The belief in witchcraft has been till recently in full force and
vigour among the Gonds, and is only now showing symptoms of decline. In
1871 Sir C. Grant wrote: [75] "The wild hill country from Mandla to
the eastern coast is believed to be so infested by witches that at
one time no prudent father would let his daughter marry into a family
which did not include among its members at least one of the dangerous
sisterhood. The non-Aryan belief in the power of evil here strikes a
ready chord in the minds of their conquerors, attuned to dread by the
inhospitable appearance of the country and the terrible effect of its
malicious influences upon human life. In the wilds of Mandla there are
many deep hillside caves which not even the most intrepid Baiga hunter
would approach for fear of attracting upon himself the wrath of their
demoniac inhabitants; and where these hillmen, who are regarded both
by themselves and by others as ministers between men and spirits,
are afraid, the sleek cultivator of the plains must feel absolute
repulsion. Then the suddenness of the epidemics to which, whether from
deficient water-supply or other causes, Central India seems so subject,
is another fruitful source of terror among an ignorant people. When
cholera breaks out in a wild part of the country it creates a perfect
stampede--villages, roads, and all works in progress are deserted;
even the sick are abandoned by their nearest relations to die, and
crowds fly to the jungles, there to starve on fruits and berries till
the panic has passed off. The only consideration for which their minds
have room at such times is the punishment of the offenders, for the
ravages caused by the disease are unhesitatingly set down to human
malice. The police records of the Central Provinces unfortunately
contain too many sad instances of life thus sacrificed to a mad
unreasoning terror." The detection of a witch by the agency of the
corpse, when the death is believed to have been caused by witchcraft,
has been described in the section on funeral rites. In other cases a
lamp was lighted and the names of the suspected persons repeated; the
flicker of the lamp at any name was held to indicate the witch. Two
leaves were thrown on the outstretched hand of a suspected person,
and if the leaf representing her or him fell above the other suspicion
was deepened. In Bastar the leaf ordeal was followed by sewing the
person accused into a sack and letting her down into shallow water;
if she managed in her struggles for life to raise her head above water
she was finally adjudged to be guilty. A witch was beaten with rods
of the tamarind or castor-oil plants, which were supposed to be of
peculiar efficacy in such cases; her head was shaved cross-wise from
one ear to the other over the head and down to the neck; her teeth were
sometimes knocked out, perhaps to prevent her from doing mischief if
she should assume the form of a tiger or other wild animal; she was
usually obliged to leave the village, and often murdered. Murder for
witchcraft is now comparatively rare as it is too often followed by
detection and proper punishment. But the belief in the causation of
epidemic disease by personal agency is only slowly declining. Such
measures as the disinfection of wells by permanganate of potash during
a visitation of cholera, or inoculation against plague, are sometimes
considered as attempts on the part of the Government to reduce the
population. When the first epidemic of plague broke out in Mandla in
1911 it caused a panic among the Gonds, who threatened to attack with
their axes any Government officer who should come to their village,
in the belief that all of them must be plague-inoculators. In the
course of six months, however, the feeling of panic died down under a
system of instruction by schoolmasters and other local officials and
by circulars; and by the end of the period the Gonds began to offer
themselves voluntarily for inoculation, and would probably have come
to do so in fairly large numbers if the epidemic had not subsided.