Witchcraft: How Developed.
The belief in witchcraft is general among the lower and less advanced Indian races. Colonel Dalton’s assertion that the Juângs, who were quite recently in the stage of wearing leaf aprons, do not believe in witchcraft or sorcery, must be accepted with great caution. It is quite certain that all the allied Drâvidian races, even those at a somewhat higher state of culture than the Juângs, such as Kols, Kharwârs, and Cheros, firmly believe in witchcraft. But all these people observe the most extreme reticence on the subject. If you ask a Mirzapur Hill-man if there are any witches in his neighbourhood, he will look round furtively and suspiciously, and even if he admits that he has heard of such people, he will be very reluctant to give much information about them.
A belief in witchcraft is, then, primarily the heritage of the more isolated and least advanced races, like the Kols and Bhîls, Santâls and Thârus. In fact, whatever may be the ethnical origin of the theory, it is at present in Northern India almost specialized among the Drâvidian, or aboriginal peoples. It also widely prevails among those who lead a nomadic life and are thus brought more directly in contact with nature in her wilder and sterner moods, such as the Nat and the Kanjar, the Hâbûra and the Sânsiya. So, in Europe sorcery and fortune-telling, the charming of disease, the making of love philters, and so on are the function of the Romani; and Mr. Leland hazards the supposition that Herodias was a gipsy.[3]
The belief that a certain person is a witch is probably generated in various ways. Many a one becomes reputed as a witch from the realization of some unlucky prophecy, or the fulfilment of some casual, passionate curse or imprecation upon an enemy or rival. The old Scottish rhymes exactly express this feeling:—
There dwelt a weaver in Moffat toun,
That said the minister would die sune;
The minister died, and the fouk o’ the toun
They brant the weaver wi’ the wadd o’ the lume,
And ca’d it weel-waned on the warloch loon.[4]
With this is intimately connected the belief in the Evil Eye, and that certain persons have the power of calling down on their enemies the influence of evil spirits; and, as in Western lands, such a power is often attributed to persons afflicted with ugliness, deformity, crankiness of temper, liability to sudden fits of passion, epilepsy, and the like. Disease or death, famine, accident, or any form of trouble, never, in popular belief, come naturally. There is always behind calamity some malignant power which selects the victim, and the attribution of this faculty to any one naturally regarded as uncanny, or who practises rites or worship strange to orthodox belief, is in the opinion of the rustic only reasonable.