'Dear Sir,--Observing from your note in Longman's Magazine that you have
mislaid my notes re fire-walking, I herewith repeat them. I have more
than once seen it done by the "Klings," as the low-caste Tamil-speaking
Hindus from Malabar are called, in the Straits Settlements. On one
occasion I was present at a "fire-walking" held in a large tapioca
plantation in Province Wellesley, before many hundreds of spectators, all
the Hindu coolies from the surrounding estates being mustered. A trench
had been dug about twenty yards long by six feet wide and two deep. This
was piled with faggots and small wood four or five feet high. This was
lighted at midday, and by four p.m. the trench was a bed of red-hot
ashes, the heat from which was so intense that the men who raked and
levelled it with long poles could not stand it for more than a minute at
a time. A few yards from the end of the trench a large hole had been dug
and filled with water. When all was ready, six men, ordinary coolies,
dressed only in their "dholis," or loin-cloths, stepped out of the crowd,
and, amidst tremendous excitement and a horrible noise of conches and
drums, passed over the burning trench from end to end, in single file, at
a quick walk, plunging one after the other into the water. Not one of
them showed the least sign of injury. They had undergone some course of
preparation by their priest, not a Brahman, but some kind of devil-doctor
or medicine-man, and, as I understood it, they took on themselves and
expiated the sins of the Kling community for the past year (a big job, if
thieving and lying count; probably not). They are not, however, always
so lucky, for I heard that on the next occasion one of the men fell and
was terribly burnt, thus destroying the whole effect of the ceremony. I
do not think this to be any part of the Brahmanical religion, though the
ordeal by fire as a test of guilt is, or was, in use all over India. The
fact is that the races of Southern India, where the Aryan element is very
small, have kept all their savage customs and devil-worship under the
form of Brahmanism.
'Another curious feat I saw performed at Labuan Deli, in Sumatra, on the
Chinese New Year. A Chinaman of the coolie class was squatted stark
naked on the roadside, holding on his knees a brass pan the size of a
wash-hand basin, piled a foot high with red-hot charcoal. The heat
reached one's face at two yards, but if it had been a tray of ices the
man couldn't have been more unconcerned. There was a crowd of Chinese
round him, all eagerly asking questions, and a pile of coppers
accumulating beside him. A Chinese shopkeeper told me that the man "told
fortunes," but from the circumstance of a gambling-house being close by,
I concluded that his customers were getting tips on a system.
'Hoping these notes may be of service to you,
'I remain,
'Yours truly,
'STEPHEN PONDER.'
* * * * *
In this rite the fire-pit is thrice as long (at a rough estimate) as that
of the Fijians. The fire is of wooden embers, not heated stones. As in
Fiji, a man who falls is burned, clearly suggesting that the feet and
legs, but not the whole body, are in some way prepared to resist the
fire. As we shall find to be the practice in Bulgaria, the celebrants
place their feet afterwards in water. As in Bulgaria, drums are beaten
to stimulate the fire-walkers. Neither here nor in Fiji are the
performers said to be entranced, like the Bulgarian Nistinares. {161} On
the whole, the Kling rite (which the Klings, I am informed, also practise
in the islands whither they are carried as coolies) so closely resembles
the Fijian and the Tongan that one would explain the likeness by
transmission, were the ceremony not almost as like the rite of the Hirpi.
For the Tongan fire-ritual, the source is The Polynesian Society's
Journal, vol. ii. No. 2. pp. 105-108. My attention was drawn to this by
Mr. Laing, writing from New Zealand. The article is by Miss Tenira
Henry, of Honolulu, a young lady of the island. The Council of the
Society, not having seen the rite, 'do not guarantee the truth of the
story, but willingly publish it for the sake of the incantation.' Miss
Henry begins with a description of the ti-plant (Dracaena terminalis),
which 'requires to be well baked before being eaten.' She proceeds thus:
'The ti-ovens are frequently thirty feet in diameter, and the large
stones, heaped upon small logs of wood, take about twenty-four hours to
get properly heated. Then they are flattened down, by means of long
green poles, and the trunks of a few banana-trees are stripped up and
strewn over them to cause steam. The ti-roots are then thrown in whole,
accompanied by short pieces of ape-root (Arum costatum), that are not
quite so thick as the ti, but grow to the length of six feet and more.
The oven is then covered over with large leaves and soil, and left so for
about three days, when the ti and the ape are taken out well cooked, and
of a rich, light-brown colour. The ape prevents the ti from getting too
dry in the oven.
'There is a strange ceremony connected with the Uum Ti (or ti-oven), that
used to be practised by the heathen priests at Raiatea, but can now be
performed by only two individuals (Tupua and Taero), both descendants of
priests. This ceremony consisted in causing people to walk in procession
through the hot oven when flattened down, before anything had been placed
in it, and without any preparation whatever, bare-footed or shod, and on
their emergence not even smelling of fire. The manner of doing this was
told by Tupua, who heads the procession in the picture, to Monsieur
Morne, Lieutenant de Vaisseau, who also took the photograph {163} of it,
about two years ago, at Uturoa, Raiatea, which, being on bad paper, was
copied off by Mr. Barnfield, of Honolulu. All the white residents of the
place, as well as the French officers, were present to see the ceremony,
which is rarely performed nowadays.
'No one has yet been able to solve the mystery of this surprising feat,
but it is to be hoped that scientists will endeavour to do so while those
men who practise it still live.