Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/435

Rh tion of the hooks. The officiating priest, (not a Brahmin, for this is a Sudra service,) taking up as much of the skin and flesh beneath the shoulder-blade as he can grasp within his fingers, thrusts the point of the hook into the naked back of the devotee; another hook is inserted into the other side of the back. These hooks are attached to a cord which is hung from one extremity of the cross-beam. Those who hold the end of the rope hung from the other extremity of the beam now draw upon it, raising the opposite end, and the wretch is swung by these two hooks inserted in his flesh, high in the air above the heads of the multitude. At the sight, an exulting cry bursts from every mouth, and the roar of the surf is drowned in the united outburst of delight which comes up from ten thousand men as the sound of many waters. Those who hold the rope now move around the pole in a circle,carrying the beam, which rotates upon a pivot, round and round, swinging the miserable victim of superstition in a circle over the heads of the multitude. Hence the name of the ceremony, churruk pujah, or circular worship. As he is thus suspended between earth and heaven, with nothing but the strength of his own flesh to prevent his falling