Quacks and old-wives.
Closely akin to the goëtes or wizards are the old hags and quack-doctors who offer one Indian spices or boxes supposed to contain bits of stone taken from the moon, stars, or depths of earth.[1146] Likewise the divining old-wives who go about with sieves in their hands and pretend by means of their divination to heal sick animals for shepherds and cowherds.[1147] We also read that Apollonius expelled from the cities along the Hellespont various Egyptians and Chaldeans who were collecting money on the pretense of offering sacrifices to avert the earthquakes which were then occurring.[1148]
The Brahmans.
We have heard Philostratus mention the Brahmans of India in the same breath with the Magi of Persia and imply that Apollonius’s association with them contributed to his reputation as a magician.[1149] In another passage[1150] Philostratus places goëtes and Brahmans in unfortunate juxtaposition, and, immediately after condemning the wizards and defending Apollonius from the charge of sorcery, goes on to say that when he saw the automatic tripods and cup-bearers of the Indians, he did not ask how they were operated. “He applauded them, it is true, but did not think fit to imitate them.” But of course Apollonius should not even have applauded these automatons, which set food and poured wine before the guests of the Brahmans, if they were the contrivances of wizards. And in another passage,[1151] where he defends the signs and wonders wrought by the Brahmans against the aspersions cast upon them by the Gymnosophists of Ethiopia, Apollonius explains their practice of levitation as an act of worship and communion with the sun god, and hence far removed from the rites performed in deep trenches and hollows of the earth to the gods of the lower world which we have heard him mention before as a practice characteristic of wizards.
Marvels of the Brahmans.
Nevertheless the feats ascribed to the Brahmans are certainly sufficiently akin to magic to excuse Philostratus for mentioning them along with the Magi and wizards and to justify us in considering them. Indeed, modern scholarship informs us that in the Vedic texts the word “bráhman” in the neuter means a “charm, rite, formulary, prayer,” and “that the caste of the Brahmans is nothing but the men who have bráhman or magic power.”[1152] In marked contrast to the taciturnity of Apollonius as to his interviews with the Magi of Babylon and Susa is the long account repeated by Philostratus from Damis of the sayings and doings of the sages of India. As for Apollonius himself, “he was always recounting to everyone what the Indians said and did.”[1153] They knew that he was approaching when he was yet afar off and sent a messenger who greeted him by name.[1154] Iarchas, their chief, also knew that Apollonius had a letter for him and that a delta was missing in it, and he told Apollonius many events of his past life. “We see, O Apollonius,” he said, “the signs of the soul, tracing them by a myriad symbols.”[1155] The Brahmans lived in a castle concealed by clouds, where they rendered themselves invisible at will. The rocks along the path up to their abode were still marked by the cloven feet, beards, faces, and backs of the Pans who had tried to scale the height under the leadership of Dionysus and Heracles, but had been hurled down headlong.[1156] Here too was a well for testing oaths, a purifying fire, and the jars in which the winds and rain were bottled up.
Magical methods of the Brahmans.
When the messenger of the Brahmans greeted Apollonius by name, the latter remarked to the astounded Damis, “We have come to men who are wise without art (ἀτεχνῶς), for they seem to have the gift of foreknowledge.”[1157] As a matter of fact, however, most of the subsequent wonders wrought by the Brahmans were not performed without the use of paraphernalia and rites very similar to those of magic. Each Brahman carries a staff—or magic wand—and wears a ring, which are both prized for their occult virtue by which the Brahmans can accomplish anything they wish.[1158] They clothe themselves in sacred garments made of “a wool that springs wild from the ground” (cotton?) and which the earth will not permit anyone else to pluck. Iarchas also showed Apollonius and Damis a marvelous stone called Pantarbe, which attracted and bound other stones to itself and which, although only the size of his finger-nail and formed in earth four fathoms deep, had such virtue that it broke the earth open.[1159] But it required great skill to secure this gem. “We only,” said the Brahman, “can obtain this pantarbe, partly by doing things and partly by saying things,” in other words by incantations and magical operations. Before performing their rite of levitation they bathed and anointed themselves with a certain drug. “Then they stood like a chorus with Iarchas as leader and with their rods uplifted struck the earth, which heaving like the sea-wave raised them up in the air two cubits high.”[1160] The metallic tripods and cup-bearers which served the king of the country when he came to visit the Brahmans appeared from nowhere laden with food and wine exactly as if by magic.[1161]
Medicine of the Brahmans.
The medical practice, if we may so call it, of the Brahmans was tinged, to say the least, with magic. A dislocated hip, indeed, they appear to have cured by massage, and a blind man and a paralytic are healed by unspecified methods.[1162] But a boy is cured of inherited alcoholism by chewing owl’s eggs that have been boiled; a woman who complains that her sixteen-year-old son has for two years been vexed by a demon is sent away with a letter full of threats or incantations to employ against the spirit; and another woman’s sufferings in childbirth are prevented by directing her husband to enter her chamber with a live hare concealed in his bosom and to release the hare after he has walked around his wife once. Iarchas, indeed, attributed the origin of medicine to divination or divine revelation.[1163] His theory was that Asclepius, as the son of Apollo, learned by oracles what drugs to employ for the different diseases, in what amounts to mix the drugs, what the antidotes for poisons were, and how to use even poisons as remedies. This last especially he affirmed that no one would dare attempt without foreknowledge.