DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.70300#0267
SELF-TORTURE IN THE EAST INDIES. £35
Account of the singular Modes of Self-Torture, as practised
in different parts of the East Indies, by the Devotees,
described by various Travellers ; some having travelled in
one direction, others in a contrary one, a variation will
be found in their different Accounts, but in the whole of
them, there is enough to satisfy us, that such severities are
most surprising, when it is considered that thousands are in
the habit of devoting themselves to them during the whole
of their lives.
AN ACCOUNT OF
TWO FAKEERS, WITH A PORTRAIT.
BY JONATHAN DUNCAN, ESQ.
Extracted from the Supplement to Sir W. Jones’s Works,
vol. II. page 834.
a I beg leave to lay before the Society, the accom-
panying pictures of two Fakeers, now living at Benares,
which I had drawn there from life. The first is named Pa-
rana Poori, or (as usually pronounced in Hinduee) Praun
Poory, a Sunyassy, distinguished by the epithet Oordh-
bahu, from his arms and his hands being in a fixed position
above his head ; and as he is a very intelligent man, and
has been a great traveller, he consented, in the month of
May, 1792, to gratify my curiosity, by allowing to be com-
mitted to writing, by a servant of mine, from his verbal de-
livery in the Hindustan language, a relation. Praun Poory is a
native of Canouge, of the Khetry or Raujepoot tribe. At nine
years of age he secretly withdrew from his father’s house, and
proceeded to the city of Bethour, on the banks of the Ganges?
where he became a Fakeer, about the time (for he cannot
otherwise fix the year), of Muusoor Ali Khan’s retreat from
Delhi to Lucknow, and two or three years before the sack of
Mathura by Akoned Shah Abdalli, which two events are in
Scott’s ‘ History of the Dekkan,* related under the years
1751-2 and 1756 ; within which period he came to Allaha-
bad to the great annual meeting of pilgrims, where hearing of
Account of the singular Modes of Self-Torture, as practised
in different parts of the East Indies, by the Devotees,
described by various Travellers ; some having travelled in
one direction, others in a contrary one, a variation will
be found in their different Accounts, but in the whole of
them, there is enough to satisfy us, that such severities are
most surprising, when it is considered that thousands are in
the habit of devoting themselves to them during the whole
of their lives.
AN ACCOUNT OF
TWO FAKEERS, WITH A PORTRAIT.
BY JONATHAN DUNCAN, ESQ.
Extracted from the Supplement to Sir W. Jones’s Works,
vol. II. page 834.
a I beg leave to lay before the Society, the accom-
panying pictures of two Fakeers, now living at Benares,
which I had drawn there from life. The first is named Pa-
rana Poori, or (as usually pronounced in Hinduee) Praun
Poory, a Sunyassy, distinguished by the epithet Oordh-
bahu, from his arms and his hands being in a fixed position
above his head ; and as he is a very intelligent man, and
has been a great traveller, he consented, in the month of
May, 1792, to gratify my curiosity, by allowing to be com-
mitted to writing, by a servant of mine, from his verbal de-
livery in the Hindustan language, a relation. Praun Poory is a
native of Canouge, of the Khetry or Raujepoot tribe. At nine
years of age he secretly withdrew from his father’s house, and
proceeded to the city of Bethour, on the banks of the Ganges?
where he became a Fakeer, about the time (for he cannot
otherwise fix the year), of Muusoor Ali Khan’s retreat from
Delhi to Lucknow, and two or three years before the sack of
Mathura by Akoned Shah Abdalli, which two events are in
Scott’s ‘ History of the Dekkan,* related under the years
1751-2 and 1756 ; within which period he came to Allaha-
bad to the great annual meeting of pilgrims, where hearing of