Fakirs, like all persons who voluntarily torture themselves, are curious examples of the modifications that will, patience, and, so to speak, “art” can introduce into human nature, and into the sensitiveness and functions of the organs.  If these latter are capable of being improved, of having their functions developed and of acquiring more strength (as, for example, the muscles of boxers, the breast of foot racers, the voice of singers, etc.), these same organs, on the contrary, can be atrophied or modified, and their functions be changed in nature.  It is in such degradation and such degeneration of human nature that fakirs excel, and it is from such a point of view that they are worth studying.

We may, so to speak, class these individuals according to the grades of punishments that they inflict upon themselves, or according to the deformities that they have caused themselves to undergo.  But, as we have already said, the number of both of these is extremely varied, each fakir striving in this respect to eclipse his fellows.  It is only necessary to open a book of Indian travel to find descriptions of fakirs in abundance; and such descriptions might seem exaggerated or unlikely were they not so concordant.  The following are a few examples: 

Immovable fakirs.—­The number of these is large.  They remain immovable in the spot they have selected, and that too for an exceedingly long period of time.  An example of one of these is cited who remained standing for twelve years, his arms crossed upon his breast, without moving and without lying or sitting down.  In such cases charitable persons always take it upon themselves to prevent the fakir from dying of starvation.  Some remain sitting, immovable, and apparently lifeless, while others, who lie stretched out upon the ground, look like corpses.  It may be easily imagined what a state one of these beings is in after a few months or years of immobility.  He is extremely lean, his limbs are atrophied, his body is black with filth and dust, his hair is long and dishevelled, his beard is shaggy, his finger and toe nails have become genuine claws, and his aspect is frightful.  This, however, is a character common to all fakirs.

We may likewise class among the immovables those fakirs who cause themselves to be interred up to the neck, and who remain thus with their head sticking out of the ground either during the entire time the fair or fete lasts or for months and years.

Anchylotic Fakirs.—­The number of fakirs who continue to hold one or both arms outstretched is very large in India.  The following description of one of them is given by a traveler:  “He was a goussain—­a religious mendicant—­who had dishevelled hair and beard, and horrible tattooings upon his face, and, what was most hideous, was his left arm, which, withered and anchylosed, stuck up perpendicularly from the shoulder.  His closed hand, surrounded by straps, had been traversed by the nails, which, continuing to grow, had bent like claws on the other side.  Finally, the hollow of this hand, which was filled with earth, served as a pot for a small sacred myrtle.”