ered
without hindrance.

The yard was full of devotees, and of ascetics. But our attention
was especially attracted by three ancient, perfectly naked fakirs. As
wrinkled as baked mushrooms, as thin as skeletons, crowned with twisted
masses of white hair, they sat or rather stood in the most impossible
postures, as we thought. One of them, literally leaning only on the
palm of his right hand, was poised with his head downwards and his legs
upwards; his body was as motionless as if he were the dry branch of a
tree. Just a little above the ground his head rose in the most unnatural
position, and his eyes were fixed on the glaring sun. I cannot guarantee
the truthfulness of some talkative inhabitants of the town, who had
joined our party, and who assured us that this fakir daily spends
in this posture all the hours between noon and the sunset. But I can
guarantee that not a muscle of his body moved during the hour and twenty
minutes we spent amongst the fakirs. Another fakir stood on a "sacred
stone of Shiva," a small stone about five inches in diameter. One of
his legs was curled up under him, and the whole of his body was bent
backwards into an arc; his eyes also were fixed on the sun. The palms of
his hands were pressed together as if in prayer. He seemed glued to his
stone. We were at a loss to imagine by what means this man came to be
master of such equilibration.

The third of these wonderful people sat crossing his legs under him; but
how he could sit was more than we could understand, because the thing on
which he sat was a stone lingam, not higher than an ordinary street post
and little wider than the "stone of Shiva," that is to say, hardly more
than five or seven inches in diameter. His arms were crossed behind his
back, and his nails had grown into the flesh of his shoulders.

"This one never changes his position," said one of our companions. "At
least, he has not changed for the last seven years."

His usual food, or rather drink, is milk, which is brought to him once
in every forty-eight hours and poured into his throat with the aid of a
bamboo. Every ascetic has willing servants, who are also future fakirs,
whose duty it is to attend on them; and so the disciples of this living
mummy take him off his pedestal, wash him in the tank, and put him back
like an inanimate object, because he can no longer stretch his limbs.

"And what if I were to push one of these fakirs?" asked I. "I daresay
the least touch