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

Folklore, April, 2001 by Michelle Maskiell, Adrienne Mayor

* Glauke's Gown. In another Greek myth, the jealous Asian sorceress, Medea, poisoned a beautiful gown and sent it in a sealed casket to her rival, Glauke, who immediately tried it on. The gown burst into flames and melted the flesh from her bones. Glauke threw herself into a fountain, but the flames were unquenchable and she was incinerated by the clinging, burning dress. A statue of the goddess "Terror" was erected near Glauke's fountain to avert epidemic; the fountain became a major tourist site in antiquity and is still an archaeological attraction in Corinth (Rose 1959, 204; Mayor 1997; first recorded by Euripides, Medea, 431 BC)

* Arthur's Mantle. In medieval Arthurian legend, Arthur's arch-enemy, Morgan le Fay, sent him a mantle intended to burn him alive. But Arthur narrowly escaped the doom that Medea and Deianeira had brought upon Glauke and Heracles. Forewarned by the Lady of the Lake, Arthur ordered the maiden who brought him the cloak to put it on. She was immediately burnt to coals (Thompson 1928, 34-9, 89, 145 and 198-227).

* Smallpox Blankets. Historical legends with strong poison khilat overtones grew up around the smallpox-infected garments distributed to Native Americans by the Spanish, French, and English in the early colonial era. According to seventeenth-century Jesuit records, for example, a Canadian "tribe" was ravaged by smallpox transmitted by the French king's gift of a cap a pie ("head to toe" costume of royal finery, essentially a khilat). Fearing retaliation, the king refused the tribe's gift of a native costume. Another notorious incident occurred in 1763, when the English commander, Lord Jeffrey Amherst, ordered his men to give the leaders of the Delaware tribe blankets that he knew were infected with smallpox. Similar stories with different victims and perpetrators circulated in the Americas. The victims of these robes sought relief from burning fevers in rivers and sweat baths, but perished from virulent smallpox (Mayor 1995).

The British officials who came to India in the eighteenth century almost certainly knew of the use of smallpox blankets as secret weapons. Lord Amherst was lauded in England and his nephew was appointed governor-general in Bengal in 1823 (Peabody 1996, 209). Classical Greek and biblical education would have made the notion of poisoned robes familiar to the English, whose own hero, King Arthur, narrowly escaped murder by poison cloak. Numerous European court intrigues involving poisoned articles of clothing echoed the biblical, classical and Arthurian stories (Nass 1898; Crooke 1926, 1:195; Thompson 1928; Mayor 1995; the assassination of a lady-in-waiting by poison dress was depicted in the 1998 film Elizabeth). Allusions to Heracles, Glauke and Arthur permeated both popular and fine art and literature in England at the time when the poison khilat legends were collected by the British in India.

The Tales

In Tales 1-4, the goal is murder by means of a khilat that transmitted disease. The primary focus in Tale 6 is disease transference by means of a khilat, with death as a secondary effect; Tale 5 combines the two types. Tales 1-4 appear to be historical scenarios inspired by "disease riddance" folk beliefs as suggested in Tales 5, 6 and 7. The first four tales are set in the contemporary Indian states of Rajasthan (the geographical location of former "princely states" of Amber, Marwar, Mewar), Gujarat (Idar), Madhya Pradesh (Ganore, Bhopal), and Maharashtra. Tale 5 occurred in Awadh (Oudh), now in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Tales 6 and 7 are set respectively in Suket State, a minor Himalayan kingdom now in Himachal Pradesh, and in Nagaland, a small mountainous state in northeast India on the Myanmar (Burma) border. See Figure 1 for the location of all places mentioned in the text. Alternative versions of these seven tales are given in "Killer Khilats, Part 2."