SELF-TORTURE IN INDIA.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1988, 14 May 1906, Page 7

SELF-TORTURE IN INDIA.

WHERE HEATHENISM IS STILL i HEATHENISM. ; n* ! Heathenism is still heathenism. At ' least, it is so in India. It needs something stronger than culture and the devices of civilization to change | it. Every object of civ ilization, from the railway and the electric light, and the best motor-car, down to the lucifer match sold at three boxes for a cent is to be seen in common use in India : and yet the old customs, not strictly forbidden by law, have not loostened their hold. Christianity and education have effected changes in some portions of the empire, but have just touched this mass of heathen and Mussulman, plaguostricken humanity. ‘‘Leslie’s Weekly” describes selftorture practiced in three separate forms at Lucknow in a local religious fair. Two miles from the city is an insignificant shrine little iarger than a coal-bin, and no more attractive. In it is a red-clay idol. Here one day over 100,000 pilgrims resorted to make offerings of money and sweets. It is the custom for those who have a vow, or who wish to get some great boon, to go the entire, way from their homes, however distant, by measuring their length every inch of the way. At home they choose a pebble, or something of that kind. Laying flat, with their feet touching their door-sills, they place the stone at arm’s length, and, arising, walk to it, pick it up, place the foot where the stone was. and, measuring their length, place it one reach further on. Thus they go the whole way. At the same fair was a fakir, swinging head downwards through a hot Are. His head swept through the high blaze, and almost touched the glowing coals. He said he was 80 years old. He was toothless and might be 70, but he was yet as nimble as a cat. He said that he did it for merit with the gods. He declared that he used all the money that he got in purchasing fuel. He certainly ate very little, and that mostly lentils. Another man with a brick piled on his stomach, his face, except his nostrils, covered with dust, lying in the sun, whose rays at the time were not milder than 120deg. Fahrenheit ! All this for merit.