eir loins, which
the police require them to wear; they plaster their bodies with
mud, ashes and filth; they rub clay, gum and other substances
into their hair to give it an uncouth appearance. Sometimes they
wear their hair in long braids hanging down their backs like the
queue of a Chinaman; sometimes in short braids sticking out in
every direction like the wool of the pickaninnies down South.
Some of them have strings of beads around their necks, others
coils of rope round them. They never wear hats and usually carry
nothing but a small brass bowl, in imitation of Buddha, which
is the only property they possess on earth. They are usually
accompanied by a youthful disciple, called a "chela," a boy of
from 10 to 15 years of age, who will become a fakir himself unless
something occurs to change his career.

Many of the fakirs endeavor to make themselves look as hideous
as possible. They sometimes whitewash their faces like clowns
in circuses; paint lines upon their cheeks and draw marks under
their eyes to give them an inhuman appearance. At certain seasons
of the year they may clothe themselves in filthy rags for the
time being as an evidence of humility. Most of them are very
thin and spare of flesh, which is due to their long pilgrimages
and insufficient nourishment. They sleep wherever they happen
to be. They lie down on the roadside or beneath a column of a
temple, or under a cart, or in a stable. Sometimes kindly disposed
people give them beds, but they have no regular habits; they
sleep when they are sleepy, rest when they are tired and continue
their wanderings when they are refreshed.

About the time the people of the country are breakfasting in
the morning the chela starts out with the brass bowl and begs
from house to house until the bowl is filled with food, when he
returns to wherever his master is waiting for him and they share
its contents between them. Again at noon and again at night the
chela goes out on similar foraging expeditions and conducts the
commissary department in that way. The fakir himself is supposed
never to beg; the gods he worships are expected to take care of
him, and if they do not send him food he goes without it. It is
a popular delusion that fakirs will not accept alms from anyone
for any purpose, for I have considerable personal experience to
the contrary. I have offered money to hundreds of them and have
never yet had it refused. A fakir will snatch a penny as eagerly
as any