‘Did not a similar case occur to Mr. Fraser at Jubbulpore?’

’A “chaprasi"[2] of his, while he had charge of the Jubbulpore district, was sent out to Mandla[3] with a message of some kind or other.  He took a cock from an old Gond woman without paying for it, and, being hungry after a long journey, ate the whole of it in a curry.  He heard the woman mutter something, but being a raw, unsuspecting young man, he thought nothing of it, ate his cock, and went to sleep.  He had not been asleep three hours before he was seized with internal pains, and the old cock was actually heard crowing in his belly.  He made the best of his way back to Jubbulpore, several stages, and all the most skilful men were employed to charm away the effect of the old woman’s spell, but in vain.  He died, and the cock never ceased crowing at intervals up to the hour of his death.’

‘And was Mr. Fraser convinced?’

‘I never heard, but suppose he must have been.’

’Who ate the livers of the victims?  The witches themselves, or the evil spirits with whom they had dealings?’

’The evil spirits ate the livers; but they are set on to do so by the witches, who get them into their power by such accursed sacrifices and offerings.  They will often dig up young children from their graves, bring them to life, and allow these devils to feed upon their livers, as falconers allow their hawks to feed on the breasts of pigeons.  You “sahib log” (European gentlemen) will not believe all this, but it is, nevertheless, all very true.’[4]

The belief in sorcery among these people owes its origin, in a great measure, to the diseases of the liver and spleen to which the natives, and particularly the children, are much subject in the jungly parts of Central India.  From these affections children pine away and die, without showing any external marks of disease.  Their death is attributed to witchcraft, and any querulous old woman, who has been in the habit of murmuring at slights and ill treatment in the neighbourhood, is immediately set down as the cause.  Men who practise medicine among them are very commonly supposed to be at the same time wizards.  Seeking to inspire confidence in their prescriptions by repeating prayers and incantations over the patient, or over the medicine they give him, they make him believe that they derive aid from supernatural power; and the patient concludes that those who can command these powers to cure can, if they will, command them to destroy.  He and his friends believe that the man who can command these powers to cure one individual can command them to cure any other; and, if he does not do so, they believe that it arises from a desire to destroy the patient.  I have, in these territories, known a great many instances of medical practitioners having been put to death for not curing young people for whom they were required to prescribe.  Several cases have come before me as a magistrate in which the father has stood over the doctor with a drawn sword by the side of the bed of his child, and cut him down and killed him the moment the child died, as he had sworn to do when he found the patient sinking under his prescriptions.[5]