Mesmerism in the Orient

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 468, 3 May 1890, Page 3

Mesmerism in the Orient

Kcllar, tli« Conjurer, Itelates Marvellous Tales of Ills Own Knowledge. BURIED ALIVE FOR FORTY DAYS. A Young Man Thrown into a Trance and Burned with a Living Coal Without Feeling It—An Old Fakir Who Threw Himself Unaided Into the Same State —Some Unimpeachable Witnesses. I have seen during the last twenty years almost every hypnotist and mesmerist of note in America and in Europe. I have been permitted to carefully examine their performances and to note the precise effect produced upon the subjects by their manipulations. With this experience I think I am able to judge whether a performance of that character is well or poorly done, and I say to you that there were ten years ago, and I presume are now, in India mesmerists whose performances transcend in wonder the combined efforts of such of their Christian rivals as I have ever seen. Let me describe one performance. It was in Secunderbad in 1878 and it took place in the broad corridor of the palace of Saler Jung, the Nyzam. I was one of a party of Englishmen, among whom were Dr. Crawford, surgeon of the British army, and Dir John Hodgkins, formerly an officer in Her Majesty’s Lancers, bub at that time in the employ of an English banking and mercantile firm in Hong Kong. We were in the front ranks of the spectators, nearly all of whom were Europeans. After we had waited a few minutes, fanning ourselves, for the day was oppressively hot, the fakirs made their appearance. There was eight in the party. An old man, with aquiline features, a patriarchal white beard and a pair of flashing black eyes, was the leader. His wife, a pretty little woman, young enough to be his daughter, was his chief assistant, and the six remaining men served as subjects and under assistants. I had heard much about the wonderful performances of this particular band of fakirs, as all itinerant performers are generally termed, and thus, when I received the invitation of the palace authorities, I was delighted to accept it. But I must admit that all the praise I had heard ■ seemed faint and cold after I had seen all that was to be seen. It was, taking it all in all, the mosb wonderful performance of the sort any of our party had ever witnessed. After the fakirs arrived they proceeded at once to business. The old man bound a bandage tightly around the forehead of one of his young men, placing a small, wedgeshaped piece of pith under the cloth and directly between the eyes. JTljen he handed him a small, round mirror, telling him to place it in his hand and gaze upon it intently. This the young man did. Meanwhile, the other fakirs made a circle partially around him, droning a monotonous chant, that ran something as follows :

‘ Ram, ram, amaram, amaram, ram. Amaram, amaram, amaram, ram. This was repeated. s over and over again in sing-song tones, resembling - the distant hum of a hive of bees, and when the chant was ended we were nearly as drowsy as the poor subject was. . - Directly the song was finished we started from our lethargy and brought our lagging senses to bear upon the victim of this remarkable incantation. He was lying on the parlour floor, to .all appearances dead. His face was of the ghastly pallor of the tomb. His arms, legs and fingers were as thought they had been suddenly turned to ice. His blood seemed to have been frozen on a day when we living spectators were almost suffocated by the heat. We felt his fingers. They were as rigid as though modelled from marble. Dr. Crawford raised his eyelids. The pupil •had been upturned and nothing bub the white was visible. The. doctor examined his heart and felt his pulse. His blood had stopped flowing through

his veins. To make the test even more complete the doctor stopped his nostrils, his eyes and his ears and mouth with a thick, putty-like paste, that made breathing an impossibility. In every previous mesmeric or hypnotic experiment I had witnessed the subject always breathed. Now came some further tests, and cruel ones they were, too. Large bodkins were thrust entirely through the palm of his hand, and he never moved a muscle. Neither did a single drop of blood follow the withrawal of the steel. This prodding was repeated upon his cheeks, his finger-point 3, his thighs and arms, with precisely the same results. Then the old man took a glowing coal of burning charcoal from his pot and placed it on the upturned palm of his unconscious victim’s hand. Here it at first smoked, then sizzled, and the corridor became permeated with the odor of burning human flesh. Still the man was unconscious. At last the doctor forced the old man to remove the coal, for fear that it might do the young man some permanent injury The subject was then turned over to the doctor’s care. The physician made every effort known to medieal science to resuscitate him, all for naught. After he had been in this trance for nearly an hour, the old fakir made some wide-spreading passes over his body with his arms, and leaned back to watch the result. A shiver passed over the subject’s form, and a grim smile of triumph curled the corners of the old man s mouth. We gathered around the prostrate man, and watched him until we grew sick at heart and felt faint. Such torture, such horrible agony I never before beheld on a human being’s face. His features were twisted and distorted out of all human resemblance. His limbs became knotted, and he writhed into a thousand different shapes from his finger tips to his toes. After five minutes, that seemed to us an age, he opened his eyes, rubbed the moisture from his forehead, and sat up as one who was dazed. A minute later he rose and took his place amongst the others as though nothing whatever had happened. While this was very wonderful, the old man now proceeded to astonish us still more. With no one to help him save the singers and their chant, of his own volition he threw himself into this marvellous state. We repeated the same experiments upon him that we had done in the first instance. We drove steels through his limbs and scorched the palm of his hand with a living coal. We stopped up his nostrils, ears, eyes and mouth and then the doctor worked on him for half an hour or more. The effect of death was in this case more pronounced than in the former. The natural pailor of the old man’s face, his flowing white hair and beard made him appear like the carved figure of some old Indian chieftain in one of the royal burial grounds. It impressed us as though we were in the presence of actual death and we instinctively spoke in whispers. When the doctor was tired he turned the body over to the woman, who made certain passes over ic, and slowly and terribly the old man regained his senses. That ended this performance, the like of which I have never personally seen equalled. The old man was said to be the only member of this particular party who could throw himself into this trance, if I may so call it, and his wife was the only one who had the power to bring him to life. Without her help he would remain in that condition for an. indefinite period. Some of the natives claimed that he could sleep that dreamless sleep for centuries and then be brought to life. However that may be, he would undoubedtly remain unconscious until death really came to him unless some powerful agent recalled his dormant senses. Several months later, during the same year, I visited Lucknow, the guest of Col. Sir Julius Medley, whose niece afterwards became my wife. We were-entertained by Col. Jenkins, commander of the British forces, at the Chuddarmumzil Club, of which the Colonel was the Secretary. One evening I related to the Colonel the experience I have just described, when he proceeded to tell me of one that recently happened in Lucknow, the truth of which he vouched for. This is the Colonel’s story : In 1877, I think he said, a party of fakirs, possibly the same ones I had seen, for their description tallied closely with that of my acquaintance, visited the Colonel s quarters and gave an exhibition of their almost superhuman powers. The old man threw himself while in a sitting or rather squatting position into a trance, and his assistants proceeded to place his tongue far back in his mouth. Then they swathed his body with bandages, as a mummy is prepared for the tomb. They filled his ears, eyes, mouth and nostrils with paste, and bandaged his face and neck, arms and chest, as they had done the lower part of his body. When this was done he was turned over to the Colonel. Mind you, all this had been done in the presence of the Colonel and his officers. There was, and could be, no deception in it. , , , The Colonel had had a deep hole dug in the barrack-yard, and into this he placed the bandaged fakir, after first putting him into a box, sheathed with metal and hermetically sealed. The earth was spread over this box and the grave was placed under guard of a squad of soldiers. Every second of the time, day and night for forty days, the grave was under guard. The box could not have been meddled with by any human being and have escaped detection. At the end of that period the box was exhumed and opened, the body was unswathed and a woman breathed upon its face and passed her hands over his limbs, and precisely as I have described before, the man came to life, apparently none the worse for his long burial. How much longer he could have remained under the ground of course I cannot tell. All I know is that he certainly was buried, and remained there forty days, without air, food or drink. There are many stones current m India apropos of such phenomena, but these two are all that I can vouch for during the fifteen years of my residence in that land of mystery. I have never iseen or heard of such experiments being produced by an American or European performer. What the secret may be I shall leave you to decide. I have described to you what I hava seen with my .own eyes and what I have received on evidence that cannot be impeached. You may. explain it as you please. If you can do it satisfactorily you will do more than I have ever been able to j O . Kellar.