A manual of medical jurisprudence for India : including the outline of a history of crime against the person in India / by Norman Chevers.

  • Chevers, Norman, 1818-1886.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of medical jurisprudence for India : including the outline of a history of crime against the person in India / by Norman Chevers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    and eyes), into which is poured whatsoever is given them to drink. They pretend to be indifferent whether it be ardent spirits, or milk, or foul water. Their food is the first tiling that offers, whether it be a putrid corpse, cooked food, or ordure. With matted hair, blood-red eyes, and body covered with filth and vermin, the Aghorpunt is an object of terror and disgust to everybody. He looks rather a wolf, ready to destroy and then devour his prey, than a human being. I once saw a wretch of this fraternity eating the head of a putrid corpse ; and, as I passed by, he howled and pointed to me, and then scooped out the eyes and ate them before me ! Colonel Tod met with a tribe of these Aghori near Mount Aboo. They not only existed on the sacred hill, but amidst the impenetrable recesses of the other mounts dedicated to the Jain faith in the Saura Peninsula. One of the Deora Chiefs told Colonel Tod that, when con- veying the body of his brother to the pile, one of these monsters, crossing the path of the funeral processions, begged to have the corpse, saying it would make excellent chatni.* These wretches, although not very numerous, are spread over the whole country. Mr. McCosh mentions that, during his residence at Goalpara, two men of this caste were caught gnawing the flesh from a human bone, and were taken up by the police. They were sent to him by the Magis- trate for his opinion as to their sanity. One of them was not exactly compos mentis, but the other was of sound miud, and told Mr. McCosh that he had been in the habit of eating human flesh for many years. This author accounts for the abominable practices of these cannibals in a very clear manner,—viz., that their object in walking about the bazars picking a putrid thigh-bone, is to extort money from the inhabitants, who preferred paying them a few pice to get rid of the anuoyance ; and it was formerly even considered justifiable to shoot them like wild beasts when- ever they were found.f Mention has already been made of wild crimes committed by reli- gious mendicants and impostors.^ To these may be added an instance in which one Lall Doss Byragee, having lived in the Mountain Koilee Doogree, near Bhudruk, for about a mouth, with two other Byra^ees, reported that the goddess Kallee had eaten his two companions. A search was made; the two bodies were found on the mountain with large stones heaped on them ; two clubs were in the hut, and a blood- stained axe was afterwards found near the spot. The prisoner confessed * Travels in Western India. t Topography of Assam, p. 87. % See cases in which a Byragee killed a child by striking it on the head with a club, p. 796 ; one in which a fanatic twice cut off the right hands of unoffending persons, p. 482 ; and another in which a Brahmin slaughtered his pregnant wife to bring her blood upon one who had offended him, p. 388 (Note).