Some are simply wanderers; they have abandoned all earthly goods, have left their homes, and taken their place among the poorest. Smearing themselves with ashes, their only garment a wisp of rag—and this they wear simply because the police will not let them go without it—they ramble from holy place to holy place. "Naked, homeless, he eats only when food is offered to him, drinks only from the cup of cold water which is given in the name of the Lord."
Many of these men have been rich and powerful members of the society in which they moved. Then a day came when they laid aside their robes of muslin and silk embroidered with gold; they left their great houses filled with troops of servants; without a word they slipped away from wife, from children, from friends, and the place they had filled knew them no more. They had gone to wander far and wide through the vast plains, the mighty hills of India—strange, naked, wild-looking figures, unwashed, unshorn, looking the veriest outcasts of the earth.
Why is this done? For this reason. They feel deeply the vanity of earthly things; they believe that the more one can get rid of the needs and the wants of the body, the nearer he will get to the Divine. So they cast aside everything which pampers the body and makes this life sweet, and forsake all things of this world in favour of prayer and meditation.
It is not uncommon to meet a man who has the air of a naked, half-crazy savage, and to find that man capable of arguing in the most able manner on the highest topics. Mrs. Steel remarks: "They are often extremely well educated. They will knock a false argument into a cocked hat with easy ability. Some of them—these naked savages—will astonish you by quoting Herbert Spencer; for even nowadays they are recruited from all classes, and they belong by rights to the most thoughtful of each class." Such men as these belong, of course, to the highest order of the religious mendicants. The majority of their fellows are of a much lower order, but one and all they practise poverty and live only upon alms.
Many of them, of the fakir class, practise all kinds of self-torture upon themselves. One, perhaps, has held up his arm above his head for so many years that it is now immovable, and stands straight up from his shoulder, thin and shrunken, and as stiff as a piece of wood. Another has held his fingers close shut in his palm until the nails have grown through the flesh and stand out at the back of the hand. A third has lain for many years on a bed of spikes, until his skin, hard as horn, renders so uneasy a bed no discomfort. There are fakirs who have not stood upright once in forty years. They travel by crawling, and as their cry rings along the village street, the pious hasten to bring them a handful of rice or a cup of water. It would be useless to offer them better fare; they would refuse it. An account is given of one fakir who sat so long without moving at the foot of a tree that the roots grew around him and fettered him to his place.
Many observers have been extremely puzzled by certain powers which these fakirs possess. Fakirs have been seen to walk across a row of upturned knife-blades, each blade sharpened to the keenest edge, yet no sign of injury could be perceived on the naked foot. Another will climb a ladder formed of a single pole, from the sides of which well-sharpened sickles stand out to form the rungs. The fakir climbs to the top and descends. He rests his naked hands and feet upon the keen edges, and no cut, no mark can be seen; or he walks, still barefoot, over stones raised to white heat in a furnace. These feats have been performed in the presence of English gentlemen of high standing in the official world—men who have taken such precautions that they were perfectly certain that the feats were genuine—but they have been utterly unable to explain how the things were done. And, finally, the fakir has obtained such mastery of himself that he can be buried alive, being left for a time in his living grave, and restored to life again.
CHAPTER XVI
IN THE BAZAAR
What is a bazaar in India? It is, first of all, the quarter where the shopkeepers are gathered together, where the tiny shops stand in close-packed rows on either side of the narrow ways, and whither all who have money flock to spend it. But it is more than that. It is the place to which those who have no money resort just as freely, for here ebbs and flows in one unending flood the news, the rumours, the gossip of the town and country.
All day long an Indian bazaar is filled with throngs of buyers, sellers, newsmongers, idle loungers, merchants, sightseers—all the flotsam and jetsam of the city. It is always a scene of wonderful colour and movement. The sun strikes into the dusty ways on turbans of red, green, and orange; on robes of white, pink and blue; on petticoats of rose and saffron; on the bronze bodies of almost naked coolies who march along beneath their loads. People of every colour—white, brown, black, yellow—jostle each other in the crowded ways, and there is a bewildering variety of tint and form in the striking and picturesque scene.