12 Colorado College Studies. 



unknown and unknowable, by whom they are finally to be ab- 

 sorbed. The sceptical Hindus naturally drifted into witchcraft, 

 and the pretentions of the professional wizards are by no means 

 modest. It is not an uncommon thing for a Hindu, when his 

 own prayers and those of the Brahmaus, hired for the purpose, 

 are unavailing, to go to some practitioner of magic who rarely 

 fails to promise all he wishes and does not scruple sometimes to 

 even administer poison, if need be. There are stories of those 

 who invoked genii; but did not know how to control them and 

 were torn to pieces in consequence. That, however, matters little. 

 The popular belief in witchcraft is so general that there is 

 scarcely a town in central India of any size, says Lyall,* that has 

 not a hereditary servant whose duty it is to ward off impending 

 hail-storms by watching the motion of water in certain pots, 

 muttering incantations and dancing about with a sword. This, 

 however, is white magic, not black. 



The sorcerer has an enemy in the witch-finder who volun- 

 teers, for so much money, to tell who has bewitched any sick or 

 unfortunate person. The method called S a t a n e is as follows: 

 The witch-finder sits on the ground with a branch of the Bale- 

 tree opposite. Rice is handed him which he eats in the name 

 of each village. When the name of the right village is men- 

 tioned, he throws up the rice. The families of the village are 

 then treated in the same way; and, lastly, the individuals of the 

 family which has been chosen as guilty. A sufficient sum will 

 induce him to doubt the result and try it again. Charreen 

 is a similar process. A stone is hung on a string with the vil- 

 lages, families, and individuals marked on it; the names are 

 mentioned and the guilty one is selected by the vibrations of 

 the suspended rock. The sorcerer who was thus detected had 

 to put his tongue to red-hot iron nine times unless sooner burnt. 

 InGobereen, water, oil, and cow-dung are mixed and brought 



* Sir Alfred Lyall, Asiatic Studies, from which many of these 

 facts were gathered. 



