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OCTOBER, 1878.3
a desire to be released from physical suffering. This was called performing samádh (Sanskrit samadhi, suspending the connexion between soul and body by religious abstraction).
Sleeman describes how he once knew a very respectable Hindu gentleman who came to the river Narmada, attended by a large retinue, to perform samadh, in consequence of an incurable disease under which he laboured. After taking leave of his family, he entered a boat, which conveyed him to the deepest part of the river. He then loaded himself with sand, and stepping into the water disappeared.
In most of these cases the laudable humanity of our Government in preserving human life has given rise to fresh evils and difficulties.
CORRESPONDENCE AND MISCELLANEA.
In the first place, population is increasing upon us in a degree which threatens to become wholly unmanageable. Then, widows never marry again; not even if their boy-husbands die, leaving them widows at the age of six. A woman is supposed to be sacramentally united to one husband, and belongs to him for ever. Every town, every village, almost every house, is full of widows, who are debarred from all amusements, and converted into household drudges. They often lead bad lives. Their life, like that of the lepers, is a kind of living death, and they would often cheerfully give themselves up to be burned alive if the law would let them. Only the other day in Ne på 1, where our supremacy is still barely recognized, the widows of Sir Jang Bahadur became satis, and burned them. selves with their husband.
Then, again, the increase in the number of girls who cannot find suitable husbands is now causing much embarrassment in some districts; and even the lepers, whose lives we preserve, involve us in peculiar difficulties. These unfortunate creatures often roam about the country, exacting food from the people by threatening to touch their children.
Here and there we have built leper-villagesrows of cottages under trees, devoted to their use; and we make the towns contribute from local funds to support them, while charity ekes out the miserable pittance they receive.
As to the practice of self-torture, this cannot be entirely prevented by our Government, but it is rapidly dying out. Formerly, it was possible for devotees-with the object of exciting admiration, or extorting alms, or under the delusion that their self-torture was an act of religious merit-to swing in the air attached to a lofty pole by means of a rope and hook passed through the muscles of the back. Such self-inflicted mutilation is now prohibited. Yet, even in the present day, to acquire a reputation for sanctity, or to receive homage and offerings from the multitude, or under
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the idea of accumulating a store of merit, all sorts of bodily sufferings, penances, and austerities, even to virtual suicide, are undergone the latter being sometimes actually perpetrated out of mere revenge, as its consequences are supposed to fall on the enemy whose action has driven the deceased to self-immolation.
I saw a man not long since at Allahâbâd who has sat in one position for fifty years on a stone pedestal exposed to sun, wind, and rain. He never moves except once a day, when his attendants lead him to the Ganges. He is an object of worship to thousands, and even high-caste Brahmans pay him homage.
I saw two Urdhva-b & hus, one at Gayâ and the other at Banaras,-that is, devotees who hold their arms with clenched fists above their heads for years, until they become shrivelled and the finger-nails penetrate through the back of the hands. Another man was prostrating himself and measuring every inch of the ground with his body round the hill of Govardhan when I passed.
Two attempts at samádh occurred in Mr. Sheppard's district. A devotee announced his intention of adopting this extraordinary method of securing perfect abstraction and beatitude, and was actually buried alive in the neighbourhood of a village. His friends were detected by the villagers in pouring milk down a hollow bamboo which had been arranged to supply the buried man with air and food. The bamboo was removed, and the interred man was found dead, when his friends opened the grave shortly afterwards.
The other attempt is still more recent, and I will conclude this communication by giving Mr. Sheppard's own account of it, almost in his own words:" As I was shooting near my camp one evening, a mounted orderly came up with news that a Bhat had performed samadh that afternoon in a neighbouring village, and that there was much consequent excitement there. Not having a horse with me, I directed the orderly to ride off to the village (picking up my police escort as he passed through my camp) and to dig up the buried man, taking into custody any persons who might endeavour to oppose the execution of my orders.
"On returning to my camp, I ordered the apprehension of all those who had assisted in the samádh, and soon afterwards received a report that the marr had been actually buried in a vault in his own house, but had been taken out alive. He was, however, very weak, and died the following morning. It was then reported to me that the limbs, though cold, had not stiffened, and the people-ready, as of old, to be deceived, and always inclined to attribute the smallest departure from
