POISONING IN INDIA,.

Otago Witness, Issue 1189, 12 September 1874, Page 19

POISONING IN INDIA,.

Even to this day India is a land of surprises. We can remember the thrill of horror which passed through Britain and all Europe, when, some forty years ago, the revelations of the crimes of Thuggee were published by Colonel Sleeman and others. 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 soldiers who went on leave and 1 never returned to their regiments led to enquiry and finally to the discovery, breaking. up and repression of one of the moßt diabolical confederacies which ever cursed the earth, or blasphemed the name of religion. It was found that Hindoo Society held in its bosom a caste of professional murderers, men actuated to deliberate, stealthy, and oft-repeated homicide not by cupidity merely, but by the belief that in every life destroyed by their agency they rendered the deity to whom they were devoted,' religious service. Prompted as much by fanaticism as by the love of plunder, they would accompany travellers on long journeys, and thruat themselves into groups where they were made anything but welcome, 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' coolnass and skill begoi* ten of long practice, inevitable. It is no 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 povsons, destined from their very birth to be devotees uf Kalee and to live by murder, were subjected to needful coercion and converted into such useful members of Bociety as tent and carpet makers. We occasionally see notices of Thug weaving establishments in the Indian papers, but probably few of those who see such notices have read the awful details in SSleeman's and Taylor's works, of the deeds and confessions of many of those who now appear inoffensive in demeanour 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, how- ! ever subordinate. The most recent sensation is created by the discovery of the existence amongst the natives of Northwestern India of a system of stealthy j 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 India, 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 leguminous creeper. The seeds are round, or a brilliant scarlet colour, with a spot of black at tho end. They resemble crab's eyes, and we think they are so called. The native goldsmiths have from time immemorial used them as weights. A small Caltura basket j filled with these Beeds, or with those flatter and larger ones produced by the Meditiya tree, forms one of the nicest, presents which could be sent to England. The seeds, pierced and strung as necklaces, closely resemble coral. Those of the Meditiya, so far from being deemed poisonous, are roasted and eaten by the natives, like gram or any other pulse, And who could possibly suspect that in the exquisitely beautiful seeds of the legumi1 nous 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 folloW3 the injection into the human circulation of cobra poison. Indeed, the mixture used by the " mild Hindoos" for subcutaneous poison- j ing 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 the flesh into which the poison haß been introduced. Against the reptile poisoner precautions 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 rankle in tho 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 be a wide- spread system of poisoning, 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 retreating. He feels some .pain in the neck, but thinks so little' of it that' he goes forth to his 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 desoriptiona of the mode in which the poison is prepared and administßred, and no doubt there is greater 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 orime stamped out with the lives of those detected using the poison, British rule is not what we take it to be. But we have no fear that thure will be any hesitation or any delicacy in doaling with a form of revenge and murder so atrocious. For ourselves we should give our full adhesion to a policy of suspension of 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 frr further evil on the earth, as is a cobra by the w^U-aimed and fatal blow which follows an attempt by the reptile to bite. The evil is 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 peoplb, ao good in the estitnati >n of some persons that to offer them Christianity in lieu of their own religion is a folly and an insult. —Ceylon Observer.