Sketches of Imposture, Deception, and Credulity

by R. A. Davenport

More individual cases of absurd and disgusting fanaticism occur in the Hindoo religion than, probably, in all the other religions in the world. The excruciating penances these Indian devotees voluntarily undergo, their number and extent, have struck all travellers. In making a pilgrimage to Hurdwar, one zealous devotee performed a journey of some hundred miles, prostrating himself and measuring every inch of the way with his body as he advanced; some swing themselves on a rope by means of a hook passed through the muscles of the back; some over fires with their heads towards the flame; every variety of personal torture is endured from a mistaken principle of religion conjoined with pride of caste; some have literally burned themselves alive; mutilation to propitiate some goddess is no uncommon occurrence; some years since a Hindoo actually cut out his tongue to propitiate the amiable goddess Kali-Ghat.

The Malays have equally absurd superstitions, and charms are bought at extravagant prices. A volume would alone be required to cite the superstitions of Asia, where the human mind remains to this day in a childlike state. The peculiar tenets of the Chinese have been ably set forth by many writers, and by none more successfully than by Davis, in his history of this curious nation. Their priests are taken from the lowest orders, and a Chinaman depends upon their prayers.

But we need not visit China to be convinced of the natural tendency of man to superstition; a story is current of a picture of the immaculate conception, which was in the late college of Jesuits in Valencia, that may challenge competition for absurdity. This picture is the object of general veneration, and by the devout is considered almost equal to the Virgin herself; for tradition reports, that it was painted of Father Alberto, to whom the Blessed Virgin condescended to appear on the eve of the assumption, ordering her portrait in the dress she then wore; he employed Juanes, who, after many trials succeeding, the work was sanctified, and the pencil, like a sword, was blessed and made invincible by the Pope, so that it never missed its stroke. One day Juanes seated on a scaffold at work on the upper part of the picture, the painter being in the act of falling, the holy personage, whose portrait he had finished, stepped suddenly from the canvass, and seizing his hand, preserved him from the fall, when the gracious lady returned to her post!

A very ancient fraud connected with architecture is mentioned by Sandys, in his curious and rare book on the East. One of the Ptolemies caused a tower to be built of a wonderful height, having many lanterns for the use of ships at sea during the night. It was reputed the seventh wonder of the world. Sostratus, of Cnidos, the ambitious architect, was refused by the king the satisfaction of setting his name to the work. This, however, the artist effected by cutting an inscription on a block of marble, which he encrusted over with a fictitious stone, on which was engraved a pompous inscription in honour of the king; when it decayed his own name appeared as the builder.

Michael Angelo, to try how far he could impose upon the curious in sculpture, carved a statue of Cupid. Having broken off the arm, he buried the rest of the figure under a certain ruin, where they were wont to dig in search of marbles. It was soon after discovered, and passed among the learned antiquaries for an invaluable and undoubted piece of ancient sculpture, till Angelo produced the arm previously broken off, which fitted so exactly as to convince them of their too easy credulity, and the vanity of their speculations.

In the year 1678, was erected the animated statue of Charles I., at Charing Cross. The parliament, in Cromwell’s time ordered it to be sold, and broken to pieces; but the brazier who purchased it dug a hole in his garden, and buried it unmutilated, producing to his masters several pieces of brass which he told them were parts of the statue; and in the true spirit of trade, he cast a number of handles of knives and forks, offering them for sale as composed of the brass of the statue; they were eagerly sought for, and purchased by the loyalists, from affection for their murdered monarch. When the second Charles was restored, the statue was brought forth from its place of concealment, and eagerly purchased at a great profit to the brazier.

A superstition now forgotten, was long credited, that sepulchral lamps have burned for several hundred years, and that they would have continued burning, perhaps for ever, had they not been broken by the accidental digging into the tombs by husbandmen and others; few have declared themselves to have been eye-witnesses of the fact, but many learned and ingenious authors give abundance of instances on the report of others. The origin of these lamps seems to have been with the Egyptians, who, through a firm belief of the metempsychosis, endeavoured to procure a perpetuity to the body itself, by balsams or embalming, and security to it afterwards, by lodging it in pyramids or catacombs: so also they endeavoured to animate the defunct by perpetual fire, the essence of which answered to the nature of the soul in their opinion: for with them fire was the symbol of an incorruptible, immortal, and divine nature. The soul was to be lighted by its lamp when it wandered according to its option, and thus safely return to its old quarters.

One of the most remarkable of the sepulchral lamps has thus been described as found in the tomb of Pallas. In the year 1501, a countryman, digging deep into the earth, near Rome, discovered a tomb of stone, wherein lay a body, so tall, that being raised erect, it overtopped the walls of the city, and was as entire as if newly buried, having a very large wound on the breast, and a lamp burning at the head, which could neither be extinguished by wind nor water; so that they were obliged to perforate the bottom of the lamp, and by that means put out the flame. This was said to be the body of Pallas, slain by Turnus; the lamp is said to have burned two thousand five hundred and eleven years; and perhaps would have continued to burn to the end of the world, had it not been broken, and the liquid spilt!

At the present day of intellectual advancement, this story of the size of Pallas, and of the lamp whose contumacious flame, well befitting such a giant, exceeds all belief, however gravely stated; yet the time was, when, instead of exciting contemptuous laughter, it was implicitly credited. The lamp in the temple of Jupiter Ammon was reported by the priests to have burned continually, yet it consumed less oil each succeeding year; though burning in the open air, neither wind nor water could extinguish it. A similar lamp also burned in honour of Venus. Trithemius obliges his readers with two long receipts for the artificial manufacture of these lamps, yet seems to doubt their efficacy.

The possibility of such eternal lamps being made in Egypt has been attributed to the existence of the bituminous wells or fountains, from which the learned in those days laid secret canals or pipes to the subterranean caves, where, in a convenient place, they set up a lamp with a wick of asbestos. It seems, indeed, to have been thought a great desideratum in the arts to invent a perpetual lamp for the companion of the dead as a complimentary illumination to the manes of the departed, or from some foolish desire to strike wonder, in after times, in some carnal beholder, unwittingly violating the tomb; the accounts of such appear to have been generally believed authentic up to the end of the seventeenth century; the utilitarian age we live in is content to possess a perpetual locomotive fire for those above ground.