Travels in India (Tavernier) 135.7

135.7

I shall relate also an example of a strange kind of penance which I saw when ascending the Ganges on the 12th of May 1666. A very clean place on the margin of the river had been prepared, in which one of these poor idolaters was condemned to place himself on the ground many times during the day, supported only on two hands and two feet, and kissing the ground three times before rising, without daring to touch it with the rest of his body. When he rose it was necessary for him to do so on the left foot, with the right foot in the air, and every morning during a whole moon, before drinking or eating, he was obliged to place himself in this position fifty times in succession, and consequently to kiss the ground one hundred and fifty times. I was told that the Brahmins had inflicted this penance on him for having allowed a cow to die in his house, not having taken it to the margin of the water according to custom, in order that it might be bathed while dying. Here is yet another somewhat curious custom. When an idolater loses a coin or a sum of gold, be it by mistake or that he has been robbed, he is bound to take as much as he has lost to the Chief Brahmin, and if he does not do so and it gets known he is driven with ignominy out of his caste, through policy, to make people careful.