In India, the same is the case with the Konkan in Bombay.[70] The semi-aboriginal Thârus of the Himâlayan Tarâî are supposed to possess special powers of this kind, and Thâruhat, or “the land of the Thârus,” is a common synonym for “Witchland.” At Bhâgalpur, Dr. Buchanan was told that twenty-five children died annually through the malevolence of witches. These reputed witches used to drive a roaring trade, as women would conceal their children on their approach and bribe them to go away. In Gorakhpur, he says, the Tonahis or witches were very numerous, “but some Judge sent an order that no one should presume to injure another by enchantment. It is supposed that the order has been obeyed, and no one has since imagined himself injured, a sign of the people being remarkably easy to govern,”[71] and it may be added of the patriarchal style of government in those early days. Nowadays the accusation of witchcraft is practically confined to the menial tribes. The wandering, half-gipsy Banjâras, or grain-carriers, are notoriously witch-ridden, and the same is the case with the Dom, Sânsiya, Hâbûra, and other vagrants of their kin.
Nonâ Chamârin, the Witch.
At the present day the half-deified witch most dreaded in the Eastern Districts of the North-Western Provinces is Lonâ, or Nonâ, a Chamârin, or woman of the currier caste. Her legend is in this wise. The great physician Dhanwantara, who corresponds to Luqmân Hakîm of the Muhammadans, was once on his way to cure King Parikshit, and was deceived and bitten by the snake king Takshaka. He therefore desired his son to roast him and eat his flesh, and thus succeed to his magical powers. The snake king dissuaded them from eating the unholy meal, and they let the cauldron containing it float down the Ganges. A currier woman, named Lonâ, found it and ate the contents, and thus succeeded to the mystic powers of Dhanwantara. She became skilful in cures, particularly of snake-bite. Finally she was discovered to be a witch by the extraordinary rapidity with which she could plant out rice seedlings. One day the people watched her, and saw that when she believed herself unobserved, she stripped herself naked, and taking the bundle of the plants in her hands threw them into the air, reciting certain spells. When the seedlings forthwith arranged themselves in their proper places, the spectators called out in astonishment, and finding herself discovered, Nonâ rushed along over the country, and the channel which she made in her course is the Lonî river to this day. So a saint in Broach formed a new course for a river by dragging his clothes behind him. In Nonâ’s case we have the nudity charm, of which instances have been already given.
Pûtanâ, the Witch Fiend.
Another terrible witch, whose legend is told at Mathura, is Pûtanâ, the daughter of Bali, king of the lower world. She found the infant Krishna asleep, and began to suckle him with her devil’s milk. The first drop would have poisoned a mortal child, but Krishna drew her breast with such strength that he drained her life-blood, and the fiend, terrifying the whole land of Braj with her cries of agony, fell lifeless on the ground. European witches suck the blood of children; here the divine Krishna turns the tables on the witch.[72]
The Witch of the Palwârs.
The Palwâr Râjputs of Oudh have a witch ancestress. Soon after the birth of her son she was engaged in baking cakes. Her infant began to cry, and she was obliged to perform a double duty. At this juncture her husband arrived just in time to see his demon wife assume gigantic and supernatural proportions, so as to allow both the baking and nursing to go on at the same time. But finding her secret discovered, the witch disappeared, leaving her son as a legacy to her astonished husband.[73] Here, though the story is incomplete, we have almost certainly, as in the case of Nonâ Chamârin, one of the Melusina type of legend, where the supernatural wife leaves her husband and children, because he violated some taboo, by which he is forbidden to see her in a state of nudity, or the like.[74]