Read Ebook: Indian Conjuring by Branson L H Lionel Hugh

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 199 lines and 15251 words, and 4 pages

Wonderful isn't it? Marvellous! Mahatmaism!

Now let us have the explanation.

The cocoa-nut shell is full of water. It has only one outlet, the small hole in its side. This is so small that the air cannot get in to let the water out. The only way the air can get in is up the hollowed mast, the bottom of which is immersed in the water in the boat. There is a small hole in the bottom of the boat through which the water in it leaks away. This lowers the water until it has cleared from the bottom of the mast through which a puff of air goes up into the shell, allowing some of the water in the shell to pour out into the water in the boat. Now the water from the shell pours out in greater volume into the boat than the water that is leaking out of the boat. This fills it up again until the bottom of the mast is again immersed, stopping any air going up into the shell and the water stops pouring out of it.

The performer drones away on his musical instrument until he sees that the water level in the boat is just about to clear the bottom of the mast. He then orders the water to come out of the shell. He watches until the newly added water to that in the boat is about to cover the bottom of the mast again, and then gives that wonderful and much used order "Bus" that, possibly, many of my readers may use from time to time after the sun has set. The water stops pouring out of the mast.

Wonderful isn't it? Mahatma. Ghandi ki Jai!

THE BOWL OF RICE

A surprising little trick was once shewn to me by a performer whose exhibition of magic was otherwise of a very low class.

He borrowed a "lota" or brass water bowl of one of the servants. These lotas are invariably so shaped that the circumference of the top is about half that of the widest part, thus:--

He then borrowed some uncooked rice with which he proceeded to fill the bowl to its utmost capacity. While doing so he kept on bumping the bowl on the ground so that the rice was packed as closely as possible inside it, until finally one could see the last few grains in a pyramid on top.

He then borrowed a large table knife, and as it were, stabbed it into the rice down into the bowl. Little stabs at first, and then deeper and deeper until the whole of the blade of the knife was in the rice, and the handle alone remained to be seen. After an incantation and jadoo-music, he caught hold of the handle and raised the bowl and the rice slowly into space. He then swung it to and fro and eventually spun round and round, holding the handle of the knife while the bowl and its contents of rice clung tenaciously to the blade. Beginning to slow down, he at last replaced the bowl on the ground, extracted the knife and handed it to me for examination. He emptied the bowl pouring the rice into some paper laid out to receive it. The closest scrutiny revealed no trace of "gadgets" or of any artifice that had enabled him to thus lift the filled bowl.

A small bribe could not tempt him to reveal the secret, and in such cases I make it a rule to try the trick exactly as I have seen it done.

I took a similar bowl, filled it with rice, and stabbed it with a table knife. Gently at first and then more firmly. To my astonishment I found that after three or four stabs in exactly the same place, the rice below the blade seemed to get harder, until I pressed down the knife and found that I could not extract it with a straight pull! I lifted the bowl of rice, and could with impunity swing it round over my head just as one uses an Indian club. To extract the knife one has to twist the handle slightly, when it comes out immediately. Try it and see.

Occasionally our conjuring friend breaks out from the stereotyped programme already described, and one of the most common additions to his programme is the "coloured sand" trick.

He has a bowl of water on the ground, and from a number of small packets of paper he takes a corresponding number of different coloured powders. Let us say "Green, Red, White, Orange and Blue." He pours all these into the bowl of water, which assumes a dirty blue colour when stirred up well.

Finally, from a box containing common sand he puts two or three handsfull into the basin of water and thoroughly mixes up the contents of the bowl.

He then asks his audience which coloured sand they would like extracted from the water. The reply may be "green." "Wet or dry?" asks the conjuror. Let us ask for "dry." He dips his hand into the water and grasping, apparently, a handful of the mixture, draws it out again, and squeezes out a shower of dry green sand, unmixed with any other colour! "Now what colour will you have?" asks the magician. Let us ask for "wet blue sand." He dips his empty hand into the water, and draws out a handful of wet blue sand, for, when he opens his hand, a damp ball of blue sand falls on to the ground. He can deal with the other coloured sands in the same way, bringing out each colour separately, and wet or dry as desired.

How on earth is it done?

The different coloured sands or powders are put into the water in a fair and square manner. But the solution of the trick is to be found in the way in which he puts the common sand into the water. This common sand is kept in a box, and in it are little balls of prepared powders or sand of colours corresponding to those already put into the water. These balls are prepared by being mixed with a little water, rolled into a ball, which is smeared all over with grease, and then baked until dry. Each ball can then be immersed in water for a minute or so without crumbling or being damaged by the water. These balls are put into the common sand box, so that they are only just visible to the performer. He puts his hand into the box and extracts a handful of common sand, together with a ball of powder. He thrusts his hand into the bowl leaving the ball immersed, and notes its position. He again takes a handful of common sand and with it another ball which he places in the water. Similarly he places all the coloured balls into the water, under the guise of adding plenty of common sand, to make the trick more difficult and wonderful. He notes very carefully the position of each coloured ball as he puts it into the water, as when immersed they cannot be seen either by him or the audience, owing to the dirty blue-ishness of the whole mixture.

The audience now select the colour of the powder to be extracted. The performer remembers the position of the required ball and takes it out.

If it is to be poured out wet, he opens his hand and drops it on to the ground. If it is wanted "Dry," by squeezing the ball, its baked shell is cracked and its contents pour out.

There is no difficulty in performing the trick. It is very effective and one that is included in the programme of many European conjurors, though their modus operandi is more efficient and needs less preparation.

A ROPE TRICK

The only rope trick I have ever seen performed by an Indian conjuror, is that of "The cut string restored," as it is called in England.

The idea is to get one of the audience to cut a piece of string or rope ostensibly in half and by magic to restore it, without the use of knots.

The explanation of this trick is given in many books for beginners in Magic. The author of "Modern Magic"--the best work to my mind on Elementary conjuring--says of it "This trick is of such venerable antiquity, that we should not have ventured to allude to it, were it not that the mode of working, which we are about to describe, though old in principle is new in detail and much superior in neatness to the generally known methods."

After offering the rope for thorough examination Shah Mahommed took the two ends and manipulated the rope in such a manner that when it was held out to be cut it was in this wise:--

Held at A by the left hand and at B by the right. It was cut at x and consequently was in two pieces not of equal length, but of which one was practically the whole length of the rope while the other was the piece AX, or possibly some six inches long. While gathering up the rope to be magically restored, the old scoundrel simply got rid of this small piece and showed the longer one as the restored rope.

To go into details and to give the "drill" as to how to get the string or rope into the required position would be tedious and difficult to understand. The illustration, I trust, explains sufficiently clearly the secret of the trick, and if one tries to get it into this position it will be found quite easy to do, "chacun ? son gout."

Shah Mahommed made quite a feature of the trick, using two assistants for it, one to hold the rope occasionally and the other to cut it.

The first time I remember seeing it was when Uncle George showed it to me on my fourth birthday, many long weary years ago.

The string being held for the audience to cut at x.

THE SWASTIKA

I remember on one occasion some 20 years ago, being very puzzled by a trick that is often performed in Bengal.

The magician gets from one of the servants a broken "chatti" or earthenware bowl. He selects a piece about two inches square and asks one of his audience to draw upon it with a piece of charcoal, borrowed from the "Khansamah" or cook, the sign of the Swastika, with which most people are familiar.

The draftsman is then requested to place the piece of earthenware or tile on the ground and after gazing intently at the Swastika to crush it to powder with the heel of his boot. These instructions are accordingly carried out. The man of magic now asks his assistant to look at the palm of his hand and see that there is no mark upon it. There is no mark. The hand is then held out palm upwards over the powdered tile and the assistant is told to gaze at it intently. After a few seconds the performer turns the assistant's hand over so that it is now palm downwards. A little music on the "bean," a magic pass, a mystic word, and the assistant is requested to look at the palm of his hand, when to his astonishment, there is a distinct mark of the Swastika upon it! Truly a miracle!

The trick is a most effective one, and when well performed, with intervals for gazing at the dust, the clean palm, mystic words and so forth, it would baffle most audiences. Yet it is simplicity itself, and this is the secret.

When the Swastika is drawn on the piece of tile, the performer in placing it on the ground to be trodden upon, puts his thumb on the drawing, and thereby gets an inverse print of it on the ball of his thumb. The tile is powdered and the hand held palm upwards over it. When turning the assistant's hand palm downwards, the conjuror does so with his fingers at the back of the assistant's hand and the thumb on the clean palm, leaving the imprint of the Swastika upon it. A rub with his thumb on his garment, or the ground, removes instantly all trace of the medium between the tile and the assistant's palm. Charcoal must be used as it is soft to write with and gives the best imprints. An "HH" pencil for instance, might do, but the imprint would be hardly visible on the palm.

I consider this little trick to be one of the most mystifying of the Indian conjuror.

THE EGG BAG

An effective little trick usually follows that of the Cut and Restored String in the form of an egg being put into a small bag. A magic pass is made over the mouth of the bag, which is then turned inside out, stamped upon if necessary, and slapped all over to show that it is quite empty and that the egg has disappeared. At will, and with another magic pass, the egg reappears from the bag when it is turned over, mouth downwards.

The secret lies in the fact that the bag, which is of some opaque material, and is nine inches deep and six inches broad, has one of its sides double. The easiest way to make such a bag is to take a piece of cloth six inches broad and 24 inches long. Fold six inches of one end over and then turn the other end to where the cloth has been folded. Stitch up either side, thus making a bag.

When the egg is put in, it drops to the bottom of the bag. When the performer dips his hand in again to take out the egg, in doing so he slips it into the pocket formed inside, and leaves it there, bringing his hand out empty and from which the egg has disappeared. The bag being turned inside out does not expose the egg which is in the inner pocket. When treading on or slapping the bag, care should of course be taken to miss the egg.

THE DANCING DUCK

As his last trick was with water the Jadoo-wallah sensibly enough proceeds to show another with water, though an English conjuror would separate such tricks from an artistic point of view, thinking that a change of diet in magic is just as necessary as it is in a meal. The trick is that of the dancing duck.

A half cocoa-nut shell is dug out of the bag. It is wrapped up in a piece of cloth and very carefully unfolded, for reasons that will be apparent later. In this shell is a little wooden duck. The shell is placed on the ground and filled with water upon which the duck floats. The performer takes his "tom tom" and while playing it the duck begins to dance, as it were, upon the water. After an interval it is commanded to pay its obeisances or in other words, to "salaam," which it does by going right under water. On the word "bas" it comes up again. And so forth and so on.

It is a clever little trick and we will now see how it is done.

The cocoa-nut shell has a hole through the bottom of it. Through this hole passes a horse hair that is attached at one end to the duck and at the other to a piece of bees wax. The hair is about two feet long. The whole apparatus is wrapped in a piece of cloth as otherwise the horse hair would get unwound and broken. When placing it on the ground, the bees wax enables the performer to see where the end of the hair is when unwound. The shell is filled with water, some being carelessly spilt to prevent the leakage through the little hole at the bottom being too noticeable. When picking up his "tom-tom" the performer also picks up the bees wax, and attaching it to the "tom-tom" the arrangements are complete. Bringing the "tom-tom" closer to the body makes the duck dive under water. The ordinary shaking of the drum makes the duck dance.

This is not a trick that can be conveniently shewn by Europeans, because of the inconvenience of doing it on the ground. The leakage of the water is not so apparent on the earth, which hides the horse hair. But at a small distance the trick can be done on a table, as the horse hair is quite invisible at a range of five feet, especially when it is against a dark back ground. It can be easily made or bought for a few annas, and with good patter presents a neat little after dinner experiment.

"A conjuror came into the compound, and my father told him to clear out. The man, however, persisted in remaining, saying that he had something very wonderful to show us. My father eventually agreed to watch the performance. We all sat down on the verandah, which was of solid concrete, and the Jadoo-wallah took off his "dhoti" or loin cloth, and squatted in front of us. He produced a mango stone and put it under some loose earth, which he had gathered up from our own garden. He played on his flute, and as he did so the stone began to sprout until the little shrub was about two inches high. He then watered it a little and again began playing the most beautiful music to it. The little plant grew higher and higher as he did so, until it was quite two feet high with a number of leaves upon it. He then watered it a second time, and again played his flute until the tree was four feet high with fruit on it. He then stopped his music and cut one of the mangoes off the tree, which my father ate and found to be delicious."

That was Macpherson's story.

I have never seen the trick done this way, and do not know of anyone who has. But I have an explanation to give. In fact four explanations. These are:--

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet