These people also deal in ornaments of base metal and practise
other swindles. One of their tricks is to drop a ring or ornament
of counterfeit gold on the road. Then they watch until a stranger
picks it up and one of them goes up to him and says, "I saw you
pick up that gold ring, it belongs to so-and-so, but if you will
make it worth my while I will say nothing about it." The finder is
thus often deluded into giving him some hush-money and the Jogis
decamp with this, having incurred no risk in connection with the
spurious metal. They also pretend to be able to convert silver and
other metals into gold. They ingratiate themselves with the women,
sometimes of a number of households in one village or town, giving
at first small quantities of gold in exchange for silver, and binding
them to secrecy. Then each is told to give them all the ornaments which
she desires to be converted on the same night, and having collected as
much as possible from their dupes the Jogis make off before morning. A
very favourite device some years back was to personate some missing
member of a family who had gone on a pilgrimage. Up to within a
comparatively recent period a large proportion of the pilgrims who
set out annually from all over India to visit the famous shrines at
Benares, Jagannath and other places perished by the way from privation
or disease, or were robbed and murdered, and never heard of again by
their families. Many households in every town and village were thus
in the position of having an absent member of whose fate they were
uncertain. Taking advantage of this, and having obtained all the
information he could pick up among the neighbours, the Jogi would
suddenly appear in the character of the returned wanderer, and was
often successful in keeping up the imposture for years. [208]