THE TOUR 323 



Struck by the beauty of one of the houses there 

 that line the river bank, I entered it to view the 

 interior. The owner, a raja in the west, occupied the 

 house only on the rare occasions when he attended 

 at the great fair ; meanwhile he permitted it to be 

 used by fakirs of all sorts as a kind of caravanserai. I 

 found it full of them. Words would fail to describe 

 its condition. The floors were covered with ordure 

 and other impurities. The fakirs with painted faces, 

 glassy, bloodshot eyes, and bodies smeared with wood 

 ashes, seemed hardly human. All were more or less 

 under the influence of narcotics ; some were entirely 

 stupefied. They sat motionless, leaning against the 

 walls, as if in a trance or dream. The place resembled 

 less a habitation of men than a den of the impurest 

 of animals. The filth, the odours, the aspect of the 

 inmates, excited in me a feeling of horror. 



In former days the lower class of fakirs were 

 in the habit of inflicting on themselves torments, 

 often permanent injuries. These practices, steadily 

 discountenanced by our Government, are now almost 

 entirely discontinued ; by the educated natives they 

 were never approved of. These self-tortures frequently 

 consisted of merely temporary sufferings, and being 

 performed at fairs, they partook a good deal of the 

 nature of acrobatic exhibitions. A common one, and 

 which has often been described, was the swinging the 

 performer from a revolving beam by an iron hook 

 run through the muscles of the back. The more 

 serious self-tortures consisted of mutilations, distor- 

 tions, and the infliction of other permanent injuries, 



