Killer Khilats, Part 1: Legends of Poisoned "Robes of Honour" in India

Folklore, April, 2001 by Michelle Maskiell, Adrienne Mayor

Abstract

This article presents seven historical legends of death by Poison Dress that arose in early modern India. The tales revolve around fears of symbolic harm and real contamination aroused by the ancient Iranian-influenced customs of presenting robes of honour (khilats) to friends and enemies. From 1600 to the early twentieth century, Rajputs, Mughals, British, and other groups in India participated in the development of tales of deadly clothing. Many of the motifs and themes are analogous to Poison Dress legends found in the Bible, Greek myth and Arthurian legend, and to modern versions, but all seven tales display distinctively Indian characteristics. The historical settings reveal the cultural assumptions of the various groups who performed poison khilat legends in India and display the ambiguities embedded in the khilat system for all who performed these tales.

Introduction

We have gathered seven "Poison Dress" legends set in early modern India, which feature a poison khilat (Arabic, "robe of honour"). These "Killer Khilat" tales share plots, themes and motifs with the "Poison Dress" family of folklore, in which victims are killed by contaminated clothing. Because historical legends often crystallise around actual people and events, and reflect contemporary anxieties and the moral dilemmas of the tellers and their audiences, these stories have much to tell historians as well as folklorists. The poison khilat tales are intriguing examples of how recurrent narrative patterns emerge under cultural pressure to reveal fault lines within a given society's accepted values and social practices.

The basic structure of a recurrent legend such as the Poison Dress tale "provides a `body' to be `clothed' in performance," in the words of contemporary legend scholar, Paul Smith. "Each localised legend is `dressed' in a way that provides an opportunity to discuss a relevant issue at some particular time and place, and similar plot structures may later appear `reclothed' to express similar issues by another group elsewhere" (Smith 1995, 99). One hallmark of such legends is that the familiar becomes threatening: an ordinary scenario (here, a gift of special clothing) produces extraordinary results (the garment causes the death of the wearer). Realistic details, local place names, dates, and historical personages are common devices that enhance the plausibility of legend narratives.

The deadly clothing tales that arose in India have striking parallels to classical Greek, ancient Hebrew, and modern European and American Poison Dress lore. These Indic versions caught the attention of early European travellers and later British imperialists, who recognised similarities to familiar Western folklore and who, coincidentally, harboured their own anxieties about costume, status and contagion in India. Keeping in mind that English-educated writers recorded all the legends examined here, we ask what these texts can tell us about the meaning of Poison Dress tales in India. In "Killer Khilats, Part 2: Imperial Collecting of Poison Dress Legends in India," we will suggest how the context and cultural assumptions of their British and Indian English-language collectors affect the reading of these narratives.

Legends circulate as long as they address significant concerns in a given society. No poison clothing tales are listed in Stith Thompson and Warren Roberts, Types of Indic Oral Tales (1960) or Heda Jason's 1989 supplement, nor do any poison garments appear in post-1930s compilations of newly collected Indian folklore, such as Brenda Beck's Folktales of India (Beck et al. 1987). But The Oral Tales of India by Stith Thompson and Jonas Balys (1958) listed several motifs related to deadly garments from old Indian lore collected in the nineteenth century. For example, S111.6, "Murder by Poison Robe," comes from our Tale 1 and Motif D1402.0.1.2, "Holy Man's Cloak Burns Person Up," is our Tale 6. How can we explain what made Poison Dress stories so resonant during the Mughal Empire (1526-1858) and the British presence in India (1600-1947)?

To answer these questions, we first need to understand why the medium of poisoning--a robe of honour or khilat--was so salient for Indians and Europeans. We begin with a brief summary of the standard Poison Dress scripts, themes, and motifs. Then, the seven tales themselves appear, and we establish the historical background of each narrative before analysing its meaning. In interpreting these narratives, of course, it is essential to avoid forcing English translations of South Asian lore into European folk genres (Islam 1982; Korom 1993, 235-6). In this article, we show how overlapping cross-cultural factors influenced the idea of a poisoned khilat among Indian peoples during the Mughal Empire, and draw several conclusions from our contextual-comparative approach. In "Killer Khilats, Part 2," we will show how these factors resonated among contemporary and later British observers.

The Complex Meanings of Gifts of Special Clothing