THE TOUR 325 



austerity is the performance of a pilgrimage and 

 measuring the distance by successive prostrations of 

 the pilgrim's body. This when I left India was still 

 occasionally practised. I once beheld it in process of 

 performance. The pilgrim laid himself flat on the 

 ground, face downwards and with arms extended; 

 then he rose, advanced to the spot where his head 

 had rested, and there again lay down, extended his 

 arms, and again rose and advanced ; and this he 

 continued to do till I grew tired of watching him. 

 This devotee, I was told, had commenced his journey 

 from some far-away place in the Punjaub. He was 

 proceeding to Juggernath. I forget in how many 

 years after his setting out he was expected to arrive 

 there. 



Towards the end of the last century a fakir at 

 Benares attained great celebrity on account of a novel 

 form of austerity he had devised. He slept always on 

 a bed of iron spikes. The singularity of the penance 

 caused it to excite much interest even among Europeans. 

 The fakir and his bed became one of the sights of 

 Benares. An account of both drawn up by Mr. 

 Jonathan Duncan, the English Resident at Benares, 

 is to be found in one of the early numbers of the 

 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. The account 

 is accompanied by a sketch of the bed and of the 

 fakir reposing on it. The bed as there represented 

 has much the appearance of an inverted harrow. This 

 fakir in his youth, so the account states, had been a 

 great traveller, and had even penetrated far into 

 European Russia. How in such remote northerly 



