Occasionally, a child will claim to remember having lived a past life. These cases can sometimes be distinguished from childish fantasies by features that seem to link the child’s claims with verifiable details of the past life.

Many examples of such stories can be found in the books of Ian Stevenson and Jim Tucker, or indeed on Reddit. But little research on them was done in Western countries until the period after World War II. Nor were they much talked about, as they ran contrary to the dominant Western ways of understanding the world (Christianity and secular rationalism). To a large extent, this remains the case. In south and east Asian countries in which beliefs in reincarnation are prevalent, things were and are different.

Below, I have reproduced two articles from an imperial-era British newspaper about reported cases of past life memories. One case is from 1903 and arose in Burma (which at that time was part of British India). The other is from 1930 and arose in Uttar Pradesh.

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Civil & Military Gazette, 30 May 1903, 7

THE RE-INCARNATION OF A POLICE OFFICER

Many persons in Burma, writes a Correspondent of the Rangoon Gazette, will doubtless remember the terrible death near Waw village, on the Pegu Canal, of the famous shikari [big game hunter], Mr, A. H. Tucker, District Superintendent of Police, Pegu, on August 20, 1894. He was literally hacked to pieces by about twenty Burmese dacoits [bandits]. The affair excited a great sensation all over the country for some time, but gradually was forgotten. The memory of the unfortunate officer would probably not have been revived here but for a conversation the writer had with a Burman on the subject of “win-zas”, a superstition about the re-incarnation of the dead. A win-za is a person who from the tenderest period of his life remembers perfectly well all the circumstances of his last existence, the persons who surrounded him and all the occurrences that brightened or saddened a life extinct and gone. A win-za may be re-born in his own house, or in some other house of his native village, or perhaps hundreds of miles away. He is living, so to say, a double life; while he is accumulating and storing up in his mind new facts and experiences, [he] always sees clearly all those of a past life when his spirit animated a body now gone to dust. And he is fond of talking of those past things, of things which perhaps had no other witness but the very person to whom they are recalled. The Burmese have great faith in win-zas and readily believe all that they assert, because, say they, all that they assert can in some way or other be proved to be true, either by consulting elderly people who were contemporaries of the win-za, or written documents, if any, bearing on the subject of conversation or dispute. Unexpected evidence may thus be not infrequently procured in a civil or criminal case.

There lives in the Pegu district, a Burmese boy between six and seven years of age who, according the Burmese, is without doubt the re-incarnation of poor Tucker; in a word, the D. S. P. has become a win-za, and an English spirit or soul is now animating the body of a young Burman, who, of course, remembers all that he was in his previous existence; the experience of the boy must be a weird one and there must be an awful jumbling of Western and Eastern ideas and notions in his brain. When still a little boy of three or four, he spoke so wisely and accurately on many difficult subjects and points of law, and recalled so accurately many happenings in which, the listeners know, Mr. Tucker had been closely concerned, that first at that period their attention was drawn to the fact that the Englishman had been re-born as a Burman; moreover, the personal appearance of the boy fully corroborated their surmise. Unlike all other children of the soil born of purely Burmese parents he is very fair, with reddish hair and beautiful blue eyes; he was born with the traces on his body of the wounds inflicted on the late D. S. P. Thus, on one of his cheeks may faintly be seen the scar of a ghastly wound, the little finger of his right hand is missing, and it is known that the D. S. P’s little finger was cut off with a dab, and he bears on other parts of his body also unmistakable signs.

The villagers, however, and above all the parents, being very desirous of settling the point at once, took the child, when he was about four to Pegu. They told him, and asked him, nothing; if he really was a win-za, the scenery, the persons and other associations would certainly bring crowding to his memory the occurrences of his previous life. And so it happened. He had lived in such or such a bungalow, in such a year; there he had first met with Mr. So and so; here he had enjoyed a picnic with his friends; he wondered whether such a one was still in Pegu and if Mr. Black had at last got his promotion. They took him to the scene of the murder and the boy tremblingly gave a vivid description of the bloody deed. In such a place he bad been first pounced upon, here he had been struck, there he had been felled to the ground. He was then led to the cemetery where he had never previously been, and without the least hesitation he walked up to, and showed his own grave to the appalled spectators. What thoughts must have crossed his mind while standing there over what were his own remains! Did he call to mind a place far away west, where, as a boy, he had played, or could he remember the faces of those other parents who had cherished him; he was another little b[o]y of four and not so very many years ago, but that he might remember some old, familiar faces? [sic] Nobody ever knew, and it is a pity nobody ever asked, what was then passing in his little mind as he was there solemnly standing over the grave of an able and in some ways a gifted man, whose valuable life had been so tragically cut short. It is said the boy was unusually grave and pensive. There could be, after such a test, no reasonable doubt as to the genuineness of the win-za and the boy was taken back to his village, far from the scenes that saddened his heart.

I have heard of many a win-za, and had the pleasure of personally knowing one in Mandalay, but they had always been Burmese in their previous, as well as in their present life, and all their recollection were purely indigenous. But it is the first time I have heard of a foreigner becoming a win-za, and presenting the strange anomaly of a Western spirit residing in an eastern body, and of recollections, purely European, troubling the mind of an uneducated Burmese lad.

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Civil & Military Gazette, 20 January 1930, 7

BOY WITH MEMORY OF PAST LIFE.

Identifies Widow and Children.

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

Allahabad, Jan. 18.

An astonishing case of a child remembering a past life on earth is reported by Pandit Ram Gopal Misra, Deputy Collector of Gorakhpur. The child, a boy aged three, is the son of Ram Charan Mahajan in the Kurauri village in the Mainpuri district of the U. P.

About three months ago, the boy suddenly began to reveal a great desire to leave his home. Several times he was found walking on the road at a distance from his parents[‘] house, and on being asked where he was going invariably replied that he was Gopi, a bania [member of the trading caste] of a neighbouring village, called Pharha, and was returning there.

His parents were more mystified when, says the writer, the child related that, as Gopi, the bania, he was taking out some coloured powder from his shop for a customer when a snake bit him on the hand, as a result of which he died. The child is said to have added that he had left behind his wife, a son and a daughter at Pharha, as well as some treasure buried under the house.

THE CAP FITS.

A strange fact was that a bania, named Gopi, had died from a snake bite about four years ago at Pharha, leaving a widow, a son and a daughter. Consequently, when the news of the peculiar behaviour of Ram Chand’s son reached there, the bania’s widow hastened to Kurauri village where she and her children were identified by the boy.

Then, proceeds the writer, a scene was created, when the boy insisted on returning with the widow to her home, and when the widow, who was considerably amazed by the child’s revelations, besought his parents to let him go with her.

In regard to the buried treasure, the accuracy of the boy’s statement could not be tested, as the house mentioned by him had been sold. “However”, says the writer. “it is reported that the present owner of that house, a man named Ram Sarup, who was very poor before Gopi’s death, has suddenly grown rich.”