But this empire of the imagination is beaten hollow in Java, where it is supposed that a housebreaker, by throwing a handful of earth upon the beds of the inmates, completely incapacitates them from moving to save their property. And this is no mere speculative belief, but an actual fact. The man who is to be robbed, on feeling the earth fall upon him, lies as motionless as if he was bound hand and foot. He is under a spell; a spell which, in our own country, even knowledge and refinement have power only to modify.
In England, there is a large class of persons who believe that a certain pill is able to cure all diseases, however opposite their natures, and however different the constitutions of the patients. It is in vain the analytical chemist describes publicly the component parts and real qualities of the quack medicine—their faith is unshaken. In India, this low and paltry credulity acquires a character of the poetical; for there the popular confidence reposes—not more irrationally—on the prayers and incantations of the practitioner. But this sort of practice, in the wilder parts of the country, renders the medical profession somewhat unsafe to its professors; for the doctor is looked upon as a wizard, with power to cure or kill as he chooses. In such places—the jungly districts—there are diseases of the liver and spleen, to which the children, more especially, are subject; and when so affected, the patient pines away and dies without any external token of disease. This result is, of course, attributed to preternatural means; and if there is not an old woman at hand obnoxious to suspicion, the doctor is set down as the murderer. 'I have in these territories,' says Colonel Sleeman, 'known a great many instances of medical practitioners being put to death for not curing young people for whom they were required to prescribe. Several cases have come before me as a magistrate, in which the father has stood over the doctor with a drawn sword, by the side of the bed of his child, and cut him down, and killed him the moment the child died, as he had sworn to do when he found the patient sinking under his prescriptions.'
Another superstition of the country, originating no doubt in local circumstances, found its way into Europe, where no such circumstances existed. In India, a man suddenly vanishes. His family, perhaps, are expecting him at home, but from that moment he is never more heard of. He has been destroyed in the jungle by a tiger, and his remains so completely devoured by other animals, that there is scarcely a relic of his body left to give assurance of a man, far less as a proof of his identity. These mysterious disappearances, however, are connected with their real cause; and men are believed to be frequently metamorphosed—sometimes voluntarily, sometimes involuntarily—into tigers. The voluntary transformation is effected merely by eating a certain root, whereupon the man is instantly changed into a tiger; and when tired of his new character, he has only to eat another, when, presto! he subsides from a tiger into a man. But occasionally mistakes happen. An individual of an inquiring disposition once felt a strong curiosity to know what were the sensations attendant on such a transformation; but being a prudent person, he set about the experiment with all necessary precaution. Having provided himself with
——the insane root
That takes the reason prisoner,
he gave one likewise to his wife, desiring her to stand by and watch the event, and as soon as she saw him fairly turned into a tiger, to thrust it into his mouth. The wife promised, but her nerves were not equal to the performance. As soon as she saw her husband fixed in his new form, she took to flight—carrying in her hand, in the confusion of her mind, the root that would have restored him to her faithful arms! And so it befell that the poor man-tiger was obliged to take to the woods, where for many a day he dined on his old neighbours of the village, till he was at length shot, and recognised! In this superstition will be seen the prototype of the wolf-mania of mediæval Europe. In Brittany, men betook themselves to the forests in the shape of wolves, out of a morbid passion for the amusement of howling and ravening; but if they left in some secure place the clothes they had thrown off to prepare for the metamorphosis, they had only to reassume them in order to regain their natural forms. But sometimes a catastrophe like the above occurred: the wife discovered the hidden clothes, and carrying them home in the innocent carefulness of her heart, the poor husband lived and died a wolf.
The Hindoos, like other ancient peoples, predict good or evil fortune from certain phenomena of nature; but one instance of this has been described to us in a communication from our Old Indian, which far excels in the poetical the finest fancies of the Greeks. We cannot undertake to say that the thing is new, although we ourselves never heard of it before; but as the knowledge of it was imparted to her by her moonshee as a profound secret, we present it as such to our readers, recommending them to make the experiment for themselves. At the initiation of our informant, she was about to undertake a distant journey, and the old moonshee was anxious to consult the fates as to the fortunes that might be in store for his beloved mistress. He, accordingly, prevailed upon her to walk forth one night from the veranda, and with many quaint expressions of respect and anxiety, besought her to follow his directions with an attentive mind, abstracted as much as possible from the common thoughts of life.
It was a clear, calm night; the moon was full, and not the faintest speck in the sky disturbed her reign. The Ganges was like a flood of silver light, hastening on in charmed silence; while on the green smooth sward on which they walked, a tall shrub, here and there, stood erect and motionless. The young lady, whose impressions were probably deepened by the mystical words of the moonshee, felt a kind of awe stealing over her: she looked round upon the accustomed scene, as if in some new and strange world; and when the old man motioned her to stop, as they reached an open space on the sward, she obeyed with an indescribable thrill.
'Look there,' said he, pointing to her shadow, which fell tall and dark upon the grass. 'Do you see it?'
'Yes,' said she faintly, yet beginning to be ashamed. 'How sharply defined are its edges! It looks like something you could touch.'
'But look longer—look better—look steadfastly. Is it still so definite?'