A STUDY IN PRIMITIVE CHEMISTRY. 31 



or two hairs from among those which he holds in his hand, and reading some established 

 spell over them, puts them into a bottle and corks it up ; whereupon the patient's devil is 

 supposed to be imprisoned therein. Then he either buries the bottle underground or 

 burns it ; after which the devil never returns. 



" Some Seamias 1 make a small wax doll, fasten one extremity of a hair to the crown 

 of its head, and the other to the bottom of a cork, fill the bottle with smoke, put the doll 

 into it, and cork it up. They ! put in smoke to prevent people distinguishing the doll, 

 which remains suspended in the middle of the bottle. The Seanna, the moment the 

 demoniac falls on the ground, pulls out a hair or two as above stated, and contrives to in- 

 sert them into the bottle ; which, holding up to public view, he exclaims, " Behold ! I 

 have cast the devil out of the demoniac and confined him in this bottle. There he is, 

 standing in the middle of it, longing to come out. Now, if you give me so much money, 

 well and good ; if not, I will let him loose again." Those foolish people, on beholding 

 the doll in the bottle, actually believe it to be the devil himself, and out of fear give him 

 any sum of money he asks, and get it buried or burnt." 2 



The story just given is chiefly noticeable for the light that it throws on the path by 

 which men passed from a belief in the innate spirituality of hair to the utilisation of the 

 same or any other adjunct of the human body in operations that were designed with the 

 intention of bringing one man into another's power. The procedure only varied in detail. 

 " A drop of a man's blood, some clippings of his hair or parings of his nails, a rag of the 

 garment which he had worn, sufficed to give a sorcerer complete power over him. These 

 relics of his person the magician kneaded into a lump of wax, which he moulded into the 

 likeness and dressed after the fashion of his intended victim, who was then at the mercy 

 of his tormentor. If the image was exposed to the fire, the person whom it represented 



by hammering an iron nail into the place where the head of the patient had lain, " Clavum ferreum defigere, in quo loco primum 

 caput defixerit corruens morbo comitiali, absolutorium ejus mali dicitur " (op. cit., XXVIII, 17). 



* uUm. siydnd, an Urdu word literally meaning ' cunning,' or ' artful.' Herklots translates it by 'conjuror.' 



2 Qanoon-e-Islam by Jaffur Shurreef (Ja'far Sharif of Ellore), Herklot's translation, 1863 ed., pp. 220-222. Ja'far Sharif men- 

 tions with approbation at the beginning of his chapter on Exorcism the Juwfthir- i-Khamsa, written in 956 A.H.('= 1549 A.D.), by 

 Muhammad Ghauth. Gwaliyarl, who was a descendant of the famous Persian Sufi Farldu-d-dln 'Attar (f 1230 A.D.) An exa- 

 mination of a MS. copy of the Juwahir-i-Khamsa that is in the library of the Asiatic Society of Bengal does not, however, lend 

 any support to the suggestion that Ja'far Sharif derived most of his information from this book, and the account quoted in the 

 text may, therefore, be accepted as an independent description of the methods that were current in Madras when the Qanoon-e- 

 Islam was written, 75 years ago. 



In Bengal (Calcutta), the methods employed are of a much simpler character. The 'dmil himself ties the knot in the demoniac's 

 hair when he first sees him, and he is generally content if the devil is simply driven away by his exorcisms. The bottling process is only 

 performed if the spirit persists in returning. The patient's hair does not seem to be used as a medium for transferring the spirit to 

 the bottle, nor is the spirit pegged down during the operation. Iron pegs are, however, employed by Bengali Muhammadans to 

 safeguard a house against the advent of evil spirits. A house may be protected either by the insertion of one nail on each side of 

 the threshhold, or by placing one in each of the four corners of the house. Suitable extracts from the Qur'an are read while this is 

 being done. 



In the case of patients whom the ' dmil is not allowed to see, such as women, he writes an incantation on a piece of paper, and 

 directs that it should be bound round a stick by many strands of cotton. This torch (*xb, palltah — or falltah^ after being dipped 

 in ghl, is taken to the patient's room and lighted. If the patient can be induced to stare at it, the evil spirit will depart with the 

 rising smoke. A much fuller account of the same process, accompanied by illustrations of the prescribed charms, is to be found in 

 the Qanoon-e-Islam, pp. 223 and 224. 



