The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1888-09-29
BLACK ART IN INDIA.
A Country Where Sorcerers Live
and Thrive.

There is scarcely village in Eastern
and Southern India that does not DOS
sess its witch, to whom terrible powers
are attributed by the popular mind.
The witches, they say, can suck the
blood of healthy children; and the
anxious mother directly she sees the
witch approach, catches up her child
and mutters some charm to save the
dear one from being sucked to death.
OF course the best antidote to the occult
influence Of the dreaded hays is the
gift OF few copper coins or some sort
OF aims. But there are other means
employed to counterfeit their malignity.
They are sometimes detected by salt
being placed on their heads, which
causes them to turn round and mutter
1ncoherent syllables. Sometimes the
trembling mother splits on the head of
her child, or gently bites his little
finger, in order to render him witch
proof. No woman of the lower orders
who lives in a village infested by a
witch would venture to leave her house
with her child until she had made her
self and her child safe by putting GER
tain mark on his forehead.
There are various modes of treatment
for persons supposed to be under the
influence of witch. The forehead of
a child suffering from illness brought
on by witch's curse is sometimes
marked with burnt tumeric. Often the
mother, muttering some spells, sprin-
kles water over her child and rubs his
forehead over with burnt wicks of
earthen lamps fed with mustard oil.
sometimes branches of particular trees
are waved over the patient, who is
made to chew the leaves of plum trees.
But should these simple remedies fail,
as they often do, to produce any effect
on the bewitched child, what would
happen then to the poor sufferer?
There is no need to be in despair in
this matter, for, as the dock grows side
by side with the nettle, so in India
there lives close by the witch the sor-
cerer, the practitioner of the black art,
who is always called in when the simple
remedies fail.
Like the witches, the sorcerers are
believed to possess great occult powers;
but, unlike the former, they often use
their skill for benefcent purposes. The
common sorcerers in India are a peo-
pie of very low caste, or no caste at all
belonging mainly to the aboriginal
races who are still outside the pale of
Hindooism. Their treatment, though
often violent, does not in modern times
result in death, as it did in some authen-
tlcated cases which happened years ago.
The sorcerer, taking his place in front
OF his patient, with flowers in his hand
and lamp and incense burning before
him, gives burnt tumeric and charmed
mustard seed to the bewitched person
to smell, and dashes cold water with
violence upon his face. Sometimes the
treatment of the patient at the hands
OF sorcerer vicariously fortunes the
witch. Thus it is said that in one in
stance, upon the sorcerer squeezing the
juice of certain plant into the eyes of
bewitched child, the witch immedi-
ately complained of pain in the ewes,
which she lost. and the child was cured.
BY far the most formidable maaic
powers are, however, attributed to a
class of Brahmins, who are, par excel
1ence, the professors of the black art in
India. The Brahmin sorcerers are
versed in the practice of the spells and
charms which, with the accompanying
rites, are described in the Sansxrit
books, called tantras. The keynote
of these is struck in a well-known
couplet, which, done into English, runs
thus: THE whole world is in the
power OF the gods, and the gods are in
the power of magic; magic is in the
power of the Brahmins, and therefore
the Brahmin is himself the god" 1t
must not be forgotten, however, that
in spite Of this oracular deliverance,
and the decentralization of the magical
spells and charms in several Sanskrit
treatises and their commentaries, the
Brahmins themselves acquired the
black art from the wild aboriginal races
of India
OF the six modes in which the Brah-
man s0rcerer can influence his neigh
bors, four are malignant, one is doubt
ful, and one only is beneficial. The
four malignant operations are the