138 ON THE CUSTOM OF ADMINISTERING THE TANGHIN IN MADAGASCAR. 



began to operate in half an hour or less. The skid takes particular notice how 

 they fall, whether on the face, on the right or left hand, or on the back, each 

 position indicating a different share of guilt. Convulsions generally come on, 

 accompanied with efforts to vomit. Those whose stomachs reject the dose at an 

 early period, usually recover ; on this occasion there were only two individuals 

 with whom this was the case ; the others were thrown, in a state of insensibility, 

 into a hole, and every person present at the ceremony was obliged to throw a 

 stone over them, so that their burial was quickly completed. The king's skid 

 was one of the first that fell. Those that recover are supposed to bear a charmed 

 life ever after, and are respected as the peculiar favourites of the gods.''' 



The following letter from the Rev. J. F. Freeman to Charles Telfair, Esq., 

 on the subject of the Tanghen, Tanghin, or Tanghena, poison, is extracted from 

 Sir William Jackson Hooker's Botanical Miscellany. 



Port-Louis, Mauritius, July 1st, 1830. 



My dear Sir, 



You are perfectly aware that the Tanghena has long been employed in Madagascar as a 

 test in the native ordeal, to which persons suspected of witchcraft, or of being bewitched, are 

 subjected. It has been used also to detect the guilt of persons charged more rationally with 

 civil offences, burglary, murder, &c. It is likewise frequently employed in settling litigations 

 as to property, petty larceny, &c, by administering it to the dogs of the parties concerned, and 

 of course convicting the owner of the dog killed by the test, to the penalties of the law. In 

 some parts of the island, the conviction is made to depend on the life or death of the party 

 drinking the Tanghena : if the dose cause death, he is unquestionably guilty ; if he live, his 

 innocence has been demonstrated. But in Emerina, where I have resided for some time, the 

 Tanghena forms an ordeal simply by its operation as a powerful emetic. Its mode of exhibition 

 is this : — the accused person having eaten as much boiled rice as possible, swallows, without 

 mastication, three pieces of the skin of a fowl, each about the size of a dollar. He is then 

 required to drink the test, a small quantity scraped of the Tanghena nut, and mixed with the juice 

 of Bananas. The " Panozondoha " (denouncer of the curse or imprecation), then placing his 

 hand on the head of the accused, pronounces the formula of imprecation, invoking all direful 

 curses on him if guilty. Soon after this, large quantities of rice-water are administered. The 

 contents of the stomach are consequently ejected ; and if on examination the three pieces of 

 skin are found, all is well, the party is pronounced " Madio," clear — legally and morally innocent 

 of the charge ; — but if otherwise, guilt has fixed its stain, that stain is indelible, and the disgrace 

 incurred is irreparable. Sometimes the corrosive nature of the poison acts with so great rapidity, 

 that life is destroyed during the ordeal. Should the test have proved the guilt of the party, and 

 yet the Tanghena itself not have produced immediate death, he is generally killed by the by- 

 standers, a large club, spear, or the rice-pestle, being used as the murderous weapon, and the 

 brains of the unhappy victim are dashed out on the spot. Strangling is sometimes used, as in 

 an instance just communicated to me by an eye-witness, in which the miserable sufferer was 

 hurried away, or dragged to a sort of burial before life was quite extinct. 



In some instances the guilty are left to perish amidst their excruciating agonies — deserted 

 by every one — family, friends, and all ! Slaves, on conviction, are more generally sent to a 

 distance, and sold where no suspicion of their guilty character is supposed to exist. But slaves 

 belonging to any member of the Royal Family are put to death. 



To every humane mind it was highly gratifying to witness the decline of such a barbarous 

 custom during the latter years of the reign of Radama, the late enlightened and enterprising 

 monarch of the country. His successor has, however, encouraged or permitted its revival, to a 

 most lamentable extent — all her principal people, officers, diviners, cursers, and others, to the 

 amount of some hundreds, have been compelled to drink the Tanghena within the last few 

 months, and scores have perished, cut off in the midst of health and vigour, their property 

 confiscated, and their families reduced to ruin and misery ! Of one instance 1 have just heard 

 the melancholy details from an eye-witness of the tragical scene. An aged widow, upwards of 



