POISONING IN INDIA.

Thames Star, Volume VI, Issue 1808, 19 October 1874, Page 2

POISONING IN INDIA.

Even to this day India is a land of surprises. Wo can remember the. thrill of horror which passed through Britain and all Eurepe, when, somo forty year? ago, the revelations of the crimes of Thuggee were published by Colonel Sleoman and others. 1 The Thugs, were wise enough in their generation never to place their strangling apparatus round the neck of any member of the ruling race. But the mysterious disappearance of so many native soklit-rs who went pn leave and never returned to ■ ttieir regiments led to enquiry and finally to the discovery, breaking-up and repression, of one of the most diabolical coufedenicies whichever cursed the earth, or. blasphemed the name of religion. It was .found that Hindoo Society held in its bosbni a caste of professional >; mnrdcrerßi * men actuated to deliberate, stealthy, and oftrepeated homicide,, not Kyp't cupidity merely, but by the belief that in every life destroyed by their agency they rendered the deity to whom tW *ere devoted, religious service. Prompted as much by fanaticism as by the love of plunder, they would accompany travellers on / long i jbmrneys/ and thrust themselves into groups whMe they were made anything, but : welcdK until they could-stealthily seize the fatal moment to cast a handkerchief round the neck of their victim,,. after which the struggle for life, even in the case of the strongest, was but brief, and the result, from the Thugs' " coolness an^ skill begotten of long practice, inevitable. It is ho small part of. the glory of British rule in India that such a system should, like suttee and organised infanticide, be repressed, and holocausts of future victims rendered impossible. Thousands of persons, destined from their very birth to be devotees of Kalee, and to live by murder, were subjected to needful coercion and converted into such useful members of society as teat and ccrpet makers. We occasionally see notices of Thug weaving establishments in the Indian papers, but pro- - bably few of those who see such notices have road the awful details in Sleehan's and: Taylor s work, of the deeds and confessions of jnany of those who now appear inoffensive in demeanor and have become industrious and wellconducted in. the establishments prepared for them. A later surprise was the existence, and the systematic .practice of torture by the natives towards each other, especially by natives entrusted with the collection of ; revenue, or placed in positions of authority over their fellows, howlever subordinate. The' most recent sensation is created by the discovery of the existence amongst the natives of Northwestern India of a system bf stealthy murder, worse even in some respects than Thuggee, certainly more difficult of repression. There is a pretty little plant, common in Ceylon as well as Indii; wellknown to most of our readers. At least they are familiar with the beautiful little red seeds 'which this "liquorice" plant yields from the pods which, succeed the purple blossoms of the luguminous creeper. The seeds are round of a bril- ', Kant scarlet color, with a spot of black at the end. They resemble crab's •yes, and we think they are so called. The native goldsmiths have from time immemorial used them as weights. A small Caltura basket filled with these seeds, or with those flatter and larger ones produced by the Meditiya tree, forms one of the nicest presents that could be sent to England. The seeds, pierced and strung as necklaces, closely resemble coral. Those of the Meditiya, so far from beiag deemed poisonous, are roasted and eaten by the natives, like grain, or any other pulse. And who could possibly suspect that in the exquisitely beautiful seeds of the luguminous creeper is contained the basis of one of the most insidious' but deadly poisons, which can be used by the wicked and revengeful to destroy life—by a slower process, perhaps, but one, not less certainly fatal than that which follows the injection into the human circulation "of cobra poisoa. Indeed, the mixture used by the "mild Hindoos" for subcutoneous poisoning seems to combine essentially the same elements as the serpent venom, and the only chance of salvation in each case seems to be instant excision of the part bitten or pierced, or the cutting open and thorough washing of tho flesh into which the poison has been introduced Against the reptile poisoner precaution can be taken: its movements, its expanded hood, its hiss, give some warning, and it seldom attacks voluntarily or without what appears to be immediate provocation. But how can the poor seminude native of India defend himself from the enemy who attacks him, perhaps in his sleep, with no weapon more formidable than a needle tipped with the smallest possible quantity of poison. A puncture is made and the deadly stuff is deposited ; is left to rank in the flesh and to produce that fever for which there is no termination but death. In the case which seems to have attracted special attention to what is found to bo a wide spread system of poijoning, applied to cattle as well as to human beings, the unconscious victim was attacked when asleep. He is awakened by two blows on his neck, and^ as he opens his eyes, sees a figure retredjf? ing. Ho feels some pain in the neck, but thinks so little of it that he goes forth to hie work. But the poison is in his system, and does its work also, and so effectually that in a few days the man dies from symptoms resembling tetanus, and from the exhaustion of continued fever. Fault has been found with what is deemed the unnecessary publicity of descriptions of the mode in which the poison is prepared and administered, and no doubt there is great danger from the imitative faculty in human nature, as was proved when Bishop in London followed the example of Burke and Hare in Edinburgh: But the benefits of publicity counterbalance every disadvantage. All

India is now.awake to the existence of this new and terrible crime and danger, and if the danger is not speedily averted and the crimo stamped out with the lives of those detected using the poison, British rule is not what we take it to be. But we have not to fear that there will be any hesitation or any delicacy in dealing with a form of revenge and murder, so atrocious. For ourselves, we should give our fall adhesion to a policy of suspension lof the ordinary laws in regard to the human cobras. Their guilt even in intent, once proved, they ought to be as speedily and as effectually rendered powerless for further evil on tho earth, as is a cobra by j the well-aimed and fatal blow which follows an attempt by the reptile to bite. | Tlie^vilis so terrible that nothing but terrible examples will suffice to repress it. We really wonder what further revelations we are to have of the revengeful and murderous characteristics of a people, so good in the estimation of some persons Siat ib offer them Christianity in lieu of their own religion is a folly and an insult. Ceylon Observer.