7. For a hundred years more, enveloped with fire.
8. For a hundred years more, he stood upon his head with his feet towards heaven.
9. For a hundred years more, he stood upon the palm of one hand resting on the ground.
10. For a hundred years more, he hung by his hand from the branch of a tree.
11. For a hundred years more, he hung from a tree with his head downwards.
When he at length came to a respite from these severe mortifications, a radiant glory encircled the devotee, and a flame of fire, arising from his head, began to consume the whole world.”—From the Seeva Pooraun, Maurice’s History of Hindostan.
You see a pious Yogi, motionless as a pollard, holding his thick bushy hair, and fixing his eyes on the solar orb. Mark—his body is half covered with a white ant’s edifice made of raised clay; the skin of a snake supplies the place of his sacerdotal thread, and part of it girds his loins; a number of knotty plants encircle and wound his neck, and surrounding birds’ nests almost conceal his shoulders.
Dushmanta. I bow to a man of his austere devotion.—Sacontala.
That even Seeva’s self,
The Highest, cannot grant, and be secure.—VI. p. 52.
It will be seen from the following fable, that Seeva had once been reduced to a very humiliating employment by one of Kehama’s predecessors: