Life and Travel in India: Being Recollections of a Journey Before the Days of RailroadsLeonowens, Anna Harriette
History
Life and Travel in India: Being Recollections of a Journey Before the Days of Railroads
Leonowens, Anna Harriette
India -- Description and travel; India -- Social life and customs
These jugglers call themselves Jâdoo-wallahs, and are of the same tribe
as the Yogees who follow the Mohammedan processions and cut themselves
with knives and sharpened flints in order to extract money from the more
tender-hearted of the crowds who always frequent such spectacles. The
name of Jâdoo-wallah is a corruption of the words Yahdèo-Wallah, "filled
with god-power." The common people believe that these powers are
bestowed upon them by the gods, and thus do everything and anything in
their power to propitiate the goodwill of the Jâdoo-wallahs. As acrobats
they far surpass the Europeans. One of the men who performed for us
received on his right shoulder, as lightly as if it had been a feather,
a heavy weight which was dropped from an over-hanging branch of a tree
above.
It was dusk before the jugglers and serpent-charmers finished their
astonishing feats and performances. We handed them five rupees, and they
were delighted with this liberality, though I had feared they would not
think it enough. They departed with the usual benediction, "Both burrus
Jeho Sahib loke. Tumarra bucha kè bucha Ingrage kè guddee per bait
jowoh" ("Long may you live, gentlefolk, and may your children's children
seat themselves on the British throne").
Not long after we had an opportunity of witnessing the grand
serpent-festival held in Bombay and other parts of Hindostan in the
months of July and August. It is called "the naga-poojmi," literally,
"serpent-worship." There are many tribes in India who have assumed the
name of Nagas or Serpents from the earliest times. Diodorus supposes
that the snake had been used as their crest or banner. There are three
kinds of serpent-worship practised in India, and each is peculiar to a
distinct class of people, although all the natives of India, except the
Mohammedans, either from dread of the deadly serpent or from a feeling
of veneration, join in the festival of the naga-poojmi.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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