A thousand miles on an elephant in the Shan States

by Holt S. Hallett

The late King of Zimmé, on hearing from the villagers of the Karen village of Ban Hta, that their head-man was bewitching them and would not leave the village, allowed the people to club him to death. About three years before my visit another case came to the knowledge of the missionaries, where two Karens were brought to the city by some of their neighbours, charged with causing the death of a young man by witchcraft. The case was a clear one against the accused. The young man had been possessed of a musical instrument, and had refused to sell it to the accused, who wished to purchase it. Shortly afterwards he became ill, and died in fourteen days. At his cremation, a portion of his body would not burn, and was of a shape similar to the musical instrument. It was clear that the wizards had put the form of the coveted musical instrument into his body to kill him. The Karens were beheaded, notwithstanding that they protested their innocence, and threatened that their spirits should return and wreak vengeance for their unjust punishment. Witches and wizards in the Shan States are free agents and have made no compact with the devil. The old Burman custom for the trial of witches was similar to that practised in former times in England: the thumbs and toes being tied together, the suspected person was thrown into the water, and sinking was a proof of innocence, floating of guilt.

In Mr Wilson’s opinion, the charge of witchcraft often arises from envy, or from spite; and sickness for the purposes of revenge is sometimes simulated. A neighbour wants a house or garden, and the owner either requires more than he wishes to pay, or refuses to sell it at all. Covetousness consumes his heart, and the witch-ghost is brought into action. Then the covetous person, or his child, or a neighbour, falls ill, or feigns illness; the ailment baffles the skill of the physician, and the witch-finder is called in. Then all is smooth sailing and little is left to chance.

In the early days of the Mission at Zimmé, Christians were very unfavourably looked on by the officials. This may partly have arisen from what I consider to have been, under the circumstances, an injudicious act of a missionary. An old temple-ground was handed over to the missionaries as a compound for their houses and schools. The temple was in ruins, but a sandstone image of Buddha, five feet in height, was intact, and was much reverenced by the people, who placed offerings of fruit and flowers before it. The missionaries used the ruins of the temple for levelling the ground, and buried the image under the débris. One day during some alterations it was dug up, and the people swarmed into the compound to pay their respects to it, although it had lost its head. The missionary then took an axe and knocked it to pieces before the people, who were naturally horrified and offended at the, to them, sacrilegious deed. The people were still more disgusted by seeing the pedestal upon which the image had been seated turned into a garden seat, and the fragments of the image made into a rockery.

Another cause of friction arose in 1869 from two new converts neglecting to aid in repairing the palisading round the outer city when instructed to do so by the officials. The missionaries believed that the affair arose merely from a misunderstanding. Anyhow, the two converts were seized, and fastened with ropes passed through the holes in their ear-laps to the upper beams of a house, and next day clubbed to death. The missionaries complained to the King of Siam, and a Siamese official was sent up to inquire into the case. The King of Zimmé, being bound to Siam only so far as tribute and his foreign relations were concerned, answered the commissioner by stating that it was his affair and not Siam’s, and that he intended to kill as many of his own people as he chose. It was not till nine years afterwards, in the present king’s reign, five years after the appointment of the Siamese commissioner at Zimmé, that a proclamation, issued by the Siamese Government, declaring that any of the Siamese Shans might change their religion with impunity, was allowed to be placarded up in the Court of Zimmé. At the time of my visit, the missionaries had made nearly two hundred converts and were much respected by the princes and the people.

Besides converting the people and opening schools for their education, the missionaries have been doing their utmost to conquer the belief of the people in witchcraft; and I was glad to hear that it had become a custom with several of the princes of Zimmé and the neighbouring States, as well as other intelligent people, to call in the aid of the physician attached to the Mission in cases of serious illness in their families. Another blow has been given to superstition by the missionaries sheltering those who lie under the accusation of witchcraft. At the time of my visit sixteen accused families were residing in the Mission grounds, some of whom had been converted to Christianity; and most of the children were attending the schools.

The people account for no harm having happened to the missionaries through their harbouring witches by saying that the Pee-Kah are afraid of Europeans, and clamber up the tamarind-trees near the gate of the Mission when the witches go in, and wait until they leave the yard to enter them again.

One of the trees outside the compound was much dreaded by people who had to pass near it. The cries of the spirits were often heard from its branches at night. At times the spirits descended to the ground and confronted passers-by. One of them resembled a child about a year old; then, in a second, its form would expand and grow until it was taller than the tree, when it would vanish after forcing a scream of horror from the affrighted beholder. This ghost for some reason assumed the appearance of a missionary.

A Shan ghost.

One day Mr Wilson saw a fire built close to the tree, and two men squatting near it. On approaching them he noticed that one was holding two small chickens over the flames, whose feathers were already half consumed. The other had a bundle of bamboo splints, which he was sticking into the ground to support a platform, upon which the fowls, when roasted, were to be offered to the spirits. This was too much for the embodied missionary, who, much to their dismay, insisted upon their taking their offerings out of his compound.