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2 performed while sitting in a vessel filled with water to the height
3 of the arm-pits. It is said that the faqueer in question, a few days
4 previous to his experiments, took some kind of purgative, and
5 subsisted for several days on a coarse milk regimen. On the day
6 of his burial, instead of food, he slowly swallowed, in the presence
7 of the assembly, a rag of three fingers in breadth and thirty
8 yards in length, and afterwards extracted it, for the purpose of
9 removing all foreign matters from the stomach, having previously
10 rinsed the bowels in the manner I have before mentioned.
11 Hidiculous as this operation may appear to the reader, and as it
12 appears, indeed, to me also, yet these artists must of necessity be
13 complete masters of their body and its organism, and possess a
14 more than ordinary power over the muscles. We are scarcely
15 capable of swallowing a somewhat long piece of maccaroni if it
16 is not well boiled and moistened with butter, &c., to render it
17 palatable. It is probable, however, that they may have lost the
18 sense of taste, and their neck-muscles may be relaxed to such a
19 degree that the long linen strip does not meet with any resistance
20 in the throat. These preparations being made, the faqueer
21 stopped all the natural openings in the body with plugs of
22 aromatic wax, placed back his tongue in the manner I have
23 before indicated, crossed his arms over his breast, and thus suffo-
24 cated himself, in the presence of a multitude of spectators. On
25 his exhumation, one of the first operations is to draw his tongue
26 into its natural position ; after this, a warm aromatic paste, made
27 from pulse meal, is placed on his head, and air is injected into
28 his lungs and also through the ears, from which the plugs are
29 withdrawn. By this operation, the pellets in the nostrils are
30 driven out with considerable force and noise, and this is con-
31 sidered the first symptom of his resuscitation. Friction is then
32 strenuously applied all over the body, and at length lie begins to
33 breathe naturally, opens his eyes, and is gradually restored to
34 consciousness. It is related that, two hundred and fifty years
35 ago, in the time of the Gooroo Arjun Sing, a Joghee faqueer
36 was found in his tomb in a sitting posture, at Umritsir, and was
37 restored to life. This faqueer is reported to have been below the