MISTAKEN CONJECTURES 461
health, but deprived of the use of speech. Various means were adopted to induce us to speak, but without success.
My mother, who was greatly alarmed, gave loud vent to
her grief, and all the Brahmins of the village, both men and women, flocked to our house to learn what all the noise was about. The house was soon filled with people, and each drew his own conclusions as to the accident which was supposed to have befallen us. The prevailing opinion was that it all resulted from the curse of some secret enemy. Accordingly, my relatives forthwith sent for a famous magician living in the neighbourhood to counteract the spell. As soon as he arrived he began by fixing his eyes on us for some moments. Then he walked round us several times, uttering strange words, felt different parts of our bodies, and did so many other strange things that the remembrance of them still makes me laugh whenever I think of them. At last he declared that we were really under the influence of a spell. He even named the evil spirit which, according to him, possessed us, and described it as very obstinate and uncontrollable. Considering the difficulties that he would have in expelling it, he stated that five pagodas at least would be required to meet the expenses of the sacrifices and other ceremonies that must be performed if he was to be successful.
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My relatives, who were by no means well-to-do people, were utterly dismayed at the exorbitant sum demanded by the magician
; but rather than allow us to remain dumb, they agreed to his terms, and promised moreover
to give him a suitable present if he succeeded in restoring to us the use of our tongues.
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The magician was on the point of beginning his mystic ceremonies, when one of our Brahmin friends who was
present maintained, in opposition to everybody else, that what we were suffering from was a simple malady enough,
such as he had often seen before, and he undertook to cure us without any expense whatever. For this purpose all that he required was a plate of red-hot charcoal and a small bar of gold. As soon as these had been brought he heated the bar of gold almost to melting-point; then taking it up with pincers, he applied it red hot to the soles ofmy feet, belowmy elbows, on the pit ofmy stomach,