Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/205

Rh Some few of these Fakirs are undoubtedly sincere in their profession of giving up the world, and its social and domestic relations, to embrace lives of solitude, mortification, or self-torture, or to devote themselves to a course of religious contemplation and asceticism; others of them do it from a motive of vain-glory, to be honored and worshiped by their deluded followers; while both of these classes expect, in addition, to accumulate thereby a stock of merit that will avail them in the next transmigration, and hasten their absorption into Brahm. But no one who has seen and known them can doubt that the great majority of the Fakirs are impostors and hypocrites. A glance at the picture will enable the reader more fully to understand the descriptions which follow. These wear some clothing, but not much. The hair of the head is permitted to grow—in some cases not cut, and evidently not combed—from the time when they enter upon this profession. It grows at length longer than the body, when it is wound around the head in a rope-like coil, and is fastened with a wooden pin. The figure on the left hand of the picture in front is one of these. Having some doubts whether there was not some “make-believe” in the huge roll, I questioned a Fakir one day about it. Seizing the big pin, he pulled it out, and down fell the long line of hair trailing after him. It was, sure enough, all his own hair.

But even these are not the worst of the class. Quite a number of them give up wandering and locate, and engage in the most amazing manifestations of endurance and self-torture. A few must be mentioned. One will lash a pole to his body and fasten the arm to it, pointing upward, and endure the pain till that limb becomes rigid and cannot be taken down again. The pole is then removed. I saw one of them with both arms thus fixed, his hands some eighteen inches higher than his head, and utterly immovable. Some of them have been known to close the hand, and hold it so until the nails penetrated the flesh, and came out on the other side. Tavernier and others give engravings of some who have stood on one leg for years, and others who never lie down, supported only by a stick