Ordeal by Diving
Beginning in the 1600’s, the British East India Company became the leader in global trade, bringing goods across their conquered territories. In 1895, a book was published by The East India Company with some of the information they learned about the cultures of the countries they visited while trading in Asia. While learning about the customs of their legal system, they discovered that people in Siam, Burma, India, Cambodia, and Laos practiced ordeal by diving.
In each village, they would find a pond or river that was not too deep that was free of leeches or any other creepy crawly things that may cause someone to jump out of the water right away. Large stakes were driven into the ground in the bottom of the pond. Young men were encouraged to practice holding their breath underwater, and they sometimes held contests to see who would be the new champion. However, when someone committed a crime, they forced a man to endure holding their breath underwater as a trial to prove their guilt or innocence.
The accused would pray to the water gods, Kala and Varuna before being forced to dive underwater for a certain period of time, holding on to the stake in the ground to help prevent themselves from floating to the top, and a safety rope tied around their waist, just in case they started to drown, or the current picked up. If he could not hold his breath long enough, he was guilty, but if he practice, or had a strong lung capacity, he was acquitted of all crimes. The idea was that if they were innocent, the water gods would protect them and help keep them underwater.
This ordeal sounds completely illogical, but according to their research, the East India Company explained at they were told that the ordeal would only last “3 Klans”, which is only about 4 seconds. The British had a hard time believing this, and they wrote in their guide that it must have been a much longer test, because they thought it was not long enough to be a true ordeal. However, maybe there was a psychological element to this test. It is possible that a guilty person would panic and pop out of the water for fear that the water gods would drag them under.
Whether the person was diving for the purpose of a competition or the trial, they had a policy that if someone was submerged for more than 6 padas, they would pull on the rope to drag the man to the shore. According to the East India Company, they had a very hard time believing that they would actually force someone to be underwater for “6 padas”, because that is 36 minutes. Even the most experienced free divers in the world cannot hold their breath of that long. The current Guinness World Record is 22 minutes. So, rather than a safety rope, it was more like a way to retrieve the dead.