Batuta at Delhi, in the presence of Sultan Mahomed Tughlak ; and it was professedly exhibited by a Brahmin at Madras in the present century, a descendant doubtless of those Brahmans whom Apollonius saw walking two cubits from the ground, It is also described by the worthy Francis Valentyn as a performance known and practised in his own day in India. It is related, he says, that " a man will first go and sit on three sticks put together so as to form a tripod ; after which, first one stick, then a second, then the third shall be removed from under him, and the man shall not fall but shall still remain sitting in the air ! Yet I have spoken with twa friends who had seen this at one and the same time ; and one of them, I may add, mistrusting his own eyes, had taken the trouble to feel about with a long stick if there were nothing on which the body rested ; yet, as the gentleman told me, he could neither feel nor see any such thing. Still, I could only say that I could not believe it, as a thing too manifestly contrary to reason."
Akin to these performances, though exhibited by professed jugglers without claim to religious character, is a class of feats which might be regarded as simply inventions if told by one author only, but which seem to deserve prominent notice from their being recounted by a series of authors, certainly independent of one another, and writing at long intervals of time and place. Our first witness is Ibn Batuta, and it will be necessary to quote him as well as the of hers in full, in order to show how closely their evidence tallies. The Arab Traveller was present at a great entertainment at the Court of the Viceroy of Khansa (I(insay of Polo, or Hang-chau fu) : " That same night a juggler, who was one of the Kán's slaves, made his appearance, and the Amír said to him, ' Come and show us some of your marvels.' Upon this he took a wooden ball, with several holes in it, through which long thongs were passed, and, laying hold of one of these, slung it into the air. It went so high that we lost sight of it altogether. (It was the hottest season of the year, and we were outside in the middle of the palace court.) There now remained only a little of the end of a thong in the conjuror's hand, and he desired one of the boys who assisted him to lay hold of it and mount. He did so, climbing by the thong, and we lost sight of him also ! The conjuror then called to him three times, but getting no answer, he snatched up a knife as if in a great rage, laid hold of the thong, and disappeared also ! By and bye he threw down one of the boy's hands, then a foot, then the other hand, and then the other foot, then the trunk, and last of all the head :' Then he came down himself, all puffing and panting, and with his clothes all bloody, kissed the ground before the Amír, and said something to him in Chinese. The Amír gave some order in reply, and our friend then took the lad's limbs, laid them together in their places, and gave a kick, when, presto ! there was the boy, who got up and stood before us ! All this astonished me beyond measure, and I had an attack of palpitation like that which overcame me once before in the presence of the Sultan of India, when he showed me something of the same kind. They gave me a cordial, however, which cured the attack. The Kazi Afkharuddin was next to me, and quoth he, ` Wallah ! 'tis my opinion there has been neither going up or coming down, neither marring nor mending ; 'tis all hocus pocus !' "
Now let us compare with this, which Ibn Batuta the Moor says he saw in China about the year 1348, the account which is given us by Edward Melton, an Anglo-Dutch traveller, of the performances of a Chinese gang of conjurors, which he witnessed at Batavia about the year 167o (I have forgotten to note the year). After describing very vividly the basket-murder trick, which is well known in India, and now also in Europe, and some feats of bamboo balancing similar to those which were recently shown by Japanese performers in England, only more wonderful, he proceeds : " But now I am going to relate a thing which surpasses all belief, and which I should scarcely venture to insert here had it not been witnessed by thousands before my own eyes. One of the same gang took a ball of cord, and grasping one end of the cord in his hand slung the other up into the air with such force that its extremity was beyond reach of our sight. He then immediately climbed up the cord with indescribable swiftness, and got so high that we could no longer see him. I stood full
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