He then borrowed some uncooked rice with which he proceeded to fill the bowl to its utmost capacity. While doing so he kept on bumping the bowl on the ground so that the rice was packed as closely as possible inside it, until finally one could see the last few grains in a pyramid on top.

He then borrowed a large table knife, and as it were, stabbed it into the rice down into the bowl. Little stabs at first, and then deeper and deeper until the whole of the blade of the knife was in the rice, and the handle alone remained to be seen. After an incantation and jadoo-music, he caught hold of the handle and raised the bowl and the rice slowly into space. He then swung it to and fro and eventually spun round and round, holding the handle of the knife while the bowl and its contents of rice clung tenaciously to the blade. Beginning to slow down, he at last replaced the bowl on the ground, extracted the knife and handed it to me for examination. He emptied the bowl pouring the rice into some paper laid out to receive it. The closest scrutiny revealed no trace of "gadgets" or of any artifice that had enabled him to thus lift the filled bowl.

A small bribe could not tempt him to reveal the secret, and in such cases I make it a rule to try the trick exactly as I have seen it done.

I took a similar bowl, filled it with rice, and stabbed it with a table knife. Gently at first and then more firmly. To my astonishment I found that after three or four stabs in exactly the same place, the rice below the blade seemed to get harder, until I pressed down the knife and found that I could not extract it with a straight pull! I lifted the bowl of rice, and could with impunity swing it round over my head just as one uses an Indian club. To extract the knife one has to twist the handle slightly, when it comes out immediately. Try it and see.