Fakirs are religious mendicants who, for the purpose of exciting the charity of the public, assume positions in which it would seem impossible that they could remain, submit themselves to fearful tortures, or else, by their mode of living, their abstinence, and their indifference to inclement weather and to external things, try to make believe that, owing to their sanctity, they are of a species superior to that of common mortals.

In the Indies, these fakirs visit all the great markets, all religious fetes, and usually all kinds of assemblages, in order to exhibit, themselves. If one of them exhibits some new peculiarity, some curious deformity, a strange posture, or, finally, any physiological curiosity whatever that surpasses those of his confreres, he becomes the attraction of the fete, and the crowd surrounds him, and small coins and rupees begin to fall into his bowl.

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: