Witches Taking the Form of Tigers.
The idea that witches take the form of tigers is widespread. Colonel Dalton describes how a Kol, tried for the murder of a wizard, stated in his defence that his wife having been killed by a tiger in his presence, he stealthily followed the animal as it glided away after gratifying its appetite, and saw that it entered the house of one Pûsa, a Kol, whom he knew. He called out Pûsa’s relations, and when they heard the story, they not only credited it, but declared that they had long suspected Pûsa of possessing such power; on entering they found him, and not a tiger; they delivered him bound into the hands of his accuser, who at once killed him. In explanation of their proceedings, they deposed that Pûsa had one night devoured an entire goat, and roared like a tiger while he was eating it; and on another occasion he had informed his friends that he felt a longing for a particular bullock, and that very night the bullock was carried off by a tiger.[18]
Mr. Campbell gives a very similar story from Bombay, in which a man-eating tiger was supposed to be a witch in disguise.[19] All these stories very closely resemble the European were-wolf and similar legends.[20] In Mirzapur they tell a tale of one of the Drâvidian Bhuiyârs, whose wife went recently on the Pura Mamuâr Hill, when an evil spirit in the form of a tiger attacked and killed her. This was after her death ascertained to be the case by the inquiries of the village Baiga, who now does an annual ceremony and sacrifice near the place. For such witch tigers the favourite remedy is to knock out their teeth to prevent their doing any more mischief and becoming the Indian equivalent of the Loupgarou.[21]