There is another lower sect of gentiles called betua. Their business is to make salt, to plough and sow rice, and they do not live by anything else: they have houses in the country apart from the roads where respectable people pass. These people have a form of idolatry of their own: they also are slaves of the king and of the nayrs. They live very miserably: the nayrs make them keep far aloof from them, and speak to them from a great distance: they have no intercourse with other people. They are married and their children inherit.
There is another sect even lower of these people, called paneu,[237] who are great practisers of witchcraft, and they do not gain their living by anything else than charms. They visibly speak with devils who put themselves within them, and make them do awful things. When any king falls ill of fevers or any other illness, he immediately sends to call these men and women; of whom the most accomplished charmers come with their wives and children. Twenty-two families establish their dwellings at the gate of the palace of the king, or house of the person who is suffering, and has sent to call them: and there they set up a tent of coloured cloth in which they all place themselves. And there they paint their bodies with colours, and make crowns of painted paper and cloth, and other inventions of many sorts, with plenty of flowers and herbs, and great bonfires, and lighted lamps, and kettle-drums, trumpets, horns, and lutes, which they sound; and in this manner they come out of the tent two and two, with their swords in their hands, shouting and jumping, and running about the place or the court of the palace, and they jump upon one another's backs, and go on this way for some time, sticking one another with knives, and pushing one another naked and barefooted into the fire, until they are tired; and so they come out both men and boys two and two together to do the same thing again: and the women shout and sing with a great noise. And they go on this way for two or three days, night and day, always performing together, and they make rings of earth, and lines of red ochre and white clay, and spread upon them rice and flowers of various colours, and put lights all round, and go on this way until the devil, for whose service they do all this, enters into one of them, and makes him say what the king is suffering from, and what must be done to cure him. And then they tell it to the king, and he remains satisfied and gives them many presents, and does what they tell him, either as to making offerings to their idols, or any other matter which they enjoin him to do. And so he gets well by the work of the devil, to whom they all belong. These also live separated from intercourse with the nayrs and respectable people, and do not touch any other sect. They are great hunters and archers: they kill many boars and stags upon which they maintain themselves. They are married and their children inherit.