Superstition, like history, repeats itself,—some of the marvels with which the
Lama conjurors and the Tartar Bakhshis deluded their people are repeated by the
spiritualistic “mediums,” of the present day and put forward by them as the
credentials of their pretended mission.
They fall short, however, of the extraordinary feats performed by the
professional jugglers who laid no claim to a religious character, if we may credit
the accounts of the early travellers. Ibn Batuta, for instance, gravely describes
what he saw, or thought he saw, at a great entertainment given by the Viceroy of
Khansa:—
A juggler, he says, one of the Kaan’s slaves, made his appearance, and at the
Amir’s bidding, began to display his surprising accomplishments. Taking a
wooden ball, with several holes in it, through which long thongs were passed, he
laid hold of one of these, and slung the ball into the air. It went so high, that the
spectators wholly lost sight of it. Observe, that the scene was the palace-court,
sub Jove. There remained only a little of the end of the thong in the juggler’s
hand, and of this he desired a juvenile assistant to lay hold, and mount. He did
so, climbing by the thong, and was speedily lost to sight also. The conjuror
called him thrice, but receiving no answer, snatched up a knife, as if in a great
rage, laid hold of the thong, and in his turn disappeared. By-and-by he threw
down one of the boy’s hands, then a foot, then the other hand, the other foot, the
trunk, and lastly, the head! Finally, he himself came down, all puffing and
panting, and with blood-besmeared clothes kissed the ground before the Amir,
addressing him in Chinese. The Amir made some reply; and straightway the
juggler took the boy’s disjecta membra, laid them in their places, gave a kick,
and lo and behold, the boy arose and stood erect, “clothed and in his right mind.”
“All this,” says Ibn Batuta, “astonished me beyond measure,”—and no wonder!
—“and I had an attack of palpitation like that which overcame me once before in
the presence of the Sultan of India, when he showed me something of the same
kind. They gave me a cordial, however, which cured the attack. The Kazi
Afkharuddin was next to me, and quoth he, ‘Wallah! ’tis my opinion there has
been neither going up nor coming down, neither maiming nor mending; ’tis all
hocus pocus!’”
Impartial scientific observers have passed a similar verdict on the proceedings of
the “mediums,” who, however, have never achieved anything so surprising as
the feat here recorded. Before we incredulously reject the Arab traveller’s
narrative, let us compare it with an account furnished by Edward Melton, an
Anglo-Dutch traveller, of the performances of some Chinese conjurors, which he