326 HAUNTS AND HOBBIES 



regions he managed to exist, and still more to endure 

 the cold, is certainly a marvel. 



The practices of the Indian fakirs excite in 

 Europeans only sentiments of ridicule and disgust, 

 and yet on reflection it must be admitted that they 

 are but the outcome of the same ideas that animated 

 the Christian ascetics in early and in mediaeval times, 

 the same belief that the natural impulses are impure, 

 and that the highest virtue consists in repressing them. 

 Simon Stylites on his column, or Thomas a Becket, his 

 person swarming with vermin, were but the analogies 

 of the Indian pilgrim who measures with his body 

 the road to Juggernath or the devotee who thinks it 

 meritorious to mutilate or distort his limbs. Only in 

 the Indian fakirs the principle is carried out further, 

 and the results are more apparent. Desiring to be 

 higher than man, they end in sinking below the level 

 of the brutes. 



I must remind the reader in conclusion that the fakirs 

 I have been describing are the Hindoo devotees only, 

 to whom, strictly speaking, the term fakir ought not 

 to be applied. The Mahomedan religious mendicants, 

 the true fakirs, rarely, if ever, indulge in these 

 extravagances. 



I may add that it was on seeing these Hindoo 

 devotees that I first properly comprehended the mean- 

 ing of the scriptural phrase " sitting in sackcloth and 

 ashes." I then understood that the ashes referred to 

 were not, as I had imagined, the cinders of coal, but 

 the almost impalpable powder of burnt wood. This 

 powder, of a bluish white, when rubbed over the body. 



