Another Hindu Stone-Shower Medium.
By T. Vijiaraghava Charlu, Esq., F.T.S.
I am able to add, from personal experience, some additional facts respecting the phenomena of possession – or, as the Western people call it – mediumship.
In the year 1872, at a place called Komal, in Mayavaram Taluq, Tanjore District, lived a young female named Meena-tche Ammal. Her age was about thirteen or fourteen years: she was married. One day, when on a visit to a relative at Negapatam, she had gone to the neighbouring tank to wash her clothes, and, in the Hindu fashion, was swinging them on her head and beating them on the stones. A man, – a Mussalman, if I mistake not, – coming there, was spattered with some of the water, and, with abusive language, ordered her to desist. She answered him in the same tone and kept on with her work. He, thereupon, with malicious threats, warned her that she should suffer for her obstinacy, and, after a while, went away.
The female, in the course of a day or so, returned to her native village, and almost immediately began to be terrified with a demon (Pisacha), or ugly-looking spirit, which she declared to be constantly about the place to annoy her. She described it as having a frightful head, covered with a wild shock of hair, and sitting sometimes on her neck, which it squeezed with its knees and crushed with its weight: but the form was visible to her only in the upper portion, the limbs being concealed with a large cloth. {In this connection, let the reader refer to the records of the Salem Witchcraft tragedies in America in the year 1692. The resemblance between the experiences is most striking. – Ed.} She could not even say whether it was a male or female.
The victim was a connection of mine, and I had the opportunity of seeing the case throughout. The poor creature, in her terror, would sometimes rush into the house and close every door and window, whereupon there would immediately come, rattling against the sides and roof of the building, a storm of bricks, stones, and pebbles. Sometimes we would be sitting near her to watch the phenomena, and stones, so heavy that one would have to use both hands to lift them, would suddenly drop near our feet. We were all in fear lest they might strike and injure if not kill us, but no one was ever struck. The strangest fact was that we could not see the stone until it was within a couple of feet or so of the ground. It would then suddenly become visible to our eyes, and only then. {A most interesting fact. We have here a practical testimony going to support the theory – long since put forth by us – that, in the transport of inert substances, the atoms are disintegrated, and suddenly re-formed at the point of deposit. – Ed.}
The other members of the family would often abuse the demon (Pisacha), and be at once answered with the crash of a great stone at their feet, or the pelting of a shower upon the house. One day the medium’s father angrily said that such a demon ought to be beaten with a broomstick; whereupon there fell before him a whole bundle of sticks from worn-out brooms; as though the demon were inviting him to try to execute his threat.
I and other young men took, on various occasions, stones or fragments of bricks that had fallen, marked them with charcoal for identification, and flung them, as far as we could, out of the house court-yard into an adjoining garden. Instantly these very stones would be flung back to us, though no person was in the garden to throw them, and, as usual, we would see them falling only when a cubit’s length from the ground.
The medium would attempt sometimes to drink water from a brass lotah, but, while she held it to her open mouth and was in the act of swallowing the water, the vessel would, as it were, melt out of her grasp and be violently dashed to the other side of the room.
The girl was taken by her father and other male relatives to many different places in search of persons who claimed to have power to exorcise these Pisachas, but in vain. Many tried, but all failed with their charms. The Mussalman, who had caused her obsession, was not seen again. At last, however, after suffering thus for about six months, the medium was suddenly left by her demon, and thenceforward was troubled no more.
That there are those, who have the exorcising power, cannot be denied. I have seen such persons trace a circle on the ground and make the medium sit within it. She – mediums are most commonly females – would at once undo her hair, and begin whirling her head so as to make her dishevelled locks swing about it like whips. The exorciser would then force the demon to tell him who it was in its last birth, and how and why it had obsessed its victim. The answers would be correct as ascertained by subsequent enquiry. The Pisachas almost invariably claim that they inhabit trees – the banian and arasa in particular; deserted houses and wells not in use. They are not souls of the dead persons, but nature-demons simply, and seem to congregate in and about places not frequented by living persons.
We Hindus, – especially the Bramhans – as you are aware, consider mediumship, as explained in Spiritualistic books, as a horrible misfortune, and a case of the sort, occurring in a family, is looked upon as a fearful calamity. We have seen it in India in every imaginable form for countless generations, and, if our Western friends would but profit by our experience, they would combine to put it down instead of encouraging it, as I hear, and as they, in their ignorance, seem to be doing. Men are rarely made mediums, and, when they are, are commonly possessed by the Earth-bound souls of Bramhans – called by us Bramha-Rakshasus. Those, who die a natural death, will seldom, if ever, return on earth as Bhoots (Ghosts); but suicides, or those – who die, before the term alloted them at their birth, through some accident – especially if evilly inclined during life, sometimes will, as they have to remain in the earth’s atmosphere and cannot quit it before the expiration of the natural period.
Mediums so possessed, though normally ignorant of the first word of Sanskrit, are able to dispute with living Paudits upon Vedic texts, and repeat mantrams and slokas fluently. Sometimes the possessing Pisachas will promise to leave their victims, if offerings of specified kinds are made to them. I have not seen it myself, but trustworthy friends have told me that they have been present when this ceremony was performed. The exorciser, with chosen relatives of the obsessed person and other witnesses, would proceed in the evening to the secluded spot, a deserted house or well designated by the human demon as its dwelling-place, and there, with certain formularies of mantram and spell, make up masses of cooked food mingled with pigeon’s blood or sheep’s blood. When all was ready, the exorciser would fling the food up into the air, and – it would disappear as by enchantment. Not a grain of it would fall back to the ground. — Nellore, May 1882.
The Theosophist, June 1882.