fenfibly to have touched, several thousands of people affemble in the middle of a grove around a fhapeless black stone of 300 or 400 weight, (it is the phallus of Seeva, and the perfor mers are rigid Saivites,) befmeared with red lead mixed with oil, to ferve for a mouth, eyes, and ears, with a vase of incenfe burning before it, and a young virgin of ten years old" (an Indian veftal we must fuppofe, for few are virgins in that warm climate after that age) "to attend and cherish the flame. Some priests all naked, except a cloth of decency, run and dance round the ftone and fire for half an hour like madmen, making strange diftortions in their faces, and now and then bellowing like calves. This was the first scene. Those priests had previously erected a fcaffold about 15 feet long, and as many broad, in the middle of which was elevated a piece of wood about 20 feet high. In the upper end of this beam was cut a notch, on which refted a lever about 40 feet long, with two cross-beams at the end, each four feet in length, with a rope fastened to the ends, on which the actors were to hang, and perform their parts. The penitents were four in number; and, prefenting themselves to the priests, the latter took two tenter-hooks, exactly such as Y Y Y

the

the butchers in Britain use to hang their meat on, and fixed those hooks in the muscles of the backs of each. The hooks being fastened to the ropes at each end of the cross-beams, the penitents were then drawn up into the air. They were kept hanging by their backs in this manner at the diftance of ten yards from the ground, while hundreds of other devotees dragged the fcaffold, which went upon wheels, above a mile over ploughed ground; the fufpended penitents all the while swinging round in a circle, whence the name of CHEREC, a circle or wheel. They were then let down in a bleeding condition, but both exulting themselves and amidst the exulting acclamations of the fpectators."* M. Sonnerat, who alfo faw this dreadful ceremony performed on the Coromandel coaft, fays they are generally armed with a fword and a fhield, which they brandish with the furious motions of a man who is fighting, and, to fhew their heroism, often give themselves dreadful wounds. They muft appear chearful whatever pain they may feel; for, if tears efcape them, they are driven from their caft, a punishment more terrible than death itself.†

Thefa

Hamilton's Voyage to the East Indies, vol. i. p. 274. QA, Lond. edit. 1745.

+ Sonaerat's Voyages, vol. i. p. 149.

Thefe authentic accounts of the indifference which the devout Indians feel at the feverest inflictions of corporeal pain may strike Europeans with astonishment, but they will not those who have refided in India, and feen the Yogees affembled under their facred trees in acts of penance. For what will not frantic fuperftition perform? In India, even the women themselves reject the natural softness and timidity of their fex, with determined refolution brave the dreadful ordeal of boiling oil, walk over plates of burning iron, and mount with ferenity the funeral pile: while the men, by nature more daring and intrepid, perform fuch acts as can scarcely be admitted for true, even by credulity itself. An inftance or two of this more defperate kind now lies before me, in Renaudot's Arabian Travellers, which for refolution and horror cannot poffibly be paralleled among any nation of the earth, éxcept among the fanguinary favages, who fing the DEATH-SONG on the plains of America. A certain perfon, determined like Calanus to facrifice himself alive in the flames, when he approached the altar, drew out his fabre, and, with his right hand, gave himself a wide and dreadful gafh that reached from the breast far down in the abdomen, and laid bare his Yyy 2 entrails

entrails to the view of the fpectators. He then, with his left, tore out a lobe of the liver, which he cut off with the same sabre, and gave it to one of his brothers who stood by, converfing all the time with the utmost indifference, and with apparent infenfibility to the torments that racked him. He then, with undaunted countenance, leapt into the flames, and, without any visible motion, was burnt to cinders.*

In the early periods, when these travellers vifited India, it was the custom of the Yogees of the mountains to dare to acts of fingular aufterity those who lived in the plains. Among others, there once came down a Yogee who called upon the penitents of the plain ei ther to follow the example he was about to set them, or elfe to own their zeal and fortitude inferior. He fat himself down in a plantation of canes which grew in the neighbourhood. These canes, fay our travellers, resemble our fugarcanes, are fupple, and bend like them, have a large ftem, and often grow to a vast height. When bowed down by force, they obey the preffure without breaking, but, as soon as the preffure is removed, they violently fly back, and regain their first rectitude. One of the loftiest and largest of these canes he ordered to

Ancient Relations, p. 80.

be

be bent down to his height, and fastened his long and bushy hair strongly to the end of it; then taking his fabre, which, from its keenness, fparkled like fire, he fevered it from his body, and it mounted into the air. None of the spectators had refolution to follow his example, and the mountaineers triumphed over their brethren of the valley. The high reputation which the book, from which these facts are almoft verbatim extracted, enjoys, will, I truft, rescue the relation either from contempt or difcredit.*

Dr. Fryer, an eminent physician and a fellow of the Royal Society, who was at Surat about the fame time with Baldæus, has alfo given a very ample and particular account of Indian penitents, whom he vifited under the great banian-tree in its neighbourhood. One of these penitents he remarked, whose nails, by neglect, were grown as long as a man's finger, having abfolutely pierced into the flesh; and another, whose bushy, plaited, fun-burnt, hair trailed upon the ground, being above four yards in length. Some he faw with their arms fo diflocated, that, as the Doctor expreffes himself, "the diagbgwors of the joints was inverted, and the head of the bone lay Yyy 3

* Ancient Relations, p. 82.

in