One Siddeshur Mitter, Writing To The
Calcutta Paper, Gives A Thrilling Account Of A Conjurer's Feat Which He
Witnessed Recently In One Of The Villages Of The Hooghly District.
He saw
the whole thing himself, he tells us, so there need be no question about
the facts.
On the particular afternoon when he visited the village the
place was occupied by a company of male and female jugglers, armed with
bags and boxes and musical instruments, and all the mysterious
paraphernalia of the peripatetic Jadugar. While Siddeshur was looking
on, and in the broad, clear light of the afternoon, a man was shut up in a
box, which was then carefully nailed up and bound with cords. Weird spells
and incantations of the style we are all familiar with were followed by
the breaking open of the box, which, "to the unqualified amazement of
everybody, was found to be perfectly empty." All this is much in the usual
style; but what followed was so much superior to the ordinary run of
modern Indian jugglery that we must give it in the simple Siddeshur's own
words. When every one was satisfied that the man had really disappeared,
the principal performer, who did not seem to be at all astonished, told
his audience that the vanished man had gone up to the heavens to fight
Indra. "In a few moments," says Siddeshur, "he expressed anxiety at the
man's continued absence in the aerial regions, and said that he would go
up to see what was the matter. A boy was called, who held upright a long
bamboo, up which the man climbed to the top, whereupon we suddenly lost
sight of him, and the boy laid the bamboo on the ground. Then there fell
on the ground before us the different members of a human body, all
bloody, - first one hand, then another, a foot, and so on, until complete.
The boy then elevated the bamboo, and the principal performer, appearing
on the top as suddenly as he had disappeared, came down, and seeming quite
disconsolate, said that Indra had killed his friend before he could get
there to save him. He then placed the mangled remains in the same box,
closed it, and tied it as before. Our wonder and astonishment reached
their climax when, a few minutes later, on the box being again opened, the
man jumped out perfectly hearty and unhurt." Is not this rather a severe
strain on one's credulity, even for an Indian jugglery story?]
In Philostratus, again, we may learn the antiquity of some juggling tricks
that have come up as novelties in our own day. Thus at Taxila a man set
his son against a board, and then threw darts tracing the outline of the
boy's figure on the board. This feat was shown in London some fifteen or
twenty years ago, and humorously commemorated in Punch by John Leech.
(Philostratus, Fr. Transl. Bk. III. ch. xv. and xxvii.; Mich. Glycas,
Ann. II. 156, Paris ed.; Delrio, Disquis. Magic. pp. 34, 100; Koeppen,
I. 31, II. 82, 114-115, 260, 262, 280; Vassilyev, 156; Della Penna,
36; S. Setzen, 43, 353; Pereg. Quat. 117; I. B. IV. 39 and 290
seqq.; Asiat. Researches, XVII. 186; Valentyn, V. 52-54; Edward
Melton, Engelsch Edelmans, Zeldzaame en Gedenkwaardige Zee en Land Reizen,
etc., aangevangen in den Jaare 1660 en geendigd in den Jaare 1677,
Amsterdam, 1702, p. 468; Mem. of the Emp. Jahangueir, pp. 99, 102.)
[Illustration: Grand Temple of Buddha at LHASA]
NOTE 12. - ["The maintenance of the Lamas, of their monasteries, the
expenses for the sacrifices and for transcription of sacred books,
required enormous sums. The Lamas enjoyed a preponderating influence, and
stood much higher than the priests of other creeds, living in the palace
as if in their own house. The perfumes, which M. Polo mentions, were used
by the Lamas for two purposes; they used them for joss-sticks, and for
making small turrets, known under the name of ts'a-ts'a; the joss-sticks
used to be burned in the same way as they are now; the ts'a-ts'a were
inserted in suburgas or buried in the ground. At the time when the
suburga was built in the garden of the Peking palace in 1271, there were
used, according to the Empress' wish, 1008 turrets made of the most
expensive perfumes, mixed with pounded gold, silver, pearls, and corals,
and 130,000 ts'a-ts'a made of ordinary perfumes." (Palladius, 29. - H.
C.)]
NOTE 13. - There is no exaggeration in this number. Turner speaks of 2500
monks in one Tibetan convent. Huc mentions Chorchi, north of the Great
Wall, as containing 2000; and Kunbum, where he and Gabet spent several
months, on the borders of Shensi and Tibet, had nearly 4000. The
missionary itinerary from Nepal to L'hasa given by Giorgi, speaks of a
group of convents at a place called Brephung, which formerly contained
10,000 inmates, and at the time of the journey (about 1700) still
contained 5000, including attendants. Dr. Campbell gives a list of twelve
chief convents in L'hasa and its vicinity (not including the Potala or
Residence of the Grand Lama), of which one is said to have 7500 members,
resident and itinerary. Major Montgomerie's Pandit gives the same convent
7700 Lamas. In the great monastery at L'hasa called Labrang, they show a
copper kettle holding more than 100 buckets, which was used to make tea
for the Lamas who performed the daily temple service. The monasteries are
usually, as the text says, like small towns, clustered round the great
temples. That represented at p. 224 is at Jehol, and is an imitation of
the Potala at L'hasa. (Huc's Tartary, etc., pp. 45, 208, etc.; Alph.
Tibetan, 453; J. A. S. B. XXIV. 219; J. R. G. S. XXXVIII. 168;
Koeppen, II. 338.) [La Geographie, II. 1901, pp. 242-247, has an
article by Mr. J. Deniker, La Premiere Photographie de Lhassa, with a
view of Potala, in 1901, from a photograph by M. O. Norzunov; it is
interesting to compare it with the view given by Kircher in 1670.
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