13. Witchcraft.
“Among the Hos,” Colonel Dalton states, “all disease in men or animals is attributed to one of two causes—the wrath of some evil spirit who has to be appeased, or the spell of some witch or sorcerer who should be destroyed or driven out of the land. In the latter case a sokha or witch-finder is employed to ascertain who has cast the spell, and various methods of divination are resorted to. In former times the person denounced and all his family were put to death in the belief that witches breed witches and sorcerers. The taint is in the blood. When, during the Mutiny, Singhbhūm District was left for a short time without officers, a terrible raid was made against all who had been suspected for years of dealing with the evil one, and the most atrocious murders were committed. Young men were told off for the duty by the elders; neither age nor sex were spared. When order was restored, these crimes were brought to light, and the actual perpetrators punished; and since then we have not only had no recurrence of witch murders, but the superstition itself is dying out in the Kolhān.” Mr. H. C. Streatfeild states that among the Mundas witches used to be hung head downwards from a pīpal tree over a slow fire, the whole village dancing as they were gradually roasted, but whether this ceremony was purely vindictive or had any other significance there is nothing to show.[17]