JDr Kennedy on the Indian Penance of Gulwugty, 45 



appalling to an ordinary spectator^ and the after consequences 

 seem so singularly disproportionate to the apparently serious 

 nature of the injury endured, that it deserves consideration. 



On the western extremity of the old cantonment of the Bom- 

 bay Dekkan division was the village of Seroor, whence the 

 station was named, and on the south eastern extremity of the 

 camp was the village of Hingny, the distance betwixt the two 

 being about three miles. At each of these villages was a pa- 

 goda of peculiar sanctity ; and at certain periods, as far as I 

 can remember once in nineteen years, it was deemed a neces- 

 sary cererpony that the car of Gulwugty penance should be 

 dragged from Seroor to Hingny, with devotees suspended from 

 the mast during the whole route. The car was dragged by as 

 many volunteer labourers from the spectators as could be yok- 

 ed to it, and proceeded at a rapid rate when a sufferer was un- 

 dergoing the torture ; but it remained still in the interval of 

 unloosing one and fixing another, no progressive motion being 

 lawful unless with a devotee pendant from the hooks. The 

 spectators and officials assured me that such a circumstance 

 had never occurred as the car's being unable to reach its des- 

 tination through the want of mortifiers of their flesh ; the peni- 

 tents or devotees were always sufficiently numerous to keep 

 the hooks occupied from one pagoda to the other. 



The car was four-wheeled, and about the size of an Eng- 

 lish farmer's waggon, rather broader but not so lofty, of the 

 coarsest possible construction, being built of half beams rather 

 than planks, and exceedingly heavy ; upon this was a platform 

 ample enough to hold about twenty persons. A mast twelve 

 feet high was erected in the centre, across which, fitting on an 

 iron pivot, was balanced transversely a pole about fifteen feet 

 in length, divided however unequally, the iron ring which fix- 

 ed on the pivot being inserted into it about four feet from the 

 heavy end, and of course about eleven from the smaller. To 

 the first was suspended a square scale of wood capable of con- 

 taining four or five persons, and from the latter the hooks 

 hung by a chain. 



The process of the penance was as follows. A devotee, 

 having the hooks fixed in his back, as shall hereafter be de- 

 scribed, the number of persons that were recjuisite to balance 



