Fakir or Fake Burials ?

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 602, 2 March 1929, Page 19

Fakir or Fake Burials ?

An Indian Mystery, or Two

RE have all read o£ the [ Hindu fakirs who allow J i\ themselves to be buried Jl alive, and who come to J life again when dug up days or months later. | Viuh wisdom has beer devoted to Jhe construction of a scientific expla-1 nation of these doings. According to 1 vaul Heuze, who writes them in “Le ] journal." the answer is simple, though familiar—' "the boy lied.” He does | not doubt the burial, nor the disinterment, but he has found no case where a responsible person watched the grave while it was presumably I occupied. Even so, the fakir must I have been shut up for a considerable i time —half an hour, or an hour, perhaps —but Mr. Heuze has convinced himself by personal tests that a human being may rem-aiu enclosed in j an air-tight coffin for as long a period j as eighty-five minutes without serious! discomfort. He writes:— “Burial is one of the most import- I ant tests among those that constitute what I call the 'first group’ of phen-1 omeua of ‘fukirism’—action of the takir on himself. We may even say that in itself alone it would suffice as j an exponent of the fakir legend; for; many persons who are not at all im-} pressed by the so-called catalepsies, I or periods of insensibility, or by the puerile tricks of invulnerability I nevertheless ask this question: Are there not some Indians, who have realiy remained buried for days, months or years? "The answer is flatly, No! There are not, and there never have been, (akirs who have actually been buried tor any such periods, ■Then what are the facts? “The myth of burial rests on innumerable travellers’ tales, but if we compare texts we shall find that we must go back to 183 S to meet an account worth taking seriously. It is that of the English officer Osborn,! who then witnessed the burial for nine months of the fakir Haridas. Sow tbe crucial fact is that Osborn’s conclusions are entirely negative; I mean that his account is secondhand, Haridas having insisted on purely Hindu control end having al-! ways formally refused ’to perform his \ best under the eyes of the English, l This, nevertheless, Is ti e story which, j completely transformed, has given rise to a thousand such tales in later times. “It is certain that the burial test ia now no longer made. “Moreover, it is sufficient to reflect

only a moment to convince oneself that the suspension of the vital func- i | tlons » as it lias properly been called j I (for there is no question here, all { accounts to the contrary notwitb- j I standing, of ‘retarded life’; in that! state there is always respiration), is ! |an impossible thing. Particularly, it , is impossible for a human being to I live without breathing, for more than j ; a few minutes. i Nevertheless—and here comes in i | Llie interest of the problem—in the expertinent of Haridas, as in all those i tif his predecessors (as shown by serious observations), the fakir really remained in the cofliu about forty-five j minutes. What was his secret? ■ “I have been making some re- t j searches and tests on this matter, and ! | 1 have been astonished to find that it j depends on a clever deceit, and that,! m fact, anyone can perform this ap-1 parent miracle at the first trial. ! “I first asked of scientific men—i ; physiologists, physicians, alpinists, ! 1 etc.—this plain question: ‘During what I time can a normal man remain shut! ! up within about 100 gallons of air, be- j j fore he loses consciousness?” j “I was told how I might make the ; calculation (l will not inflict it on i I my readers here), but it was unforj tunately impossible to perform it. In ' fact, although we might obtain data j regarding the consumption of oxygen j and the production of carbonic acid, we could not, on the other hand, deI termine anything exact regarding the I progress of the respiratory rhythm. | Thus, the answer varies between ten and forty minutes. “At the same time I had conI strut ted a coffin so arranged that it j could be sunk in a pond, giving an | absolute guarantee of its tightness. “I then made several official 'tests !in the presence of physicians. And, | to be brief, I could remain for sixty-( | live, seventy-five, or even eighty-five ; minutes without auy other discomfort | than a slight feeling of suffocation at ; the end of the experiment, when the respiratory rhythm had risen to fortyfive. For success, it was absolutely necessary that I should not make the slightest movement while in the box. “I have no special aptitude, nor any j training, for such a test. Anyone I could do the same thing with at least ! equivalent results. “The problem of fakir burials was ‘ then solved. We may add that the feat of being shut up, in a badly constructed box, on the stage of a theatre, for seven minutes, becomes ; I something of a joke!”