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

Folklore, April, 2001 by Michelle Maskiell, Adrienne Mayor

As a "second skin" that can protect the wearer, cloth can also literally endanger the body by flammability, poisons absorbed by the skin, and disease transmission. Poison Dress beliefs in India often specify cholera, malaria or smallpox. Cholera is water-borne and malaria insect-borne, but air- and dust-borne smallpox virus can infect cloth for years. Long before the germ theory of disease, experience taught that illness could be contagious, and that textiles and sealed containers could harbour disease. In India, the British folklorist William Crooke reported that children were "inoculated" by wrapping them in shrouds of smallpox victims (Crooke 1926, 1:117-44; Mayor 1995, 73 note. 7-8; see also Mitra 1917, 13-21; Wujastyk 1989, 131-67).

Symbolic harm could also be transmitted through clothing; it could destroy the wearer's status, power or fortune. These physical and symbolic fears interacted dramatically when legends coalesced around historical events, creating scenarios in which an enemy used clothing as a secret weapon. Clothing from a suspect source, especially a khilat that cannot be refused, evoked anxiety not only about the givers' motives but also the cloth's purity. Poison khilat legends share features with the following Poison Dress types.

* Naaman's Khilats. This Old Testament story is not only the earliest direct written reference to a khilat, but it is the earliest known poison khilat narrative. Set in Israel of the ninth century Be, the tale describes khilats that carry both political and physical danger. The Syrian commander, Naaman, visited the King of Israel's prophet/wonder-worker, Elisha (who had assumed the magic mantle of his teacher, Elijah). After Elisha cured Naaman's leprosy, Naaman tried to persuade him to accept ten fine robes. Elisha refused the khilats, but his servant, Gehazi, secretly accepted two of the robes and was infected by Naaman's leprosy. Shortly thereafter, having persuaded a citizen of Israel to accept a khilat, Syria acted to make the hierarchical relationship a reality by invading Israel (2 Kings:5-6; Buckler 1922, 197; 1928, 240-3).

* Death of Heracles. The Greek myth of the death of Heracles in a poisoned tunic is the classic Poison Dress tale. Deianeira daubed a ceremonial cloak with what she thought was a love charm (given to her by the centaur, Nessus) and sent it to her unfaithful husband, Heracles. When he donned the robe, he suddenly began to perspire and the garment burst into flame. The poison corroded his flesh, ate into his bones, and boiled his blood. He tried to rip away the cloth but it adhered to his skin as it burned. He sought relief by plunging into a stream, but the flames only burned more fiercely. He threw himself on to a pyre and was immolated. The scalding stream where Heracles sought relief was famed in antiquity, and the hot spring is still associated with healing today (Rose 1959, 209-29; Mayor 1997; the "Nessus shirt" tale was first recorded by Sophocles, The Trachinian Women, 440-20 BC).