The Indian rope trick is a famous piece of stage magic said to have been
performed in and around India in about the 1800s. Sometimes described as "the world’s greatest
illusion", it involved a magician, a length of rope, and one or more boy assistants.
The trick
There are different accounts of the Indian rope trick in circulation, but apart from minor changes in the settings and the
participants, the basic trick remained the same as described below.
- In the simplest version of the trick, the magician would hurl a rope into the air. The rope would not fall but stand erect.
His boy assistant would climb the rope and then descend.
- A more elaborate version of the trick would find the magician (or his assistant) disappearing after reaching top of the rope,
then reappearing at ground level.
- The "classic" version of the trick, however, was even more detailed: the rope would seem to rise high into the skies, even
disappearing from view. The boy assistant would climb the rope, and soon be lost to view. The magician would call back his boy
assistant, and on hearing no response, would become furious. The magician then armed himself with a knife or sword, and he would also climb the rope and disappear in the thin air. An
argument would be heard, and then human limbs would start falling on the ground, presumably cut from the assistant by the
magician. When all the parts of the body, including the torso, landed on the ground, the magician would be seen climbing down
from the erect rope. He would collect the limbs and put them in a basket, or simply collect all the limbs in one place and then
cover them with a cape or blanket. Soon the magician’s boy assistant would appear, miraculously restored.
The accounts
Marco Polo (1254-1324), during
his stay in India and China, is believed to have witnessed the Indian rope trick. Ibn
Batuta, while traveling through Hangzhou, China in
1346, claims to have seen a trick similar to the Indian rope trick.
The legend states that similar tricks were performed during the period of the Mughal
Empire (16th-19th centuries) in the
Indian subcontinent from Peshawar to
Dhaka, and at several important centers of Mughal powers, including Murshidabad, Patna, Agra, and
Delhi.
During the period of the British Raj, several accounts exist reporting the performance of
the Indian rope trick, during 1850 and 1900. The Chicago Tribune, in 1890, published an account of the Indian rope
trick compiled by Fred S. Ellmore, and the story was repeated in several newspapers.
Skepticism
There had long been skepticism regarding the actuality of the rope trick. Once the The
Magic Circle, convinced that the trick did not exist, offered hundred guineas to anyone
who could perform the trick. A man named Karachi, also spelt Kirachi (real name Arthur), a British performer based in Plymouth, endeavored to perform the trick
along with his son, Kyder. Reportedly, his son could climb the rope, but did not disappear, and Karachi was not paid. The
incident was also filmed near Hatfield in Hertfordshire in 1936.
In 1996, Nature published "Unraveling the Indian rope trick", an article by
Richard Wiseman and Peter Lamont.
Wiseman found at least fifty eyewitness accounts of the Indian rope trick performed during late late 19th/early 20th centuries, and variations included:
- The magician’s assistant climbs the rope and the magic ends.
- The assistant climbs the rope, vanishes, and then again appears.
- The assistant vanishes, and appears from some other place.
- The assistant vanishes, and reappears from a place which had remained in full view of the audience.
- The boy vanishes, and does not return.
Accounts of the Indian rope trick collected by Wiseman did not have any single account describing severing of the limbs of the
magician’s boy assistant. Perhaps even more important, he found that the more spectacular accounts were only given when the
incident lay several decades in the past. It is conceivable that in the witnesses memory the Indian rope trick merged with the
basket trick.
Citing their work, historian Mike Dash wrote in 2000:
- Ranking their cases in order of impressiveness, Wiseman and Lamont discovered that the average lapse of time between the
event and witness's report of the event was a mere four years in the least notable examples, but a remarkable forty-one years in
the case of the most complex and striking accounts. This suggests that the witnesses embroidered their stories over the years,
perhaps in telling and retelling their experiences. After several decades, what might have originally been a simple trick had
become a highly elaborate performance in their minds ... How, though, did these witnesses come to elaborate their tales in such a
consistent way? One answer would be that they already knew, or subsequently discovered, how the full-blown Indian rope trick was
supposed to look, and drew on this knowledge when embroidering their accounts. (Dash, 321)
The explanation
Over the years, several theories have been floated to explain the supposed trick, including mass
hypnosis and levitation. Performance during the dusk and twilight may have given some
benefit to the magician, if the trick was actually ever performed.
Another theory explains the Indian rope trick as stage magic. The trick was performed between two trees or similarly placed
objects like two buildings, and at night. A strong, narrow wire was placed between the trees, and when the rope was thrown above,
it got hooked up with the string. This allowed the boy to climb up, though not to vanish or be dismembered.
However, his book on the topic, Peter Lamont exposed the entire "trick" as a
hoax created by John Elbert Wilkie while working at Chicago Tribune.
Under the name "Fred S. Ellmore" ("Fred Sell More") Wilkie wrote of the Indian Rope Trick in 1890. The Tribune piece
received wide publicity, and in the following months and years many people claimed to remember having seen the trick as far back
as the 1850s. None of these stories turned out to be credible, but as it was repeated the story became more and more
ingrained.
About four months after the story was first printed, the Tribune printed a retraction, and proclaimed the story to be a
hoax. However, the retraction received little attention.
Lamont also notes that no mention of the Indian Rope Trick appears before the publication of the 1890 article. Marco Polo's
supposed viewing of the trick was only offered as evidence after the article was published. Ibn
Batuta did report seeing a magic trick performed with a chain, not a rope, and the trick he describes is very different from the "classic"
Indian Rope Trick.
Penn and Teller followed Lamont's work and examined the trick while filming part of
their three-part CBC mini-series, Penn & Teller's Magic and
Mystery Tour. The tour travelled the world investigating various historical magic tricks, and while in India they travelled
to Calcutta where they recreated the trick.
After renting a small hall, Penn and Teller invited two British tourists who happened to be shopping nearby to see what they
claimed was a fakir performing the trick. As they walked back, an assistant ran up and claimed the
fakir was in the midst of the trick, so they rushed the rest of the way so they wouldn't miss it. As soon as the witnesses neared
the room they simply dropped a thick rope from a balcony . The witnesses saw what they thought was the end of the trick, the rope
falling as if it had been in mid-air seconds before. A sheet was then removed from a boy with fake blood at his neck and
shoulders, hinting that his limbs and head and been miraculously reattached to his torso. According to their account, the rumor
that a British couple had witnessed the trick was heard a few weeks later in England. Recently Channel 4 broadcasted a program
where video footage of the trick was captured. The trick was performed in full sunlight out in the open in the middle of a
clearing. Interestingly the magician did not throw the rope but "passed" it up hand over hand. There was no vanishing or
dismembering in this version of the trick.
References
- Mike Dash, Borderlands: The Ultimate Exploration of the Unknown; Overlook Press,
2000; ISBN 0-87951-724-7
- Peter Lamont, The Rise of the Indian Rope Trick: How a Spectacular Hoax
Became a History (ISBN 1-56025-661-3).
- Dr. Karl Shuker, The Unexplained: An Illustrated Guide To The World’s Natural And
Paranormal Mysteries (Carlton: London, 1996; ISBN 1-85868-186-3).
External links
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