PENANCE BY HINDU.

Waikato Times, Volume 118, Issue 19763, 19 December 1935, Page 9

PENANCE BY HINDU.

IN TOMB FOR 45 DAYS. WITHOUT FOOD AND WATER. HAND EATEN BY WHITE ANTS. United Press Assn.—Elec. Tel. Copyright. LONDON, Dec. 17. The -Delhi correspondent of the Times relates a remarkable instance of a Hindu Yogi meditating without food and water for 45 days, carrying out the philosophical doctrine of Samachi, the highest form of penance practised by the ancient Hindu sages. The Yogi had himself immured in a stone tomb sixteen feet square by four feet high at Rishikesh, a noted place of pilgrimage in the United Provinces. He ordered that between 7 a.mand 10 a,m. on the 45th day, when he uttered the sacred word “Om,” he should be taken out, given fruit juice, and his body rubbed with oil. Crowds of worshippers ■continually watched outside the tomb, the door of which was cemented and guarded. The Yogi was duly heard at the appointed time to utter in a low voice the word ‘lom,” and the pale, thin body, still living, was carried out amid the prayers of thousands of people. When the Yogi had previously been in a similar trance white ants partly ate one of his hands.