pointing to both pieces, ‘There’, said he, ’you see the cause of my interference’.  We looked down, and actually saw blood running from both pieces, and forming a little pool on the ground.  The fact was that the woman was a sorceress of the very worst kind, and was actually drawing the blood from the man through the cane, to feed the abominable devil from whom she derived her detestable powers.  But for the timely interference of the sepoy he would have been dead in another minute; for he no sooner saw the real state of the case than he fainted.  He had hardly any blood left in him, and I was afterwards told that he was not able to walk for ten days.  We all went to the governor to demand justice, declaring that, unless the women were made an example of at once, the fair would be deserted, for no stranger’s life would be safe.  He consented, and they were both sewn up in sacks and thrown into the river; but they had conjured the water and would not sink.  They ought to have been put to death, but the governor was himself afraid of this kind of people, and let them off.  There is not’, continued Jangbar, ’a village, or a single family, without its witch in that part of the country; indeed, no man will give his daughter in marriage to a family without one, saying, “If my daughter has children, what will become of them without a witch to protect them from the witches of other families in the neighbourhood?” It is a fearful country, though the cheapest and most fertile in India.’

We can easily understand how a man, impressed with the idea that his blood had all been drawn from him by a sorceress, should become faint, and remain many days in a languid state; but how the people around should believe that they saw the blood flowing from both parts of the cane at the place cut through, it is not so easy to conceive.

I am satisfied that old Jangbar believed the whole story to be true, and that at the time he thought the juice of the cane red; but the little pool of blood grew, no doubt, by degrees, as years rolled on and he related this tale of the fearful powers of the Khilauti witches.

Notes: 

1. Ante, Chapter 9.

2.  An orderly, or official messenger, who wears a ‘chapras’, or badge of office.

3.  On the Nerbudda, fifty miles south-east of Jubbulpore.

4.  Of the supposed powers and dispositions of witches among the Romans we have horrible pictures in the 5th Ode of the 6th Book of Horace, and in the 6th Book of Lucan’s Pharsalia. [W.  H. S.] The reference to Horace should be to the 5th Epode.  The passage in the Pharsalia, Book VI, lines 420-830, describes the proceedings of Thessalian witches.

5.  Such awkward incidents of medical practice are not heard of nowadays.

6.  The population of Jabalpur (including cantonments) has increased steadily, and in 1911 was 100,651, as compared with 84,556 in 1891, and 76,023 in 1881.