HINDOO SAINTS' TRICKS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 6147, 30 July 1881, Page 7

HINDOO SAINTS' TRICKS.

When lately returning from Bombay to.lndore, Maharajah Holkar fell in with a saintly old gentleman named Jasawant Rao, of whose miraculous powers very strango tales are toldr One day the wife of a wealthy native merchant dropped her nose ring' while in the act of presenting a cocoanut to the holy man. In vain did he politely request the lady to pick up.her jewel; she vowed that she could not be guilty of auch profanity after it had fallen of its own aecord at his feeti So Jasawant Rao gave the ring to another woman who happened to be standing by, and returned the coeoanut to the merchant's wife with directions that on reaching home she was to bathe, and then to break open the nut with her own hands. These instructions being faithfully carried out, the lady was rewarded for her piety by finding her nose ornament- inside the coeoanut. Such is the tale as related by a correspondent of a leading native journal, 'who evidently believes implicitlyjn its truth." ■No doubt a clever piece of.jugglery. -These saintly personages are often accomplished conjurors, and some of their appliances showremarkablo ingenuity. "One'-ox these is abrassciip three or four inches high, containing an upright figures of Luchmeo, with her infant lying horizontally across her-bent arms. One foot of .the brrss baby touches the upper edge of the cup, Luchniee stands 1 on the bottom..;On water being poured in, the cup fills gradually until the-fluid reaches ; the infant's foot, when a miracle takes place. Out runs the water. fromra hele in the bottom of the cup underneath Luchmee-V-feet, but whiphxaoes not. apparetitly"penetfateVto7£e inside, and the stream never ceases for a-minute until .every drop is drained out. There is a umall hole in the side of tho cup close to where, the> infant's foot touches the rim, but the odd; thing isthaValthbugh'the"water - only comnlencea to run out of the bottom of the cup: when it reaches the "brince; the flow" continues* after the surface'oftfie.fluid, hos > fallen below-the-only-apparent'exit frdm'-tHe cup, We.beliove this ingenious apparatus is muphl used fi'some parts of India to delude the ignorant into-a" belief in the'- ! miraculous powers .of wandering saints.—London Globe,