In various religions we meet with the idea that a person appeases or gives pleasure to the deity by subjecting himself to suffering or deprivation. This belief finds expression in all sorts of ascetic practices. We read of Christian ascetics who lived in deserted dens of wild beasts, or in dried-up wells, or in tombs; who disdained all clothes, and crawled abroad like animals covered only by their matted hair; who ate nothing but corn which had become rotten by remaining for a month in water; who spent forty days and nights in the middle of thorn-bushes, and for forty years never lay down.[79] Hindu ascetics remain in immovable attitudes with their faces or their arms raised to heaven, until the sinews shrink and the posture assumed stiffens into rigidity; or they expose themselves to the inclemency of the weather in a state of absolute nudity, or tear their bodies with knives, or feed on carrion and excrement.[80] Among the Muhammedans of India there are fakirs who have been seen dragging heavy chains or cannon balls, or crawling upon their hands and knees for years; others have been found lying upon iron spikes for a bed; and others, again, have been swinging for months before a slow fire with a tropical sun blazing overhead.[81] Among modern Jews some of the more sanctimonious members of the synagogue have been known to undergo the penance of voluntary flagellation before the commencement of the fast of atonement, two persons successively inflicting upon each other thirty-nine stripes or thirteen lashes with a triple scourge.[82] According to the Zoroastrian Yasts, thirty strokes with the Sraoshô-karana is an expiation which purges people from their sins, and makes them fit for offering a sacrifice.[83] Herodotus tells us that the ancient Egyptians beat themselves while the things offered by them as sacrifices were being burned, and that the Carian dwellers in Egypt on such occasions cut their faces with knives.[84] Among the ancient Mexicans blood-drawing was a favourite and most common mode of expiating sin and showing devotion. “It makes one shudder,” says Clavigero, “to read the austerities which they exercised upon themselves, either in atonement of their transgressions or in preparation for their festivals. They mangled their flesh as if it had been insensible, and let their blood run in such profusion, that it appeared to be a superfluous fluid of the body.”[85] Self-mortification also formed part of the religious cult in many uncivilised tribes in North America.[86] “The Indian,” Colonel Dodge observes, “believes, with many Christians, that self-torture is an act most acceptable to God, and the extent of pleasure that he can give his god is exactly measured by the amount of suffering that he can bear without flinching.”[87]
[79] Ibid. ii. 108 sq.
[80] Barth, Religions of India, p. 214 sq. Hopkins, Religions of India, p. 352. Monier-Williams, Brāhmanism and Hindūism, p. 395.
[81] Pool, Studies in Mohammedanism, p. 305. For similar practices among the modern Egyptians, see Lane, Modern Egyptians, p. 244.
[82] Allen, Modern Judaism, p. 407.
[83] Yasts, x. 122. Darmesteter, in Sacred Books of the East, xxiii. 151, n. 3.
[84] Herodotus, ii. 40, 61.
[85] Clavigero, History of Mexico, i. 284. See also Bancroft, op. cit. iii. 441 sq.; Réville, Hibbert Lectures on the Native Religions of Mexico and Peru, p. 100.
[86] Domenech, Seven Years Residence in the Great Deserts of North America, ii. 380. Catlin, North American Indians, ii. 243. James, Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, i. 276 sqq. (Omahas). McGee, ‘Siouan Indians,’ in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xv. 184.
[87] Dodge, Our Wild Indians, p. 149.