Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/213

Rh devotion in this special sense, and a Yogee is one devoted to God; and such a man as the one here presented is the highest style of saint that Hindoo theology or its Patanjala (School of Philosophy) can know. The demands of these tenets, and the amazing supremacy which their practice confers on such a devotee as this, are so extraordinary and beyond belief, that, instead of my own language, I prefer to state them in the words of Professor H. H. Wilson, the translator of the Veda. Describing the discipline of the Yogees, and the exaltations which they aim at, he says: “These practices consist chiefly of long-continued suppression of respiration; of inhaling and exhaling the breath in a particular manner; of sitting in eighty-four different attitudes; of fixing their eyes on the tips of their noses, and endeavoring by the force of mental abstraction to effect a union between the portion of vital spirit residing in the body and that which pervades all nature, and is identical with Shiva, considered as the supreme being, and source and essence of all creation. When this mystic union is effected, the Yogee is liberated in his living body from the clog of material encumbrance, and acquires an entire command over all worldly substance. He can make himself lighter than the lightest substances, heavier than the heaviest; can become as vast or as minute as he pleases; can traverse all space; can animate any dead body by transferring his spirit into it from his own frame; can render himself invisible; can attain all objects; become equally acquainted with the past, present, and future; and is finally united with Shiva, and consequently exempted from being born again upon earth. The superhuman faculties are acquired in various degrees, according to the greater or less perfection with which the initiatory processes have been performed.” All this is implicitly believed of them by their devotees, and they are honored accordingly with a boundless reverence.

The number of persons in the various orders of Yogees and Fakirs all over India must be immense. D'Herbelot, in his Bibliothèque Orientale, estimates them at 2,000,000, of which he thinks 800,000 are Mohammedan Fakirs. Ward's estimate seems to sustain this. But the influence of the British Government and its