Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/436

380 a mangled carcass on the ground, he loosens his cloth and scatters its contents to the crowd below. As the limes and flowers fall, every hand is outstretched, eager to catch something from a source so holy, as a charm against misfortune for the coming year. After swinging. thus for some ten minutes, he is let down, and another devotee has the hooks thrust into his back, is raised, swung, and in his turn released. Another and another comes forward, and the process goes on till fifteen, twenty, or even twenty-five, are swung on one pole in a single day.

What, it will be asked, is the motive to such self-inflicted tortures? The motives of different persons differ. A man is ill; Mari-Ammen is about to slay him, and in his extremity, he cries to her in prayer, promising, if spared, to perform the churruk pujah in her honour. Another has a sick child, and in his distress vows to swing if it is spared. Others, again, do it for pay, they enduring the suffering for a sufficient compensation, and their employers having the credit of the meritorious act set to their account!

Yet, painful as are such scenes of blind superstition and fruitless self-torture, to a Chris-