"Among the Hos," Colonel Dalton states, "all disease in men or animals
is attributed to one of two causes--the wrath of some evil spirit
who has to be appeased, or the spell of some witch or sorcerer who
should be destroyed or driven out of the land. In the latter case
a sokha or witch-finder is employed to ascertain who has cast the
spell, and various methods of divination are resorted to. In former
times the person denounced and all his family were put to death
in the belief that witches breed witches and sorcerers. The taint
is in the blood. When, during the Mutiny, Singhbhum District was
left for a short time without officers, a terrible raid was made
against all who had been suspected for years of dealing with the
evil one, and the most atrocious murders were committed. Young men
were told off for the duty by the elders; neither age nor sex were
spared. When order was restored, these crimes were brought to light,
and the actual perpetrators punished; and since then we have not only
had no recurrence of witch murders, but the superstition itself is
dying out in the Kolhan." Mr. H. C. Streatfeild states that among
the Mundas witches used to be hung head downwards from a pipal tree
over a slow fire, the whole village dancing as they were gradually
roasted, but whether this ceremony was purely vindictive or had any
other significance there is nothing to show. [551]