Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 425

POWER ATTRIBUTED TO MAGICIANS
385
are supposed to produce, and the power ascribed to them
of counteracting the will even of the gods themselves,
place them on a par with the chimerical attributes which
the vulgar mind ascribes to enchantments 2
I happen to have come across a Hindu book treating of
the subject in hand, which perhaps few Europeans have
The
yet heard of. It is called the Agrushada Parikshai.
passages which I will here extract from it will never make
anybody a sorcerer, but it strikes me that they may not
be wholly uninteresting to those who like to meditate on
the aberrations and follies of the human mind.
The author begins by investigating the extent of a
magician
Such power is enormous.
magician's power.
but is more fre-
is the dispenser of both good and evil
quently inclined by natural malevolence to do evil rather
than good. Nothing is easier for him than to afflict any-
body with sicknesses, such as fever, dropsy, epilepsy,
and, in fine, diseases of all
stricture, palsy, madness
A
;
;
trifle compared with what
It is capable of completely
can otherwise do
destroying an army besieging a city, and also of causing
the sudden death of the commander of a besieged fortress
species.
But
all this is
his art
a mere
!
and of all its inhabitants, and so forth.
The Mahomedans in India, being quite as superstitious
as the natives of the country, are no less infatuated with
the power of magic. It is a well-known fact that the last
Mussulman prince who reigned in Mysore, the fanatical
and superstitious Tippu Sultan, during his last war, in
which he lost his kingdom and his life, engaged the services
of the most celebrated magicians of his own country and
of neighbouring provinces, in order that they might employ
all the resources of their art in destroying by some effi-
cacious operation the English army which was then advanc-
ing to besiege his capital, and which he found himself utterly
incapable of repelling by force of arms. In this difficult
and critical position the magicians very humbly acknow-
ledged their powerlessness and to save the reputation of
;
their craft they were obliged to maintain that their magical
operations, so potent when directed against every other
ineffectual against Europeans \
1
It is generally believed by the Hindus that such sorcerers and
enemy, were utterly