Fig. 37. Fragment. Final sentence of a letter of Mlle. Smith, finished (or rather remaining unfinished), during the irruption of a spontaneous access of Hindoo somnambulism. Note foreign words, boulboul (Persian name for nightingale), Kana (Hindoo slave of Simandini), and radyiva (Sanscrit name for blue lotus); also the Sanscrit letters a, e, i, d, r, taking the place of the French initials. Note also the change of form of the t’s.
Still, Hélène subconsciously possesses a part, at least, of the Devanagari alphabet, since sometimes certain characters belonging to it slip into her normal writing. But it is to be noted that her knowledge of this kind does not seem in any way to go beyond that which might have resulted from a rapid glance at a Sanscrit grammar.
In certain cases this irruption of foreign signs (altogether analogous to that which has been seen in the case of the Martian) is connected with an access of spontaneous somnambulism and makes part of a whole troop of images and of Oriental terms.
An interesting example is found in [Fig. 37], which reproduces the end of a letter which Hélène wrote me from the country. All the rest of this six-page letter is perfectly normal, both as to handwriting and content, but suddenly, tired by her effort of prolonged attention, she begins to speak of her health, sleep overcomes her, and the last lines show the invasion of the Oriental dream.
Kana, the slave, with his tame birds, and the brilliant plants of the tropics, substitute themselves little by little for the actual room. The letter reached me unfinished and without signature, as is shown in [Fig. 37]; Hélène closed it mechanically during her somnambulism, without knowledge of this unusual termination, at which she was surprised and annoyed when I showed it to her later.
Examination and comparison of all these graphomotor automatisms show that there are in Hélène’s subconsciousness some positive notions, albeit superficial and rudimentary, of the Sanscrit alphabet. She knows the exact form of many isolated characters, and their general value, in the abstract, as it were, but she does not seem to have any idea of their concrete use in connection with other letters.
In a word, these fragments of graphic automatisms betray a knowledge of Hindoo writing such as a curious mind might be able to acquire by perusing for some moments the first two or three pages of a Sanscrit grammar. It would retain certain detached forms; first, the a and the e, which, striking the eye at the commencement of the two first lines (containing the vowels, and usually separated from the following lines containing the consonants) of the standard arrangement of the Hindoo letters in ten groups; then the series of ciphers, occupying a line by themselves and easy to retain; finally, some other simple signs gleaned at hazard; but there will probably not be retained any of the too complicated figures resulting from the union of several characters in order to form words. This supposed genesis entirely corresponds with the extent of the notions as to Sanscrit writing of which Mlle. Smith’s subconsciousness gives evidence.
It will suffice in summing up, to account for Mlle. Smith’s Hindoo language, that perhaps in the N. group, or in some other spiritistic environment of which I am ignorant, some one, for the sake of curiosity, may have shown her and allowed her to glance over a Sanscrit grammar or lexicon, immediately after a seance, during that state of suggestibility in which the exterior suggestions are registered very strongly in her case, often without leaving traces in her conscious memory. The fact will also be explained that Hélène has no memory whatever of it, is absolutely convinced that she never saw or heard the least fragment of Sanscrit or any other Oriental language.