CHAPTER XIII.

POISON ORDEALS.

The poison ordeal, which forms the basis of judicial proceedings among so many of the African tribes, seems not to have been brought into Europe by the Aryan invaders, although it was in use among their kindred who remained in the East. Possibly this may have arisen from the fact that in their migrations they could no longer obtain the substances which they had been accustomed to use, and before they had familiarized themselves with the resources of their new homes the custom may have fallen into desuetude amid the abundance of other methods. A lingering remnant of it may perhaps be detected in the trial of the priestess of the Gæum in Achaia, already alluded to, but substantially the poison ordeal may be regarded as obsolete in the West.

In the East, however, it has continued in use. The poison prescribed is that known as _sringa_, produced by a tree which grows in the Himalayas, and the judge invokes it—

“On account of thy venomous and dangerous nature thou art destruction to all living creatures; thou, O poison, knowest what mortals do not comprehend.

“This man being arraigned in a cause desires to be cleared from guilt. Therefore mayest thou deliver him lawfully from this perplexity.”

Seven grains of the substance, mixed with clarified butter, are then administered; if no evil symptoms follow during the day, at evening the accused is dismissed as innocent.[1185] A more recent authority describes a somewhat different form. A specified quantity of some deadly article, varying in amount with its activity, is mixed with thirty times its weight of _ghee_, or clarified butter. The patient takes this, standing with his face to the north, and if it produces no effect upon him while the bystanders can clap their hands five hundred times, he is pronounced innocent and antidotes are at once administered to him.[1186] A slight variation of this is recorded by a writer of the last century. After appropriate religious ceremonies, seven barleycorns of the deadly root _vishanaga_, or of arsenic, are mingled with thirty-two times its bulk of _ghee_, and eaten by the accused from the hand of a Brahman. If it produces no effect, he is acquitted.[1187] Much more humane was the custom described by Hiouen Thsang in the seventh century, when the experiment was performed vicariously on a bullock, even as a hen is used among the Niam-Niam of equatorial Africa. The animal was fed with poisoned food, and poison was likewise inserted in a wound made for the purpose in the right leg, while the fate of the accused was determined by the death or survival of the unlucky beast.[1188]

Still another form in modern times seems to have been invented as a combination of the hot-water and poison ordeals. A _naga_ or cobra is dropped into a deep earthen pot along with a coin or ring, which the person on trial must remove with his hand. If he is bitten, he is condemned; if he escapes scathless, he is acquitted.[1189]