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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
CHAP. L. DEVIL-DANCERS
97
punishment for impiety or n2:;lcct of the god in question. Hence not the mediciner, but the exorcist, is summoned to the sick man's aid." (J. A. S. B. XVIII. 728.)
NOTE I0.—Mr. Hodgson again : " Libations of fermented liquor always accompany sacrifice—because, to confess the whole truth, sacrifice and feast are commutable words, and feasts need to be crowned with copious potations." (Ibid.)
NOTE I I.—And again : " The god in question is asked what sacrifice he requires? a buffalo, a hog, a fowl, or a duck, to spare the sufferer ; . . . anxious as I am fully to illustrate the topic, I will not try the patience of my readers by describing all that vast variety of black victims and white, of red victims and blue, which each particular deity is alleged to prefer." (Ibid. and p. 732.)
NOTE I2.—The same system of devil-dancing is prevalent among the tribes on the Lu-kiang, as described by the R. C. Missionaries. The conjurors are there called 1!Iumos. (Ann. de la Prop. de la Foi, XXXVI. 323, and XXXVII. 312-313.)
" Marco's account of the exorcism of evil spirits in cases of obstinate illness exactly resembles what is done in similar cases by the Burmese, except that I never saw animals sacrificed on such occasions." (Sir A. Plzayre. )
Mouhot says of the wild people of Cambodia called Slims: " When any one is ill they say that the Evil Spirit torments him ; and to deliver him they set up about the patient a dreadful din which does not cease night or day, until some one among the bystanders falls down as if in a syncope, crying out, ` I have him,—he is in me,—he is strangling me ! ' Then they question the person who has thus become possessed. They ask him what remedies will save the patient ; what remedies does the Evil Spirit require that he may give up his prey ? Sometimes it is an ox or a pig ; but too often it is a human victim." (J. R. G. S. XXXII. 147.)
See also the account of the Samoyede Tadibeï or Devil-dancer in Klaproth's Magasin Asiatique (II. 83).
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 hirn 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
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