INDIAN JUGGLERY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12928, 26 July 1905, Page 2 (Supplement)

INDIAN JUGGLERY.

Mb. Andrew Lang gives in Longman's Magazine a. quotation, from a letter from India in which a strange tale of jugglery is told.

"Recently," says the writer, "we wore all marching In from Khiinlasa, when we passed a village; and on the roadside a juggler was resting./ We said to him, 'Juggle!' We stood within six i feet of him., all round him, all the time, and he Was half-naked. He' took a rudely'-carved little boat, empty and undecked, ; about eight inches by four inches, with one thwart across it with a hole for a mast. We all examined this boat, and handed it. round. It was , empty. He then stuck a thin bamboo, stick about two feet long in the hole, and then took a cocoanut and handed it round. This cocoanut was empty, with three holes- in it. It was a small one, and we all saw and felt it wag empty. He then stuck the nut on the bamboo spout ill one hole of the nut, and stood five yards off, and said, ' Spout.' And it spouted water like one o'clock for a long time. He said, ' Stop,' and .it stopped; ' Spout,' and it spouted. It spouted much more water than could ever have been in the nut. or boat, All the time the man, who had a monkey's skull with him, kept 011 saying, ' Bandar ka kopra' (a monkey's skull) over and over again." From Mr.-Hugh Clifford Mr. Lang has a similar story. The juggler was a Malay, who stroked with his fingers thp blade of a long knife.or kris. Mr. Clifford Saw water fall drop by drop from the blade, which 'became flaccid* like a strip of indiarubber. Thrown 011 the ground, it bounced about, but was a knife-blade again when lifted by the juggler. This looks like a clever ease of " palming" a thin bag, full of water, for the knife-blade. But there was no water oil the mat on which Mr. Clifford saw the drops falling!