Curiosities of Superstition, and Sketches of Some Unrevealed Religions

Thus imposingly arrayed, the Tadibe takes his drum of reindeer skin, ornamented with brass rings, and, attended by a neophyte, walks round and round with singular stateliness, while invoking the presence of the spirits by a discordant rattle. This gradually increases in violence, and is accompanied by the droning incantation of the words of enchantment. In due time the spirits are supposed to appear, and the Tadibe proceeds to consult them: beating his drum more gently, and occasionally pausing in his lugubrious chant, – which, however, the novice is careful not to interrupt, – to listen, as he pretends, to the answers of the deities. At length the interrogations cease; the chant breaks into a fierce howl; more and more loudly rattles the drum: the Tadibe appears possessed by a supernatural influence; his body writhes; the foam-drops gather on his lips. All at once the wild intoxication ceases; and the Tadibe delivers the supposed will of the Tadebtsois: advises how a stray reindeer may be recovered, or the disease of the Samojede worshipper relieved, or the fisherman’s labour may secure a plenteous “harvest of the sea.”

The Tadibe’s office is usually hereditary; but occasionally some outsider, predisposed by nature to hysteric manifestations, and gifted with a warm, irregular imagination, is initiated into its mysteries. His morbid fancy is intensified by long solitary self-communings and protracted fasts and vigils; and his frame debilitated by the use of pernicious narcotics and stimulants, until he comes to believe that he has been visited by the spirits. He is then received as a Tadibe, with numerous ceremonies, which take place at midnight, and is invested with the magic drum. It is evident, therefore, that the Tadibe, if he deceive others, is the victim to some extent of self-deception. But, in order to impose upon his ignorant countrymen, he does not disdain to resort to the commonest cheats of the conjuror. Among these is the notorious rope-trick, introduced into England by the performers known as the “Davenport Brothers,” and since repeated by so many “professional artists.” With hands and feet to all appearance securely fastened, he sits down on a carpet of reindeer skin, and, the lights being put out, summons the spirits to his assistance. Their presence is speedily made known by singular noises; squirrels seem to rustle, snakes to hiss, bears to growl. At length the disturbance ceases; the lights are rekindled; and the Tadibe steps forward unbound; the spectators of course believing that he has been assisted by the Tadebtsois.

Not less barbarous than the poor creatures who submit to his guidance, the Tadibe is incapable, and probably not desirous, of improving their moral condition. Similar impostors, claiming and exercising a similar spiritual dictatorship, —Schamans, as the Tungusi call them, Angekoks among the Eskimos, Medicine-men among the Crees and Chepewyans, – we find among all the Arctic tribes of the Old and New World, where their authority has not been overthrown by Christianity or Buddhism; and this dreary superstition still prevails over at least half a million of souls, from the White Sea to the extremity of Asia, and from the Pacific to Hudson’s Bay.

Like the peoples of Siberia, the Samojedes offer up sacrifices to the dead, and perform various ceremonies in their honour. Like the North American Indians, they believe that the desires and pursuits of the departed continue exactly the same as if they were still living; and hence, that they may not be in want of weapons or implements, they deposit in or about the graves a sledge, a spear, a knife, an axe, a cooking-pot.

At the funeral, and for several years afterwards, the kinsmen sacrifice reindeer over the grave.

When a chief or Starochina dies, – the owner, it may be, of several herds of reindeer, – his nearest relatives fashion an image, which is kept in the tent of the deceased, and receives the same measure of respect that was paid to the man himself in his lifetime. At every meal it occupies his accustomed seat; every evening it is solemnly undressed, and duly laid down in his bed. For three years these honours are regularly paid; after which the image is buried, in a belief that the body must by that time have decayed, and lost all recollection of the past. Only the souls of the Tadibes, and of those who have died a violent death, are in the enjoyment of immortality, and hover about the air as disembodied spirits.

The Ostiaks

Further to the east, and occupying the northernmost part of Siberia from the Oural Mountains to Kamtschatka, are the Ostiaks.

The Russians have imposed upon this people the Christian religion, as taught by the Greek Church; but it seems probable that the majority adhere in secret to their heathen creed. Madame Felinska, a Polish lady, who for some years lived in exile in Siberia, relates that, one day, when she was seeking a pathway through a wood, she came upon a couple of Ostiaks, on the point of performing their devotions. These are certainly of a much simpler kind than the rites enjoined by the Greek Church: the worshipper simply places himself before a tree – he appears to prefer the larch – in some sequestered forest-nook, and performs in rapid succession the most extravagant contortions and gestures. As the practice is prohibited by the Russian Government, it is necessarily made a matter of secresy.

An Ostiak generally carries about him a rude image of one of the deities or demons which he adores under the name of Schaïtan; but he conforms to Russian customs by wearing a small crucifix of copper on his breast. The Schaïtan is a rude imitation of the human figure, carved in wood. It is of different sizes, according to the uses for which it is intended; if for wearing on the person, it is a miniature doll; but as part of the furniture of an Ostiak’s hut it is made on a large scale. It is always attired in seven pearl-broidered chemises, and suspended to the neck by a string of silver coins. In every hut it fills the place of honour, – sometimes in company with an image of the Virgin Mary or some Russian saint; and when they sit down to their meals, the Ostiaks are careful to offer it the daintiest morsels, smearing its lips with fish or raw game; this sacred duty fulfilled, they attack with eagerness the viands set before them.

The Ostiak priests are called Schamans. Their influence is very great, but is wholly employed in the promotion of their own selfish interests, through the encouragement of the basest superstitions.

Weather-Conjuring among the Mongols

There are many allusions in Mongol history to the practice of weather-conjuring. The operation was performed by means of a stone supposed to be endowed with magical virtues, called Yadah or Jadah Tásh; this was suspended over or hung in a basin of water with sundry ceremonies. Ibn Mohalhal, an early Arab traveller, asserts that the Kímák, a great tribe of the Turks, possessed such a stone. In the war waged against Chinghiz and Aung Khan by a powerful tribal confederation in 1202, it is recorded that Sengun, the son of Aung Khan, who had been despatched to arrest the enemy’s advance, caused them to be enchanted, so that all the movements they attempted against him were defeated by dense mists and blinding snow-storms. So thick was the mist, so intense was the darkness, that men and horses stumbled over precipices, and many also perished with cold.

The celebrated conqueror, Timur, in his Memoirs, records that the Jets resorted to incantations to produce heavy rains which hindered his cavalry from acting against them. A Yadachi, or weather-conjuror, was taken prisoner, and after he had been beheaded the storm ceased.

Babu refers to one of his early friends, Khwaja ka Mulai, as conspicuous for his skill in falconry and his knowledge of Yadageri, or the science of inducing rain and snow by means of enchantment. The Russians were much distressed by heavy rains in 1552, when besieging Kazan, and universally ascribed the unfavourable weather to the arts of the Tartar queen, who was an enchantress.

Early in the 18th century, the Emperor Shi-tsung issued a proclamation against rain-conjuring, addressed to the Eight Banners of Mongolia. “If,” indignantly observes the Emperor, “if I, offering prayers in sincerity, have yet cause to fear that it may please heaven to leave MY prayer unanswered, it is truly intolerable that mere common people wishing for rain should of their own fancy set up altars of earth; and bring together a rabble of Hoshang (Buddhist Bonzes) and Taossi to conjure the spirits to gratify their wishes.”

The belief in the efficacy of weather-conjuring prevailed all over Europe. In the Cento Novelle Antiche, certain necromancers gave specimens of their skill before the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa; and the weather began to be overcast; and lo, of a sudden rain fell with continued thunders and lightnings, as if the world were come to an end, and hailstones of the size and appearance of steel caps.

In Tibet

Marco Polo, describing his visit to the Kaan’s Palace at Chandu, once known as Kaipingfu, speaks of the immense stud of pure white mares which the Kaan kept there, and adds: – “When the Kaan sets out from the Park on the 28th of August, the milk of all those mares is taken and sprinkled on the ground. And this is done on the injunction of the Idolaters and Idol-priests, who affirm that it is an excellent thing to sprinkle that milk on the ground every 28th of August, so that the Earth and the Air and the False Gods shall have their share of it, and likewise the spirits that inhabit the Air and the Earth. And then those beings will protect and bless the Kaan and his children and his wives and his folk and his gear, and his cattle and his horses, his corn and all that is his.”

Marco Polo proceeds: – “But I must now tell you a strange thing which hitherto I have forgotten to mention. During the three months of every year that the Emperor resides at that place, if it should happen to be bad weather, there are enchanters and astrologers in his train, who are such adepts in necromancy and diabolic arts, that they are able to prevent any cloud or storm from passing over the spot on which the Emperor’s Palace stands. The sorcerers who do this are called Tebet and Kesimar, which are the names of two nations of idolaters. Whatever they do in this way is by the help of the Devil, but they make those people believe that it is compassed by dint of their own sanctity and the help of God…

“There is another marvel performed by those Bacsi of whom I have been speaking as knowing so many enchantments. For when the great Kaan is at his capital and in his great palace, seated at his table, which stands on a platform some eight cubits above the ground, his cups are set before him on a great buffet in the middle of the hall pavement, at a distance of some ten paces from the table, and filled with wine, or other good spiced liquor such as they use. Now when the Kaan desires to drink, these enchanters by the power of their enchantments cause the cups to move from their place without being touched by anybody, and to present themselves to the Emperor! This every one present may witness, and there are oftentimes more than ten thousand persons thus present. ’Tis a truth and no lie! and so will tell you the sages of our own country who understand necromancy, for they also can perform it.”

On the occasion of one of these Idol Festivals, the Bacsi would go to the Prince and say: – “Sire, the feast of such a god is come.” And he would continue: – “My Lord, you know that this god, when he gets no offering, always sends bad weather and spoils our seasons. So we pray you to give us such and such a number of black-faced sheep,” (naming any number they please). “And we beg also, good my Lord, that we may have such a quantity of incense, and such a quantity of lign-aloes, and” – so much of this or so much of that, according to the measure of their cupidity or the probability of their expectations being gratified – “that we may perform a solemn service and a great sacrifice to our Idols, and that so they may be induced to protect us and all our property.”

When the Bacsi have obtained from the Kaan the fulfilment of their desires, they make a great feast in honour of their god, and hold great ceremonies of worship with grand illuminations and quantities of incense of a variety of odours, which they make up from different aromatic spices. And when the viands are cooked, they set them before the idols, and sprinkle the bush about, affirming that in this way the idols obtain a sufficiency. Thus it is that they keep their festivals. Each idol, we must add, has a name of his own, and a feast-day, just as the Saints of the Christian Church have their anniversaries.

Large minsters and abbeys are theirs, some of them of the size of a small town, with upwards of 2,000 monks in a single abbey. These monks dress more decorously than the rest of the people, and have the head and the beard shaven. Among them a limited number are, by their rule, allowed to marry.

Another kind of devotees were called the Seusin, men of extraordinary abstemiousness, who led a life of extreme endurance. Their sole food was bran mixed with hot water, so that one might call their lives a prolonged fast. They had numerous idols, and idols of a monstrous size, but they also worshipped fire. Idolaters not belonging to this sect naturally called them “heretics,” on the old principle that “my doxy” is “orthodoxy,” and “your doxy” “heterodoxy.” Their dresses were made of hempen stuff, black and blue, and they slept upon mats. In fact, says Marco Polo, “their asceticism is something remarkable.”

Chandu, or Xanadu, and its palace, suggested to Coleridge one of his most exquisite passages of description: —

“In Xanadu did Kubla KaanA stately pleasure dome decree:Where Alph, the sacred river, ran,By caverns measureless to man,Down to a sunless sea.So twice five miles of fertile ground,With walls and towers were girdled round:And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;And here were forests, ancient as the hills,Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.”

Xanadu has disappeared, and so has its palace, but the superstitions practised in it are still in vogue among the Mongolian peoples. The word “Bakhshi,” however, has come to have a different meaning in different districts; among the Kirghiz Kazzaks it is applied, as Marco Polo applied it, to a conjuror or medicine-man; among the modern Mongols it signifies “a teacher,” and is bestowed on the oldest and most learned priest of a community; in Western Turkestan it means “a bard;” in our Indian army it is “a paymaster.”

The jugglery of the goblets, to which Marco Polo refers, was not uncommon in Mediæval Europe. Colonel Yule cites37 the Jesuit Delrio as lamenting the credulity of certain princes, otherwise of pious repute, who allowed diabolic tricks to be played in their presence; as for instance that things of iron, and silver goblets, or other heavy articles, should be moved by bounds from one end of a table to the other, without the use of a magnet or of any attachment. The pious prince appears to have been Charles IX., and the conjuror a certain Cesare Maltesio. In old legends this trick is one of the sorceries ascribed to Simon Magus. “He made statues to walk; leapt into the fire without being burnt; flew in the air; made bread of stones; changed his shape; assumed two faces at once,” – an accomplishment not confined to conjurors, – “converted himself into a pillar; caused closed doors to fly open of their own will; and made the vessels in a house seem to move of themselves.”

Colonel Yule asserts that the profession and practice of exorcism and magic in general is much more prominent in Lamaism, or Tibetan Buddhism, than in any other known form of that religion. “Indeed,” he says, “the old form of Lamaism, as it existed in Marco Polo’s day, and till the reforms of Tsongkhapa (1357-1419), and as it is still professed by the Red sect in Tibet, seems to be a kind of compromise between Indian Buddhism and the old indigenous Shamanism. Even the reformed doctrine of the Yellow sect recognises an orthodox kind of magic, which is due in great measure to the combination of Sivaism with the Buddhist doctrines, and of which the institutes are contained in the vast collection of the Jud or Tantras, recognised among the holy books. The magic arts of this code open even a short road to the Buddhahood itself. To attain that perfection of power and wisdom culminating in the cessation of sensible existence, requires, according to the ordinary paths, a period of three asankhyas (or say Unaccountable Time × 3), whereas by means of the magic arts of the Tantras, it may be reached in the course of three rebirths only, nay, of one! But from the Tantras also can be learned how to acquire miraculous powers for objects entirely selfish and secular, and how to exercise these by means of Dhárani, or mystic Indian charms.”

The commonplace and vulgar exhibition of such exploits as blowing fire, cutting off heads, and swallowing knives, is formally repudiated by the orthodox Yellow Lamas; but as the crowd cannot be satisfied without them, each of the great Yellow Lama monasteries in Tibet maintains a conjuror, as of old each European sovereign kept his jester. This conjuror is not a member of the monastic fraternity, and lives in a particular part of the convent, out of the atmosphere of their sanctity. He is called Choicong, or protector of religion, and is free to marry. The Choicong hand down their magic lore from generation to generation orally, and by their cries and howls, and their frenzied gestures, and their fantastic dress, are connected with the Shamanist devil dancers.

Magic seems to have always borne the same character in every country. The marvels accomplished by the Indian mystic charms, or Dhárani, are exactly those which the Mediæval magicians of Europe professed to achieve. To make water flow backwards, to resuscitate the dead, to fly through the air, to read a man’s inmost thoughts, these were the wonders done by Simon Magus in his day, and by Albertus Magnus and his followers in their day; and form what may be called the ordinary stock-in-trade of the old necromancers. The Bakhshis included them in their series of performances. “There are certain men,” says Ricold, “whom the Tartars honour above all in the world, viz., the Baxitæ, (or Bakhshis), who are a kind of idol priests. These are men from India, persons of deep wisdom, well conducted, and of the gravest morals. They are usually acquainted with magic arts, and depend on the counsel and aid of demons; they exhibit many illusions, and predict some future events. For instance, one of eminence among them was said to fly; the truth however was (as it proved) that he did not fly, but did walk close to the surface of the ground without touching it; and would seem to sit down without having any substance to support him.” Ibn Batuta describes a performance of this kind as witnessed by him at Delhi, in the presence of Sultan Mahomed Tughlak. Francis Valentyn, at a later date, speaks of it as common in India. He was told, he says, that a man would first go and sit upon three sticks which had been so put together as to form a tripod, after which, first one stick, then a second, then a third would be removed from under him, and yet the man would not fall, but would remain suspended in the air. He could not bring himself to believe it, so manifestly contrary was it to reason, yet he had spoken with two friends who had both seen it done on the same occasion, and one of them mistrusting his own eyes, had felt about with a long stick to ascertain if there were not something on which the body rested, but could discover nought.

Superstition, like history, repeats itself, – some of the marvels with which the Lama conjurors and the Tartar Bakhshis deluded their people are repeated by the spiritualistic “mediums,” of the present day and put forward by them as the credentials of their pretended mission.

They fall short, however, of the extraordinary feats performed by the professional jugglers who laid no claim to a religious character, if we may credit the accounts of the early travellers. Ibn Batuta, for instance, gravely describes what he saw, or thought he saw, at a great entertainment given by the Viceroy of Khansa: —

A juggler, he says, one of the Kaan’s slaves, made his appearance, and at the Amir’s bidding, began to display his surprising accomplishments. Taking a wooden ball, with several holes in it, through which long thongs were passed, he laid hold of one of these, and slung the ball into the air. It went so high, that the spectators wholly lost sight of it. Observe, that the scene was the palace-court, sub Jove. There remained only a little of the end of the thong in the juggler’s hand, and of this he desired a juvenile assistant to lay hold, and mount. He did so, climbing by the thong, and was speedily lost to sight also. The conjuror called him thrice, but receiving no answer, snatched up a knife, as if in a great rage, laid hold of the thong, and in his turn disappeared. By-and-by he threw down one of the boy’s hands, then a foot, then the other hand, the other foot, the trunk, and lastly, the head! Finally, he himself came down, all puffing and panting, and with blood-besmeared clothes kissed the ground before the Amir, addressing him in Chinese. The Amir made some reply; and straightway the juggler took the boy’s disjecta membra, laid them in their places, gave a kick, and lo and behold, the boy arose and stood erect, “clothed and in his right mind.” “All this,” says Ibn Batuta, “astonished me beyond measure,” – and no wonder! – “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 nor coming down, neither maiming nor mending; ’tis all hocus pocus!’”

Impartial scientific observers have passed a similar verdict on the proceedings of the “mediums,” who, however, have never achieved anything so surprising as the feat here recorded. Before we incredulously reject the Arab traveller’s narrative, let us compare it with an account furnished by Edward Melton, an Anglo-Dutch traveller, of the performances of some Chinese conjurors, which he saw at Batavia. Passing over the basket-murder trick, which Houdin and others have made familiar to the English public, we come to “a thing which surpasses all belief;” which, indeed, Mr. Melton would scarcely have ventured to relate had not thousands witnessed it at the same time as himself.

One of the gang took a ball of cord, and grasping one end in his hand hurled the other up into the air with such force that it was entirely lost to sight. He then climbed up the cord as rapidly as a sailor up his ship’s rigging, and to such a height that he became invisible. Melton stood full of astonishment, and at a loss to know what next would happen; when, behold, a leg tumbled out of the air! A conjuror who was on the watch for it immediately snatched it up, and threw it into a basket. Down came a hand, and then another leg, and, in short, all the members of the body successively fell from the air, to find shelter in the basket. The last of the ghastly shower was the head; and no sooner had it touched the ground than the man who had gathered the limbs and stowed them in the basket, turned them all out again topsy-turvy. Straightway they began to creep together, until they composed a whole man, who stood up and walked about just as before, having sustained apparently no damage! “Never in my life,” says Melton, “was I so astonished as when I beheld this wonderful performance, and I doubted now no longer that those misguided men did it by the help of the Devil. For it seems to me totally impossible that such things should be accomplished by natural means.”38

The Emperor Jahángir in his “Memoirs” (cited by Yule) describes the exploits of some Bengali jugglers, who exhibited before him. Two of them bear a close resemblance to the foregoing. Thus: they produced a man whom they divided limb from limb, actually severing his head from the body. These mutilated members they scattered along the ground, where they remained for some time. A sheet or curtain was extended over the spot, and one of the men placing himself under it, in a few minutes reappeared, in company with the individual supposed to have been so roughly dissected, in such perfect health and condition, that one might have safely sworn he had never received the slightest wound or injury.