In fact these strange rites of Shamanism, devil-dancing, or what not, are found with wonderful identity of character among the non-Caucasian races over parts of the earth most remote from one another, not only among the vast variety of Indo-Chinese Tribes, but among the Tamulian tribes of India, the Veddahs of Ceylon, the races of Siberia, and the red nations of North and South America.  Hinduism has assimilated these “prior superstitions of the sons of Tur” as Mr. Hodgson calls them, in the form of Tantrika mysteries, whilst, in the wild performance of the Dancing Dervishes at Constantinople, we see perhaps again the infection of Turanian blood breaking out from the very heart of Mussulman orthodoxy.

Dr. Caldwell has given a striking account of the practice of devil-dancing among the Shanars of Tinnevelly, which forms a perfect parallel in modern language to our Traveller’s description of a scene of which he also had manifestly been an eye-witness:  “When the preparations are completed and the devil-dance is about to commence, the music is at first comparatively slow; the dancer seems impassive and sullen, and he either stands still or moves about in gloomy silence.  Gradually, as the music becomes quicker and louder, his excitement begins to rise.  Sometimes, to help him to work himself up into a frenzy, he uses medicated draughts, cuts and lacerates himself till the blood flows, lashes himself with a huge whip, presses a burning torch to his breast, drinks the blood which flows from his own wounds, or drains the blood of the sacrifice, putting the throat of the decapitated goat to his mouth.  Then, as if he had acquired new life, he begins to brandish his staff of bells, and to dance with a quick but wild unsteady step.  Suddenly the afflatus descends; there is no mistaking that glare, or those frantic leaps.  He snorts, he stares, he gyrates.  The demon has now taken bodily possession of him, and though he retains the power of utterance and motion, both are under the demon’s control, and his separate consciousness is in abeyance.  The bystanders signalise the event by raising a long shout, attended with a peculiar vibratory noise, caused by the motion of the hand and tongue, or the tongue alone.  The devil-dancer is now worshipped as a present deity, and every bystander consults him respecting his diseases, his wants, the welfare of his absent relatives, the offerings to be made for the accomplishment of his wishes, and in short everything for which superhuman knowledge is supposed to be available.” (Hodgson, J.R.As.Soc. XVIII. 397; The Tinnevelly Shanars, by the Rev. R. Caldwell, B.A., Madras, 1849, pp. 19-20.)

[1] “Singpho,” says Colonel Hannay, “signifies in the Kakhyen
    language ‘a man,’ and all of this race who have settled in Hookong or
    Assam are thus designated; the reason of their change of name I could
    not ascertain, but so much importance seems to be attached to it, that