INDIAN JUGGLERY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1746, 23 August 1905, Page 59

INDIAN JUGGLERY.

Mr Andrew Lang gives in “Longman’s Magazine” a quotation from a letter from India in which a strange tale of jugglery is told. “Yesterday,” Bays the writer, we were all marching in from Tvhimlasa when we passed a village,, and on the roadside a juggler was resting. We said to ‘Juggle!’ We stood within 6ft of him, all round him, all the time, and he was half-naked. He took a rudely carved little boat, empty and undecked, about Bin by 4in, 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 2ft long, in the hole, and then' took a ooooanut and handed it round. This ooooanut was empty, with three holes in it. It wa® a small one, and we all saw and felt it was empty. He then stuck the nut on the bamboo, and stuck a little bamboo spout m 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 m the nut or boat. All the time the man, who had a monkey’s skull with him, kept on saying, ‘Bandar ka kopra’ (‘monkey's skull’) over and over again.” Jfoom Mr Hugh Clifford Mr Lang has

a similar story. The juggler was a Malay, who stroked with his fingers the 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 on the ground, it bounced about, but was a knife-blade again when lifted by the juggler. This looks like a clever case of “palming ’ a thin bag, full of water, for the knife-blade. But there was no water on the mat on which Mr Clifford saw the drops falling!.