The form assumed by superstition in India is not very different from
the European type, otherwise than in a certain exaggeration, impressed
on it, no doubt, by the grotesque grandeur of the mythology.
Witchcraft is pretty nearly the same in both regions--the old women
being the chief professors of the art; but in many districts of the
former country, the evil power is bestowed upon _every_ old woman
without exception. Girls will not marry into a family without a witch,
for how could their infants be protected from the spells of the other
old women? It is dangerous to jostle an old woman on the street,
however accidentally, lest she take vengeance on the spot. A man came
into this unpleasant contact while he was walking along, carelessly
chewing a piece of sugar-cane; and hearing the muttered objurgations
of the hag, as he turned round to apologise, he was not surprised to
find the juice of the cane turned into blood. The spectators,
likewise, recognised the metamorphosis as soon as it was pointed out
to them; and when the terrified victim instantly leaped on his horse,
and put ten or twelve miles between him and the sorceress before
drawing bridle, he was believed to have saved his life by this
dispatch.
The operations of the men-sorcerers are less spontaneous and more
scientific. They set about their work in a business-like way; and
within sight of the house of their intended victim the mystic caldron
begins to boil and bubble. The victim, however, is not to be terrified
out of his senses. What are his enemy's fires and incantations to him?
He will only just take no notice, and continue to live on as if there
was not a sorcerer in the world. But that smoke: it meets his eye the
first object every morning. That ruddy glare: it is the last thing he
sees at night. That measured but inarticulate sound: it is never out
of his ear. His thoughts dwell on the mystical business. He is
preoccupied even in company. He wonders what they are now putting into
the pot; and whether it has any connection with the spasm that has
just shot through him. He becomes nervous; he feels unwell; he cannot
sleep for thinking; he cannot eat for that horrid broth that bubbles
for ever in his mind. He gets worse, and worse, and worse. He dies!
But this empire of the imagination is beaten hollow in Java, where it
is supposed that a housebreaker, by throwing a handful of earth upon
the beds of the inmates, completely incapacitates them from moving to
save their property. And this is no mere speculative belief, but an
actual _fact_. The man who is to be robbed, on feeling the earth fall
upon him, lies as motionless as if he was bound hand and foot. He is
under a spell; a spell which, in our own country, even knowledge and
refinement have power only to modify.
In England, there is a large class of persons who believe that a
certain pill is able to cure all diseases, however opposite their
natures, and however different the constitutions of the patients. It
is in vain the analytical chemist describes publicly the component
parts and real qualities of the quack medicine--their faith is
unshaken. In India, this low and paltry credulity acquires a character
of the poetical; for there the popular confidence reposes--not more
irrationally--on the prayers and incantations of the practitioner. But
this sort of practice, in the wilder parts of the country, renders the
medical profession somewhat unsafe to its professors; for the doctor
is looked upon as a wizard, with _power_ to cure or kill as he
chooses. In such places--the jungly districts--there are diseases of
the liver and spleen, to which the children, more especially, are
subject; and when so affected, the patient pines away and dies without
any external token of disease. This result is, of course, attributed
to preternatural means; and if there is not an old woman at hand
obnoxious to suspicion, the doctor is set down as the murderer. 'I
have in these territories,' says Colonel Sleeman, 'known a great many
instances of medical practitioners being 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.'
Another superstition of the country, originating no doubt in local
circumstances, found its way into Europe, where no such circumstances
existed. In India, a man suddenly vanishes. His family, perhaps, are
expecting him at home, but from that moment he is never more heard of.
He has been destroyed in the jungle by a tiger, and his remains so
completely devoured by other animals, that there is scarcely a relic
of his body left to give assurance of a man, far less as a proof of
his identity. These mysterious disappearances, however, are connected
with their real cause; and men are believed to be frequently
metamorphosed--sometimes voluntarily, sometimes involuntarily--into
tigers. The voluntary transformation is effected merely by eating a
certain root, whereupon the man is instantly changed into a tiger; and
when tired of his new character, he has only to eat another, when,
_presto!_ he subsides from a tiger into a man. But occasionally
mistakes happen. An individual of an inquiring disposition once felt a
strong curiosity to know what were the sensations attendant on such a
transformation; but being a prudent person, he set about the
experiment with all necessary precaution. Having provided himself with
----the insane root
That takes the reason prisoner,
he gave one likewise to his wife, desiring her to stand by and watch
the event, and as soon as she saw him fairly turned into a tiger, to
thrust it into his mouth. The wife promised, but her nerves were not
equal to the performance. As soon as she saw her husband fixed in his
new form, she took to flight--carrying in her hand, in the confusion
of her mind, the root that would have restored him to her faithful
arms! And so it befell that the poor man-tiger was obliged to take to
the woods, where for many a day he dined on his old neighbours of the
village, till he was at length shot, and _recognised_! In this
superstition will be seen the prototype of the wolf-mania of mediæval
Europe. In Brittany, men betook themselves to the forests in the shape
of wolves, out of a morbid passion for the amusement of howling and
ravening; but if they left in some secure place the clothes they had
thrown off to prepare for the metamorphosis, they had only to reassume
them in order to regain their natural forms. But sometimes a
catastrophe like the above occurred: the wife discovered the hidden
clothes, and carrying them home in the innocent carefulness of her
heart, the poor husband lived and died a wolf.
The Hindoos, like other ancient peoples, predict good or evil fortune
from certain phenomena of nature; but one instance of this has been
described to us in a communication from our Old Indian, which far
excels in the poetical the finest fancies of the Greeks. We cannot
undertake to say that the thing is new, although we ourselves never
heard of it before; but as the knowledge of it was imparted to her by
her moonshee as a profound secret, we present it as such to our
readers, recommending them to make the experiment for themselves. At
the initiation of our informant, she was about to undertake a distant
journey, and the old moonshee was anxious to consult the fates as to
the fortunes that might be in store for his beloved mistress. He,
accordingly, prevailed upon her to walk forth one night from the
veranda, and with many quaint expressions of respect and anxiety,
besought her to follow his directions with an attentive mind,
abstracted as much as possible from the common thoughts of life.
It was a clear, calm night; the moon was full, and not the faintest
speck in the sky disturbed her reign. The Ganges was like a flood of
silver light, hastening on in charmed silence; while on the green
smooth sward on which they walked, a tall shrub, here and there, stood
erect and motionless. The young lady, whose impressions were probably
deepened by the mystical words of the moonshee, felt a kind of awe
stealing over her: she looked round upon the accustomed scene, as if
in some new and strange world; and when the old man motioned her to
stop, as they reached an open space on the sward, she obeyed with an
indescribable thrill.
'Look there,' said he, pointing to her shadow, which fell tall and
dark upon the grass. 'Do you see it?'
'Yes,' said she faintly, yet beginning to be ashamed. 'How sharply
defined are its edges! It looks like something you could touch.'
'But look longer--look better--look steadfastly. Is it still so
definite?'
'A kind of halo begins to gather round it: my eyes dazzle'----
'Then raise them to the heavens; fix them on yonder blue sky. What do
you see?'
'I see it still! But it is as white as mist, and of a gigantic size.'
'Has it a head?' asked the moonshee in an anxious whisper.
'Yes; it is complete in all its parts: but now it
melts--floats--disappears.'
'Thank God!' said the old man: 'your journey shall be prosperous--such
is the will of Heaven!' The experiment was tried on many other
occasions by the young lady, and always with similar success, although
never without a certain degree of trepidation, even after she had
learned that the spectral appearance in the heavens was nothing more
than the picture retained on the retina of the eye. She never saw the
phantom without a head, which accounts for her being alive to this
day; or even wanting a limb, although she has not been without her
share of the trials of the world. It can easily be conceived, however,
that certain conditions of the atmosphere may produce these phenomena,
which are regarded by the Hindoo seer as sure tokens of death or
disaster.
This superstition is not more unreasonable than the mistakes of our
early travellers, who were accustomed to attribute a meaning to the
phenomena of nature, of which more accurate knowledge has entirely
stripped them. But the notions of the Hindoo are always peculiar--his
fancy, even in its wildest excursions, is bounded by the circle of his
mythology. When our Old Indian's wanderings led her to Pinang, in the
Straits of Malacca, she found a Hindoo convict there, trembling even
in his chains as his fancy connected the wonders of the place with the
dogmas in which he had been reared. This most beautiful island, as our
readers may remember, came into the possession of an Englishman in the
latter part of last century in rather a romantic way--forming the
dowry of a native princess, the daughter of the king of Quedah, whom
he married. Captain Light transferred it to the East India Company,
who were not slow in discovering the advantages of its fine harbour,
rich soil, and salubrious climate. Its inhabitants at that time were a
few fishermen on the coast; and the interior was covered with an
almost impervious forest; but now there is a population of Europeans
and Americans, and Asiatics of almost all countries; and plantations
of sugar, coffee, pepper, and other intertropical produce. Among the
inhabitants are invalids, who proceed thither from continental India
for the restoration of their health; and convicts, who are compelled
to compensate by their labour the injuries they have inflicted on
society.
The man alluded to belonged to the latter class, having probably
travelled for his country's good from the tamer lowlands of Bengal;
and when the traveller asked him how he liked the region, he expressed
the utmost awe, united with the bitterest condemnation of the
Europeans, for desecrating by their roads and other works a place so
obviously the abode of deutas and spirits. He said, that when they had
begun to carry the up-hill road through these primeval forests, they
were warned of their impiety by the voices of the gods themselves, in
bursts of unearthly music, blasts of the trumpet, and the clash of
cymbals and gongs.
'The first tree we struck with the axe,' added he with a shudder, 'ran
milk; and the second, blood!' Of these two substances, the former is
still more ominous in the Brahminical faith than the latter, for
everything connected with the cow is sacred and mysterious.
'Well,' said the inquirer, 'what happened--since in spite of these
omens you persisted in your task? Did the gods take vengeance?'
'Yes,' said he solemnly; 'but _we_ were only instruments, like the
axes in our hands; and the vengeance, therefore, fell upon the prime
mover. The governor'--coming close up to the lady, and putting his
mouth to her ear--'the governor died!' Now, all this was true--music,
milk, blood, and death; and yet none of these was more the work of
supernatural agency than any of the common circumstances of life.
The supposed unearthly sounds proceed neither from birds nor men, and
the effect is either pleasing or awful, according to the mood of the
listener. Some, in such circumstances, instead of receiving
impressions of awe, like the Hindoo convict, would exclaim:
Where should this music be--i' the air, or the earth?
It sounds no more: and sure it waits upon
Some god of the island.
And again:
----The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again.
One would think Shakspeare had actually been in some tropical forest
when the daylight began to fade, and the myriads of insects to take up
their evening-song! One of these extraordinary musicians is
distinguished as the trumpeter; another produces a tinkle like a bell;
and a third gives forth a sound which the imagination may ascribe to
any instrument, or band of instruments, it pleases. This species of
cricket buries himself in a centre, to which converge seven holes,
which he has drilled in a circle; and from these seven tubes a sound
rushes forth, which almost stuns the passer-by. It may be conceived,
therefore, that a forest peopled with myriads upon myriads of such
'executants,' must have a strain for every ear, every mood, and every
conscience.
The tree which welled forth milk when struck by the axe was the _Ficus
elastica_--a sort of gigantic vine, as thick as a man's arm, which
creeps along the ground, sending forth new roots from the joint, and,
climbing at length some lofty tree, expands in branches. This is the
chief caoutchouc-plant, and its sap has not only the colour, but many
of the chemical properties of animal milk, and is frequently drunk as
food. The blood came from one of the _eucalypta_, popularly called the
blue gum-tree. The governor did die soon after his arrival on the
island, and no doubt _immediately_ after he had disturbed, in the
manner related, the _genius loci_.
Pinang contains about 160 square miles of surface, nearly the whole of
which is laid out in hills and dales, the loftiest of the former
reaching a height of 2500 feet above the sea-level. On the slopes of
this hill are built the governor's rural residence, and a bungalow,
where invalids resort for country air. It is possible that great
changes may have taken place here of late years, when efforts have
been made to dot the island with sugar-plantations; but at the time we
speak of, this was a solitary spot, behind which dark forests
stretched upwards to the summit. Among these forests, on the shoulder
of the hill, there occurs an optical phenomenon, not unknown in
Europe, which is here an object of superstitious terror to the
natives.
The first European who observed it was a gentleman who, taking
advantage of the coolness of the hour, had strolled away in the early
morning from the inhabited district, and was skirting round a deep
valley, dotted at the bottom, and overhung at the sides with lofty
trees. The beams of the sun had already begun to acquire some power,
although his disk was scarcely yet above the horizon; and the
traveller watched with interest the effect of the dawning light upon a
sea of vapour which nearly filled the valley. This slowly-moving
cloud, as it was acted upon by the sun, swelled higher and higher, and
became whiter and whiter, till it finally settled, filling the whole
valley with a substance that looked like alabaster, in the midst of
which the topmost branches of the tall trees hung motionless. The
scene was strangely beautiful; and the spectator, who was screened
from the now risen sun by a belt of forest, lingered for awhile to
contemplate it. When at length he resumed his walk, and, emerging from
the trees, found himself in the full blaze of the rising sun, he
turned once more to observe the effect on the vapour; and a cry of
wonder which arose to his lips was only repressed by a feeling of awe,
as he saw upon that alabaster surface a dark human figure of gigantic
dimensions, surrounded by a halo that seemed formed of the rainbow. A
confused rush of associations half acquainted him at the moment with
the nature of the phenomenon; but giving way to the feeling of
poetical delight, he clasped his hands above his head in admiration--a
movement which the Phantom of the Alabaster Valley instantaneously
imitated! It was indeed his own shadow--and a shadow he was not to
recall, even when he turned away to journey homewards. There, in that
lonely place, it seemed to him to remain for ever--a link connecting
him with the spirit of nature, and ever and anon drawing him back into
her domain from the meanness, and folly, and wickedness of the world.