ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 215 



jurisdiction this and other unspeakable rites prevail, and 

 will continue to do so, because the spirit of the thing is im- 

 mortal. Though they are not done so openly as they used 

 to be, they are still done. People will torture themselves in 

 public in the most ghastly ways, and never a groan. It 

 has been suggested that some narcotic is taken to deaden 

 sensibility, but I do not believe it ; to do so would be to 

 give the lie to the men who undergo these things, and to 

 whom it is no matter of merely showing off for the sake of 

 applause. Besides, the pain is what they offer in the volun- 

 tary act, as acceptable to their conception of the Deity ; a 

 conception in this respect shared by other creeds and not 

 peculiar to the so-called benighted faiths of the East. 

 Exaltation of mind and rapt ecstasy suffice to support them 

 under the torture as long as it lasts. 



At Benares, the Sacred City on the Ganges, the chief seat 

 of Hinduism, and one of the most ancient cities in the world, 

 there was up to some few years ago a man who had had 

 himself laid upon a bed of iron spikes, the spikes being about 

 two inches high, square-sided, and closely set. On that 

 he lived for thirty-five years, but before he died he had 

 long ceased to suffer. The wounds were healed, he rested 

 on the wooden couch, for the spikes had embedded them- 

 selves in his flesh, and could do no more. He had become 

 almost flat in his emaciation. A thatched shelter had been 

 put over him as a protection from sun and dews, and he 

 was fed with just so much as would keep a pulse in him. 

 Coercion there was none ; that death in life he endured 

 believing himself to be a redeemer of his race ; it was for 

 the sins of a world that he lay there. He was not the first 

 of his kind ; he will not be the last. 



The martyrdoms of Christianity itself pale before such 

 as these in that these are voluntary. The whole span of life 

 from early manhood is renounced, the joy of living dropped, 

 and the endurance of unremitted torment taken up instead ; 



