cetics--Their characteristics--A faqir's curse--Women
and faqirs--Muhammadan faqirs usually unorthodox--Sufistic
tendencies--Habits of inebriation--The sanctity and powers of a
faqir's grave.

There were, however, some bright spots even in Rishikes, gems
among the rubble, lumps of gold concealed among the mass of baser
metals--minds earnestly seeking a higher spiritual life, losing
themselves, wearying themselves in the quest after truth, intensely
conscious of the vanity of this world and its pursuits and pleasures,
and striving to obtain in a contemplation of the One only Pure,
the only Unchangeable, the only True, that peace of mind which they
instinctively felt and experimentally found was not to be realized
in the pursuit of material objects. The painful mistake which made
their quest so hopeless was the endeavour to divest themselves of the
bonds of their bodily material tabernacle, which, if subjugated to
the spirit, forms the basis on which that spirit can work healthily
and naturally to its divinest development, but which, if altogether
ignored and contemned, reduces that same spirit to a morbid fantasy.

With regard to the learning of many of the Sanyasis there is not a
shadow of doubt. There are men there fit to be Sanskrit professors
in the Universities, and who are deep in the lore of the ancient and
voluminous literature of Hinduism. Yet who benefits by all their
learning? They may transmit it to a few disciples, or it may live
and die with them; they make no attempt to methodize it, to draw
conclusions, to contrast the old order with the new, to summarize or
to classify, but cultivate it purely as a mental exercise or religious
duty, without apparently even the desire to benefit the world at large
thereby. This self-centred individualism, each mind self-satisfied,
self-contained, with the springs of sympathy and altruism hard frozen,
ever revolving on itself, and evolving a maze of mysticism, at length
becomes so entangled in its own introspection that other minds and
the world outside cease to have any practical existence for it. This
is at once the most salient and the saddest feature of the learned
and meditative Sadhu.

But there they are--men who might have shone academically, who might
have enriched the world with thought, research, and criticism, but
who have chosen to live for and within themselves, careless whether
others live or die, are instructed or remain ignorant. Though the