Indian Magic Book
Indian Magic Book
Indian Magic Book
New Series 9
(1/2019): 7–25 [article]
DOI: 10.4467/24506249PJ.19.001.11133
Artur Karp
Abstract
In present-day India magic is not a theoretical construct. Practiced
as witchcraft, it has its self-appointed officials and procedures. It is also
manifest, most tellingly, in the easy availability of the cheap editions of
what may, with some reservations, be termed as manuals of magic. The
activation of religiosity characteristic of Indian tribal communities, to
which most of the currently favorite magical rituals can be traced, is a
not-so unique answer to the violence inherent in the social, economic,
and political life of the nation. The methods of con- trolling complex
reality presented in those manuals revive traditional cultural patterns,
and may thus restore feelings of participation and justified agency to
their users.
1
See L. Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus, pp. 52–53, 134–135; concisely A. Karp, Niedotykalni,
pp. 283–285.
2
On the problems caused by the Government’s acquisition of land for development projects
(such as – among the already completed – Sagar Sarowar Dam, Indra Sagar Dam, Koraba
Coal Mines) see H. L. Harit, Tribal Areas and Administration, pp. 49–54; S. Mehta, Tribal
Situation in India. Encounters with Empiricism, pp. 55–66.
3
Indian tribal/aboriginal groups are collectively named adivāsi – “original inhab-
itants”; they make up 8.6% of India’s population, that is, as of 2019 (UN est.),
over 117 million people, see: http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/india-
population. For the list of the constitutionally recognized tribes see: https://
www.wikiwand.com/en/List_of_Scheduled_Tribes_in_India.
2 The term homogenising transition carries in itself the idea of original dif-
ferentiation. When introduced, it brings to the fore the question of what in
the sphere of Indian culture is central and what peripheral. A preliminary
inquiry into the available material seems to indicate the need to break free
from the continuing practices of reducing the role of magical thought, and
the images of the world it generates in the process of creating an ideal model
of Indian culture, in its historically variable but invariably socially privileged
forms.
Indian anthropology defines transition in two ways; both favour preserv-
ing the so far standard presentation of tradition as divided into two unbal-
anced segments – the sphere of “high,” described and promoted in thousands
of publications, and “low” culture.
In his 1971 Primitive Religions in India, Henry H. Presler has introduced
the term “primitive type of religiosity.”4 While presenting the main features
(such as ecstatic rituals, soothsaying, exorcism) of a diverse cultural complex,
including belief systems of tribal communities and low-caste groups, known
in the modern Indian bureaucratic terminology as scheduled tribes and sched-
uled castes, he considered them not fully developed.
A similar function is fulfilled by the concept of “culture survivals/relics”5
developed within western anthropology. It allows for the terminological sep-
aration of certain worrisome, indefinable elements, strongly rejected, and yet
continually penetrating the sphere of “high” culture, with its grand religious
ideas and sublime tools for their expression.
The concept of “great” and “little” tradition has been taken over by Indian
social scientists from Robert Redfield’s 1966 book.6 Following him, the forms
of Indian culture referring to the elite, Sanskritic pattern, were given the title
of Great Tradition, and were ultimately popularised by Milton Singer, in his
immensely influential 1972 book When a Great Tradition Modernizes.
4
H. H. Presler, Primitive Religions of India, pp. 170–174, 218–239, 256–272; Presler is also the
author of the – often quoted – thesis on the actualisation of contents carried by this type of
religiosity in the face of modernisation processes. See also: W. Crooke, Religion and Folklore
of Northern India; L. S. S. O’Malley, Popular Hinduism; G. W. Briggs, The Chamārs; N. N.
Bhattacharya, Ancient Indian Rituals and their Social Contexts.
5
See E. Sapir, American Indians, pp. 409–410.
6
See R. Redfield, Peasant Society and Culture, p. 70: “In a civilization there is a great tradition
of the reflective few, and there is a little tradition of the largely unreflective many.”
7
See T. K. N. Unnithan et al., Towards a Sociology of Culture in India – where an early attempt
at presenting the topic; a broad analysis of the political-religious themes present in the
endeavours aiming at the modernisation of the Indian “Great Tradition” in M. Singer, When
a Great Tradition Modernizes: An Anthropological Approach to Indian Civilization. See also
Y. Singh, Modernization of Indian Tradition. A Systematic Study of Social Change.
8
On the process see D. Lorenzen, Who Invented Hinduism.
9
Such as (selected to represent hundreds of publications): S. Kakar, Shamans, Mystics and
Doctors. A Psychological Inquiry into India and its Healing Traditions; V. Sujatha, Food: The
Immanent Cause from Outside – Medical Lore on Food and Health in Village Tamilnadu;
P. Froerer, Health, Biomedicine and the RSS; R. Barrett, Aghor Medicine, Pollution, Death, and
Healing in in Northern India; T. Chakravarty, Medicalisation of Mental Disorder: Shifting Epi-
stemologies and Beyond.
10
During the decades after independence, seven tribe-inhabited territories became states
within the Republic of India. These included Nagaland (1963), Manipur (1972), Meghalaya
(1972), Arunachal Pradesh (1987), Mizoram (1987), and, finally, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand,
both formed in 2000. However, these state-forming initiatives have not resulted in the ap-
pearance of new political-national entities, with their independent forms of “modernised
traditions”. On the process, see J. W. Elder, Scheduled Tribes, [in:] Encyclopedia of India,
[www 01] (access: 04.06.2019).
11
See D. Mosse, Caste and development. Contemporary perspectives on a structure of discrimin-
ation and advantage.
12
AV VIII.8.8:
ayaṃ loko jālamāsīcchakrasya mahato mahān |
tenāhamindrajālenāmūṃstamasābhidadhāmi sarvān ||
William Dwight Whitney (1827-1894):
“This great world was the net of the great mighty one; by that net of Indra do I encircle
all yon men with darkness.”
13
See P. Olivelle, Dharmasūtras. The Law Codes of Āpastamba, Gautama, Baudhāyana, and
Vāsiṣṭha; in a newer exposition: Idem, King, Governance, and Law in Ancient India. Kautilya’s
Arthaśāstra.
17
For overviews of the story, see W. Doniger O’Flaherty, Women, Androgynes, and Other Myth-
ical Beasts; S. Kakar, op. cit.
ing not from one, but two adjectives (s. pūta) possessing radically different
meanings – as “pure” and “putrid.” In one tradition, her name would mean
“purity,” in the other, more influential one – “putridity.”
Both social categories – the untouchables and members of tribal com-
munities living on the outskirts of caste societies18 – could (and still can,
depending on the need) perform the role of aliens.
7 In India, the transfer of knowledge has always been subject to many re-
strictions. In any field, only those who had managed to pass through a series
of initiation rites were given complete knowledge, and only they could pass
it on. The dissemination of literacy and low-cost printing have introduced a
significant correction to the traditional forms of conveying secret knowledge:
the function of the initiator began to be fulfilled by books.
Magic manuals already appeared on the Indian book market at the end of
the 19th century. However, only in the last half-century, new printing tech-
niques (offset printing and digital composition) made it possible to publish
them in cheap, large editions. At present, they are also sold by mail order and
as e-books, by publishing houses specialising in the distribution of tabloid
literature, guides for homemakers, agricultural calendars and self-tutorials.
Their covers tempt prospective buyers with bright colours, images of grey-
bearded sages, half-naked women, human skulls, and horned monsters, bar-
ing their fangs in wicked grins.19
8 The manuals are usually standard in their construction. The title page
of The True Anciently Handwritten Net of Indra20 prompts the buyer to start
reading it in the ritual manner prescribed for the initiation, that is – in the
morning, before sunrise, while seated after bathing (to cleanse the body and
spirit) on the sacred kuśa grass.21
18
Formerly termed as “scheduled castes and tribes.” Since the 1970s collectively known by their
own appellation as Dalits (h. dalit – “broken, oppressed”). On the reasons for and forms of
the criminalisation of this segment of India’s population (over 160 million), see H. Thiagaraj,
Human Rights from the Dalit Perspective; S. Yengde, Free the Freedom: Where Untouchability
is Locked Away in Prisons, “The Citizen is Helpful” (2017), [www 05] (access: 6.09.2019).
19
Solely publications in Hindi were used for the purposes of this paper; similar to them are
mass-printed also in the other languages of the subcontinent, such as Bengali or Tamil.
20
Aslī prācīnhastalikhit purāṇā indrajāl, Dehāti Pustak Bhaṇḍar (“The People’s Library”), Delhi,
without date.
21
Desmostachya bipinnata, a species of grass, used in various Indian religious traditions as a
sacred plant; of extreme importance in the Vedic ritual.
9 The “theoretical” first part refers directly to Sanskrit tantric texts, such as
the previously mentioned Compendium of the Knowledge of the Net of Indra.
Following the textual tradition, also The Oil lamp23 included in this collection
divides magical actions into six general types:24
22
P. 17: h. “mr̥tak ātmāõ” ko vaś mẽ karke baṛebaṛe kām nikālte the.
23
Pp. 180–264.
24
A detailed description of the Six Acts: T. Goudriaan, S. Gupta, Māyā Divine and Human,
pp. 251–412.
their ideas about reality. In addition to the acting subject and the object of the
action, there appears another operating entity – a hidden rival with opposing
intentions and plans.
Whoever conducts a magical game must always consider that he is not its
only participant. Each action is only a contraction, a response to a situation
created by someone else. In the world of these textbooks, nothing happens
without reason, and there is no room for coincidence. The fate of people is
determined not only by the law of retribution for acts committed in previous
lives (s. karman) but also by the impact of powers set in motion by powerful
enemies or allies, including their ancestors.
11 Those six pairs of magical actions respond adequately to the set of basic
techniques used in the north-Indian “white,” beneficent (h. jhāṛ phū͂knā –
“sweeping over, blowing on”) and “black,” destructive magic (h. ṭoṇā uṛāna –
“casting (evil) spells”).
The use of a positive or negative member of any pair depends on the
specific situation. In the social sphere, an expulsion is a hostile act (regardless
of its reasons), but it is a beneficial healing act if it aims to remove the harmful
substance from the human or animal body. In both cases, analogous symbolic
acts are recommended, namely – placing the removed element (in the first
case it is a card with the name of the enemy inscribed in the corresponding
diagram, in the second, the object extracted from a sick body) in a closed
vessel and setting it afloat on the river. The same applies to the immobilizing
(paralyzing) of an opponent and the arrest of premature foetal movement.
Regardless of the motivation of the acting person, texts attribute to par-
ticular actions the codes of colour, time of day, the season of the year, quarter,
guardian deity, the animal, and place. Also, though not always – of the lunar
days (s. tithi), smell, gesture, body position, flower, the skin of the animal on
the seat.
pacification is accompanied by whiteness, dawn, winter, northeast
domination – by redness, morning, spring, north
immobilization – by yellowness, evening, cool season, east
separation – by scarlet, noon, hot season, south
exclusion – by grayness, afternoon, rainy season, northwest
destruction – by blackness, north, autumn, southeast
Classifications of this kind are not unusual for Indian literature. By com-
bining a series of actions with appropriate codes, the list introduces the re-
cipient into a complex sign system that allows one to read and adequately
react to the hidden messages appearing in the surrounding reality. It also
helps one to avoid situations in which, while being confident of acting on
one’s own, one might implement someone else’s, alien strategies.25
13 Since magical practices often collide with the law and conventionally
understood norms of social coexistence, the state is involved in combating
them – using the police apparatus of repression29 and all modern media
(press, radio, cinema, TV). The educational institutions and Neo-Hindu mis-
sionary sects have a similar agenda. They are supported by far-right groups
propagating the “pure” pattern of the brahminic “Great Tradition” – such as
the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
(RSS).30
32
The postulate to account in the research on the Indian tribal/rural witchcraft for its role as
a social practice – expressed by S. Alam., A. Raj in their 2017 concise methodological study
(The Academic Journey of Witchcraft Studies in India, p. 137).
33
The most important among them are exorcist (h. jhāṛ–phū̃k karne vālā) and soothsayer
(h. cuṛail).
spaces, the distance between the doctor and the patient, foreign terminology).
Many patients turn to the least apparent alternative – to magical medicine.
The treatment of a whole range of chronic diseases is increasingly entrus-
ted to quacks and exorcists. The healing procedures used by them (rituals of
reversing the disease or tying it up) can be effective only on the condition
that both the patient and the physician participate in the same universe of
symbols, signs and cultural references.34
This magical alternative is not limited only to health crises. Some of the
procedures take the form of the group experience, such as in all-night vi-
gils (h. jāgraṇ, devī jāgraṇ), filled with collective singing, during which the
goddess descends into the bodies of some of the participants of the rite, caus-
ing their temporary possession. It is a state in which it becomes possible for
them to express the complaint on one’s fate, to protest against the situation
of handicap, social and familial.35
Hinduism (among them the goddess Kali), may outwardly resemble Vedic
incantations.36
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