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Updated: June 12, 2025
There were fakeers in plenty, with their bodies dusted over with ashes and their long hair caked together with cow-dung; for the cow is holy and so is the rest of it; so holy that the good Hindoo peasant frescoes the walls of his hut with this refuse, and also constructs ornamental figures out of it for the gracing of his dirt floor.
At Benares she saw the bazaars, and the temples, and the palaces; the bathing in the Ganges, the burning of the dead on the bank of the sacred river, and a nautchni or dance of nautches; but her attention was chiefly drawn to the miserable fanaticism of the fakeers, who revelled in self-imposed tortures.
The good fakeers rejoiced in such simple explanations, and they came to the conclusion that we were "all the same with a little difference," thus we were the best of friends with all the people.
The performance lasted a quarter of an hour, after which they accompanied the dance with what was intended for singing, but sounded like shrieking. Meantime, sweetmeats, fruits, and sherbet were handed round. As a contrast to this gay scene, Madame Pfeiffer describes the performance of the wretched fanatics called fakeers. These men inflict upon themselves the most extraordinary tortures.
And he would gain much release from his slavery to two million gods and twenty million priests, fakeers, holy mendicants, and other sacred bacilli; he would escape the Hindoo hell; he would also escape the Hindoo heaven. These are advantages which the Hindoo ought to consider; then he would go over and die on the other side. Benares is a religious Vesuvius.
The Arabs were generally very inhospitable, as this was the route frequented by all native merchants, where strangers were of daily occurrence; but towards evening we arrived at a village inhabited by a large body of Fakeers, or priests.
Immediately, seeing the blood start from his veins, I ran out of the enclosure, fearing lest any one of his company should overtake me, and flew till I reached the city of Delhi, where I subsisted that night and this day on the alms of the Faithful, till I met my Sultan and his Vizier in the habit of two fakeers."
The thieveries of the Fakeers, or religious mendicants, and the bold, though stealthy attacks of Thugs and Dacoits members of Masonic brotherhoods, which at all times have lived by robbery and assassination added to the general turmoil.
The alarm instantly drew the whole body, with the fakeers, out of the place, with so much fury, that the officers, though mounted upon elephants, were compelled to seek their safety in flight; and in endeavouring to pass the Jumna, they both perished. A Carrier's Dog.
They do not burn fakeers those revered mendicants. They are so holy that they can get to their place without that sacrament, provided they be consigned to the consecrating river. We saw one carried to mid-stream and thrown overboard. He was sandwiched between two great slabs of stone. We lay off the cremation-ghat half an hour and saw nine corpses burned.
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