Many y ogees, and similar professors, are devotees of the 
strictest order, carrying their superstition and enthusiasm far be- 
yond any thing we are acquainted with in Europe: even the 
austerities of La Trappe are light in comparison with the voluntary 
penances of these philosophers; who reside in holes and caves, or 
remain under the banian trees near the temples. They imagine 
the expiation of their own sins, and sometimes those of others, 
consists in the most rigorous penances and mortifications. Some 
of them enter into a solemn vow to continue for life in one un- 
varied posture; others undertake to carry a cumbrous load, or 
drag a heavy chain; some crawl on their hands and knees, for 
years, around an extensive empire; and others roll their bodies on 
the earth, from the shores of the Indus to the banks of the Ganges, 
and in that humiliating posture, collect money to enable them 
either to build a temple, to dig a well, or to atone for some parti- 
cular sin. Some swing during their whole life, in this torrid clime, 
before a slow fire; others suspend themselves, with their heads 
downwards, for a certain time, over the fiercest fames. 
I have seen a man who had made a vow to hold up his arms 
in a perpendicular manner above his head, and never to suspend 
them; at length he totally lost the power of moving them at all. 
He was one of the Gymnosophists, who wear no kind of covering, 
and seemed more like a wild beast than a man: his arms, from 
having been so long in one posture, were become withered, and 
dried up; while his outstretched fingers, with long nails of twenty 
years growth, gave them the appearance of extraordinary horns: 
his hair, full of dust, and never combed, hung over him in a savage 
manner; and, except in his erect posture, there appeared nothing 
