He quotes a case in 1802, in which several of the witnesses declared that they remembered numerous instances of…
- Date of account
- Second edition published 1896
- Source
- The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, Vol. 2 (of 2)
- Reference
- The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, Vol. 2 (of 2) · selected passage 172
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-25
Record summary
He quotes a case in 1802, in which several of the witnesses declared that they remembered numerous instances of persons being put to death for sorcery; one of them, in particular, proved that her mother had been tried and executed as a witch
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyHe quotes a case in 1802, in which several of the witnesses declared that they remembered numerous instances of persons being put to death for sorcery; one of them, in particular, proved that her mother had been tried and executed as a witch. In another case a Kol, thinking that some old women had bewitched him, placed them in a line and cut off all their heads, except that of the last, who, objecting to this drastic form of ordeal, ran away and escaped. In another, the nose-ring of a suspected witch was torn out with such violence as to cause extensive laceration. There are recorded instances of even more brutal forms of mutilation. A case occurred at Dhâka in which some people went to the house of a supposed witch, intending, as they said, to make her discontinue her enchantments, and ill-treated her in such a shameful way as to leave her in a dying state. She appears to have been in the habit of prescribing medicine for children, and this seems to have been the only basis for the reports that she practised magic.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
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