Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/206

196 or rope under their armpits, their legs meanwhile growing into hideous deformity, and breaking out in ulcers. Sticking a spear through the protruded tongue, or through the arm, is practiced, and so is hook-swinging—running sharp hooks through the small of the back deep enough to bear the man's weight—when he is raised twenty or thirty feet into the air and swung around. Some will lie for years on beds of iron spikes, like the one here represented, reading their Shaster and counting their beads; while their ranks furnish many of the voluntary victims who have immolated themselves beneath the wheels of Juggernaut. But there are tens of thousands of them who take to the profession simply because it gives them a living off the public, and who are mere wandering vagabonds.



Many of them are animated by another class of motives. These hunger for fame—they have become Fakirs for the honor of the thing—are willing to suffer that they may be respected and adored by those who witness in wonder the amazing self-tortures which they will endure. An instance which may be worth relating will illustrate this aspect of the subject. It was turned into verse by a humorous Englishman when the case occurred, and we present it here. One of these self-glorifying Fakirs, after graduating to