The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c8.s1.t15.38

c8.s1.t15.38

Sometimes the pretended curer of snake-bites by charms professes also to possess the power of expelling demons, and in other cases the expeller of demons disclaims being a snake-conjuror. Demon-conjurors are not numerous in Nattore; and tiger-conjurors who profess to cure the bites of tigers, although scarcely heard of in that thana, are more numerous in those parts of the district where there is a considerable space covered by jungle inhabited by wild beasts. Distinct from these three kinds of conjurors and called by a different name is a class of gifted (*guni*) persons who are believed to possess the power of preventing the fall of hail which would destroy or injure the crops of the villages. For this purpose when there is a prospect of a hailstorm, one of them goes out into the fields belonging to the villages with a trident and a buffalo's horn. The trident is fixed in the ground and the Gifted makes a wide circuit around it, running naked blowing the horn, and pronouncing incantations. It is the firm belief of the villagers that their crops are by this means protected from hailstorm. Both men and women practise this business. There are about a dozen in Nattore, and they are provided for in the same way as the conjurors.