sandals and lives in a Banyan tree.

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