BETWEEN INDIAN AND JEWISH IDEAS AND CUSTOMS. 91 
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” (Levit. xix, 26): 
“ Neither shall ye use enchantments or observe times.” 
(Deut. xviii, 10-12) : “ There shall not be found among you. . . . 
an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with 
familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer, for all that do 
these things are an abomination unto the Lord.” We are all 
aware that in our own country, until cpxite recent times, such 
beliefs dominated the minds of men ; how in the days of 
James I. five hundred women are said to have suffered for 
raising the storm which delayed the landing of the wife of that 
king when she was coming from Denmark to these islands, and 
how even such great men as Francis Bacon, Lord St. Albans 
and Sir Matthew Hale shared in the popular credulity. 
W e must not be surprised, therefore, when we are told by 
Sir John Malcolm that Zalim Singh, the famous Kegent of 
Kotah, who preserved that state when all others round it 
were suffering from the cruel oppression of the Mahrattas 
at the close of the eighteenth century, in only thirty years 
had put to death a thousand women who were said to be 
cl&kans or witches. Not fifty years ago the officers of the 
Meywar Bhil Corps at Kwairwarra were not able to prevent 
a poor woman from being tortured at the instigation of a Bhopct 
or witch-finder. Bed pepper was put into her mouth and eyes, 
and she was swung, head downwards, from the tree. This was 
done at the other side of a stream in flood which the officers 
could not cross. A few years later I met an old man fishing in 
a river close to Khairwarra, who said that he was an outlaw as 
a suspected Bhopa, who could no longer get employment, and 
was discredited. Times had indeed changed since, on the word 
of such a man as he, women could be tortured as I have 
described or flogged with castor oil plants, or tied in a bag 
and thrown into a pool to see if they would sink or swim. 
The belief still remains in witches and in other medneval 
practices — such as the evil eye, or in the power to cause 
disease or death by thrusting pins through the wax model of 
an enemy, and in many similar abominations, and would be 
carried into action if the restraining arm of the law were not 
feared. It is well known, I believe, to most students of 
Hinduism, that even worse practices, such as Sati for instance, 
would soon be universally revived if British influence were 
withdrawn. I think, therefore, that I am justified in dwelling 
upon the persistency of ancient ideas in the East. Custom is 
indeed wonderfully persistent even in small matters It is 
said that it occurred to someone cpiite recently to enquire why 
