CHOW OO-BOON, A SPIRIT-MEDIUM—CONSULTING ANCESTRAL SPIRITS—AN
EXORCIST—SPIRIT OF WITCHCRAFT—ILL-TREATING A PATIENT—TREATMENT OF
WITCHES—FALSE CHARGES—MISSIONARY DESTROYS AN IMAGE—EXECUTION OF
CHRISTIANS—PROCLAMATION IN FAVOUR OF CHRISTIANS—MISSIONARIES PROTECT
WITCHES—UNDERMINE SUPERSTITION—GHOSTS PERCHING ON TREES—A MISSIONARY
GHOST—HEADLESS DEMONS—A DEMONIAC.
After breakfast I went next door to have another chat with Mr Wilson. He
told me that Chow Oo-boon had great power with the members of the
Government, who were all connected with the royal family; because,
besides being the queen’s sister, she was the spirit-medium of the
family. As an instance of her power, he stated that when called in to
consult the spirits after the late _Chow Hona_, or second king, was
struck down with sickness, she boldly told him that the spirits were
displeased at his oppression of the people, and advised him at once to
abolish certain vexatious taxes, particularly the monopoly of arrack, or
rice-spirit.
The method practised when consulting the beneficent spirits—who, like
mortals, are fond of retaliating when provoked—is as follows: When the
physician’s skill has been found incapable of mastering a disease, a
spirit-medium—a woman who claims to be in communion with the spirits—is
called in. After arraying herself fantastically, the medium sits on a
mat that has been spread for her in the front verandah, and is attended
to with respect, and plied with arrack by the people of the house, and
generally accompanied in her performance by a band of village musicians
with modulated music.
Between her tipplings she chants an improvised doggerel, which includes
frequent incantations, till at length, in the excitement of her
potations, and worked on by her song, her body begins to sway about, and
she becomes frantic, and seemingly inspired. The spirits are then
believed to have taken possession of her body, and all her utterances
from that time are regarded as those of the spirits.
On showing signs of being willing to answer questions, the relations or
friends of the sick person beseech the spirits to tell them what
medicines and food should be given to the invalid to restore him or her
to health; what they have been offended at; and how their just wrath may
be appeased. Her knowledge of the family affairs and misdemeanours
generally enables her to give shrewd and brief answers to the latter
questions. She states that the _Pee_—in this case the ancestral, or,
perhaps, village spirits—are offended by such an action or actions, and
that to propitiate them such-and-such offerings should be made. In case
the spirits have not been offended, her answers are merely a
prescription; after which, if only a neighbour, she is dismissed with a
fee of two or three rupees, and, being more or less intoxicated, is
helped home.
In case the spirit-medium’s prescription proves ineffective and the
person gets worse, witchcraft is sometimes suspected, and an exorcist is
called in. The charge of witchcraft means ruin to the person accused,
and to his or her family. It arises as follows: The ghost or spirit of
witchcraft is called Pee-Kah. No one professes to have seen it, but it
is said to have the form of a horse, from the sound of its passage
through the forest resembling the clatter of a horse’s hoofs when at
full gallop. These spirits are said to be reinforced by the deaths of
very poor people, whose spirits were so disgusted with those who refused
them food or shelter that they determined to return and place themselves
at the disposal of their descendants to haunt their stingy and
hard-hearted neighbours. Should any one rave in delirium, a Pee-Kah is
supposed to have passed by.
Every class of spirits—even the ancestral spirits, and those that guard
the streets and villages—are afraid of the PeeKah. At its approach the
household spirits take instant flight; nor will they return until it has
worked its will and retired, or been exorcised. Yet the Pee-Kah, as I
have shown, is itself an ancestral spirit, and follows as their shadow
the son and daughter, as it followed their parents through their lives.
It is not ubiquitous, but at one time may attend the parent and at
another the child, when both are living. Its food is the entrails of its
living victim, and its feast continues until its appetite is satisfied,
or the feast is cut short by the incantations of the spirit-doctor or
exorcist. Very often the result is the death of its victim.
When the exorcist, spirit-doctor, or witch-finder is called in and asked
whether he considers the patient is suffering from a Pee-Kah, he puts on
a knowing look, and after a cursory examination of the person, generally
declares it to be so. His task is then to find out whose Pee-Kah is
devouring the sick person. After calling the officer of the village and
a few head-men as witnesses, he commences questioning the invalid. He
first asks, “Whose spirit has bewitched you?” The person may be in a
stupor, half unconscious, half delirious from the severity of the
disease, and therefore does not reply. A pinch or a stroke of a cane may
restore consciousness. If so, the question is repeated; if not, another
pinch or stroke is administered. A cry of pain may be the result. That
is one step towards the disclosure; for it is a curious fact that, after
the case has been pronounced one of witchcraft, each reply to the
question, pinch, or stroke is considered as being uttered by the Pee-Kah
through the mouth of the bewitched person.
A person pinched or caned into consciousness cannot long endure the
torture, especially if reduced by a long illness. Those who have not the
wish nor the heart to injure any one often refuse to name the wizard or
witch until they have been unmercifully beaten.
On the sick person naming an individual as the owner of the spirit,
other questions are asked—such as, “How many buffaloes has he?” “How
many pigs?” “How many chickens?” “How much money?” &c. The answers to
the questions are taken down by a scribe. A time is then appointed to
meet at the house of the accused, and the same questions as to his
possessions are put to him. If his answers agree with those of the sick
person, he is condemned and held responsible for the acts of his ghost.
The case is then laid before the judge of the court, the verdict is
confirmed, and a sentence of banishment is passed on the person and his
or her family. The condemned person is barely given time to sell or
remove his property. His house is wrecked or burnt, and the trees in the
garden cut down, unless it happens to be sufficiently valuable for a
purchaser to employ an exorcist, who for a small fee will render the
house safe for the buyer; but it never fetches half its cost, and must
be removed from the haunted ground. If the condemned person lingers
beyond the time that has been granted to him, his house is set on fire,
and, if he still delays, he is whipped out of the place with a cane. If
he still refuses to go, or returns, he is put to death.
The late King of Zimmé, on hearing from the villagers of the Karen
village of Ban Hta, that their head-man was bewitching them and would
not leave the village, allowed the people to club him to death. About
three years before my visit another case came to the knowledge of the
missionaries, where two Karens were brought to the city by some of their
neighbours, charged with causing the death of a young man by witchcraft.
The case was a clear one against the accused. The young man had been
possessed of a musical instrument, and had refused to sell it to the
accused, who wished to purchase it. Shortly afterwards he became ill,
and died in fourteen days. At his cremation, a portion of his body would
not burn, and was of a shape similar to the musical instrument. It was
clear that the wizards had put the form of the coveted musical
instrument into his body to kill him. The Karens were beheaded,
notwithstanding that they protested their innocence, and threatened that
their spirits should return and wreak vengeance for their unjust
punishment. Witches and wizards in the Shan States are free agents and
have made no compact with the devil. The old Burman custom for the trial
of witches was similar to that practised in former times in England: the
thumbs and toes being tied together, the suspected person was thrown
into the water, and sinking was a proof of innocence, floating of guilt.
In Mr Wilson’s opinion, the charge of witchcraft often arises from envy,
or from spite; and sickness for the purposes of revenge is sometimes
simulated. A neighbour wants a house or garden, and the owner either
requires more than he wishes to pay, or refuses to sell it at all.
Covetousness consumes his heart, and the witch-ghost is brought into
action. Then the covetous person, or his child, or a neighbour, falls
ill, or feigns illness; the ailment baffles the skill of the physician,
and the witch-finder is called in. Then all is smooth sailing and little
is left to chance.
In the early days of the Mission at Zimmé, Christians were very
unfavourably looked on by the officials. This may partly have arisen
from what I consider to have been, under the circumstances, an
injudicious act of a missionary. An old temple-ground was handed over to
the missionaries as a compound for their houses and schools. The temple
was in ruins, but a sandstone image of Buddha, five feet in height, was
intact, and was much reverenced by the people, who placed offerings of
fruit and flowers before it. The missionaries used the ruins of the
temple for levelling the ground, and buried the image under the
_débris_. One day during some alterations it was dug up, and the people
swarmed into the compound to pay their respects to it, although it had
lost its head. The missionary then took an axe and knocked it to pieces
before the people, who were naturally horrified and offended at the, to
them, sacrilegious deed. The people were still more disgusted by seeing
the pedestal upon which the image had been seated turned into a garden
seat, and the fragments of the image made into a rockery.
Another cause of friction arose in 1869 from two new converts neglecting
to aid in repairing the palisading round the outer city when instructed
to do so by the officials. The missionaries believed that the affair
arose merely from a misunderstanding. Anyhow, the two converts were
seized, and fastened with ropes passed through the holes in their
ear-laps to the upper beams of a house, and next day clubbed to death.
The missionaries complained to the King of Siam, and a Siamese official
was sent up to inquire into the case. The King of Zimmé, being bound to
Siam only so far as tribute and his foreign relations were concerned,
answered the commissioner by stating that it was his affair and not
Siam’s, and that he intended to kill as many of his own people as he
chose. It was not till nine years afterwards, in the present king’s
reign, five years after the appointment of the Siamese commissioner at
Zimmé, that a proclamation, issued by the Siamese Government, declaring
that any of the Siamese Shans might change their religion with impunity,
was allowed to be placarded up in the Court of Zimmé. At the time of my
visit, the missionaries had made nearly two hundred converts and were
much respected by the princes and the people.
Besides converting the people and opening schools for their education,
the missionaries have been doing their utmost to conquer the belief of
the people in witchcraft; and I was glad to hear that it had become a
custom with several of the princes of Zimmé and the neighbouring States,
as well as other intelligent people, to call in the aid of the physician
attached to the Mission in cases of serious illness in their families.
Another blow has been given to superstition by the missionaries
sheltering those who lie under the accusation of witchcraft. At the time
of my visit sixteen accused families were residing in the Mission
grounds, some of whom had been converted to Christianity; and most of
the children were attending the schools.
The people account for no harm having happened to the missionaries
through their harbouring witches by saying that the Pee-Kah are afraid
of Europeans, and clamber up the tamarind-trees near the gate of the
Mission when the witches go in, and wait until they leave the yard to
enter them again.
One of the trees outside the compound was much dreaded by people who had
to pass near it. The cries of the spirits were often heard from its
branches at night. At times the spirits descended to the ground and
confronted passers-by. One of them resembled a child about a year old;
then, in a second, its form would expand and grow until it was taller
than the tree, when it would vanish after forcing a scream of horror
from the affrighted beholder. This ghost for some reason assumed the
appearance of a missionary.
[Illustration:
_A Shan ghost._
]
One day Mr Wilson saw a fire built close to the tree, and two men
squatting near it. On approaching them he noticed that one was holding
two small chickens over the flames, whose feathers were already half
consumed. The other had a bundle of bamboo splints, which he was
sticking into the ground to support a platform, upon which the fowls,
when roasted, were to be offered to the spirits. This was too much for
the embodied missionary, who, much to their dismay, insisted upon their
taking their offerings out of his compound.
When visiting Dr Peoples, the physician attached to the Mission, he told
me of a strange case of hysteria which arose from the belief of the
Shans in evil spirits. There was a man living in the northern quarter of
the city who possessed a garden of areca palms and plantains. In the
garden was a well, the abode of a Pee-Hong, or headless spirit: all
deceased murderers, adulterers, and other people who have been executed
become Pee-Hong. In its way to and from this well the Pee-Hong passed
through a grove of trees, which the owner, against the wishes of his
neighbours, who feared the wrath of the demon, determined to cut down. A
short time after the trees had been destroyed he became very uneasy and
unwell; and whenever thinking or talking on the subject, figures
appeared on his limbs and body, in the form of regular welts, shaped
like leaves and trunks and whole trees—sometimes resembling
plantain-trees, at others areca palms. Having tried every form of
exorcism, he applied to Dr Peoples for help through his medical
assistant, but refused to display the spirit manifestations before him,
saying that they would not appear before Christians. The doctor
prescribed for the man, and went to visit him the next day at his house,
but he had left his family and started for a famous shrine. Many months
had passed since then, but nothing further had been heard of the
demoniac.
The belief in the transmigration of the soul into the bodies of animals
is apt to give rise to a peculiar form of hallucination. In one of the
Siamese books a tale is told of a wife plotting the death of her
affectionate husband with her paramour, and, on the success of the plot,
marrying the latter. Soon afterwards the woman noticed a snake in the
house, which she thought must be her late husband, as she imagined it
looked lovingly upon her. After killing the snake she had a cow which
she killed for the same reason. Then she had a dog which followed her
everywhere with affectionate watchfulness, and she, thinking her
husband’s soul must be in it, killed it. After the dog’s death a child
was born, who, because it looked at her with loving eyes, she thought
must be her husband. Not daring to cut short its life, and unable to
bear the sight of it, she gave it out to be nursed. When the child grew
up, it is said to have remembered the various migrations of its soul
from the time that it was the husband of its own mother, and to have
told the story to its grandmother.