214 ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 



him ! bloodshot and. nigh mad, not with lunacy, but with 

 devotion and ecstasy. No transient impulse of a revivalist 

 convert ; as long as life should last one idea would dominate 

 that man, ' counting not the cost,' feeling neither heat nor 

 cold, hunger nor thirst, only one thought in the poor blind 

 heroic soul — to keep his vow, to reach the goal. Salvation 

 to be bought with his agony and endurance for the sins of 

 others. Nothing lower than that magnificence of aim was 

 his ideal. It makes one think. 



Sometimes one will take a vow in early manhood that he 

 will clench a fist, never to loosen it ; till it comes to pass 

 in age that the nails have grown through the palm, and that 

 suffering is long past. That is no rare sight. Or a vow 

 that he will stand on a pillar with one arm extended, being 

 supported in the strain till the arm have learnt to obey, 

 and does not drop ; then at last comes relief in that it cannot 

 do so. 



Those three poor creatures — I have seen many more than 

 three fakirs, as they are called — were old then, and must 

 long have passed to their reward. Accounted saints on 

 earth, I dare believe that they are saints now, in very truth, 

 for surely everything lies in the motive. 



In 1829 Lord Bentinck took measures to put down the 

 ancient Hindu custom of suttee — the self-immolation of 

 widows — but cases are still heard of, ay, and sometimes 

 not heard of, when the widows claim a voice in the matter ; 

 for they it is who insist on mounting the funeral pyre, as 

 their mothers did before them. 



The great Car of Juggernaut still exists, and is used on 

 occasion of the annual festival in honour of Vishnu — the 

 second god in the Hindu Triad — and claims a yearly tribute 

 of devotees, who lay themselves in the way of its progress 

 that they may be crushed beneath the wheels. Many an 

 isolated place has its Car, and no dearth of willing victims. 

 They do not want to be prevented, and where we have no 



