Viewing page 121 of 197

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

BAIRAGEES.

prolong his life. He ascended the pile prepared for him with the utmost serenity, and died singing Indian hymns. Another Indian ascetic burned himself at Athens. Of two others in Alexander's camp, one lay all day in the sun and rain, the other stood on one foot. Such were the ascetics of 2200 years ago, such they remain; unchanged, perhaps, in any particular of doctrine, practice, or costume. Then, as now, men unable to perform habitual penance, and seduced by the enjoyment of worldly pleasure and riches, may, as some Bairagees do, enter monasteries, and live, if not luxurious, at least quiet, uneventful lives, instructing children, feeding travellers, and doing good offices as far as possible; but the fierce, fanatical spirits among them, such as those shown in the Photograph, know of no rest till they die. Where that may be, or how, they have little apprehension or care; nor has it been uncommon for members of these fraternities, weary of life, martyrs to some painful or even fatal disorder, to fling themselves under the wheels of an idol car, to leap from the sacred rock into the Nerbudda, or stand in the Ganges as the flood is rising till it overwhelms them. Self sacrifice among these classes of Bairagees is as frequent now, perhaps, as it was when the Greek philosophers beheld it in amazement, and recorded it as a noble virtue in a heathen. Where they go, what they do, who can tell? Once a Bairagee has forsaken wife ans children, home and friends, he rarely returns. They are dead to him, he is dead to them. Henceforth he wanders to every shrine of Krishna in India if he can, and as age prevents movement, crawls into some monastery, some cave in a lonely ravine, some chapel by the wayside, and lies there till villagers find him, help him if he be susceptible of help, or bury him if he dies. Infirm and worn out, such wanderers, if they live, frequently attach themselves to the community which has protected them, and die at last in the full odour of sanctity.