Fakir

Fakir, an Arabic word meaning 'indigent' (not to be confused with fakih, vulgarly pronounced fiki, 'a pedagogue'), and commonly used to designate a member of an order of mendicants or penitents, chiefly in India and the neighbouring countries. In Persia and Turkey the word is also synonymous with Dervish (q.v.), and in Egypt is particularly assigned to that class of dervishes which performs zikrs and chants funeral dirges. The origin of Fakirism, an institution which reaches back to the most remote antiquity, is lost in mythical darkness. The common account of the son of a mighty raja, who, expelled from his home and country by the cruelty of his father, made a vow, half in revenge and half in contrition, henceforth to roam a beggar through the world, and to win proselytes to a life of poverty and self-mortification, as most befitting man and most pleasing to the Deity, can hardly be called historical. The same yearning for rest, for peace and pious contemplation, for escape from the noise and turbulence of the world, has everywhere and always led pensive minds into retirement and solitude; and constant seclusion and ceaseless meditation in India, as elsewhere, produced in all but exceptional minds their sad results. Thus abstinence became mortification and self-torture; mental repose was turned to mystic self-absorption or frenzied exaltation. This leaning of the Hindus to a life of asceticism was fostered by their religion, which enjoins various exercises of penance and mortification upon the three higher castes in general, but upon the Brahmins in particular. The world and its usages have no more any claim upon them; even religious ceremonies are no longer necessary to the 'United with God.' They go naked, or in filthy rags, receive the meanest food only, and that without either demand or thanks. Their ethical code consists in the observance of truth, chastity, internal purity, constant repentance, and contemplation of Deity. Fakirism seems chiefly to have been framed upon this phase of Brahminism, and its adherents were not only pious men, but occasionally saints, believed to be workers of 'miracles' and healers of all ills, especially epilepsy and sterility. But the halo which from the first surrounded Fakirism, and the ready homage offered by the people, attracted to its ranks at a very early date many whose motives were anything but pure, and who under a garb of humility and mendicity collected fabulous treasures. Strabo already distinguishes these vagabonds from the more honest members of their class, and, if we may trust the travellers of our own day, the more respectable element has now altogether disappeared. Their number is variously stated. In the time of Tavernier's visits (1643-69) there were more than 1,200,000 Hindu and 800,000 Mohammedan fakirs in the East Indies, and their present number is said to exceed 3,000,000. At times, especially on their return from distant pilgrimages, they are even dangerous, as the killing of an unbeliever is supposed to be an infallible introduction to the glories of paradise. They live either separately as hermits or solitary mendicants, or unite in large gangs, carrying arms and a banner, beating drums, and sounding horns as they approach a town or village. Their appearance is often disgusting in the extreme; they go naked, besmeared with the dung of the holy animal, the cow. Some bedeck themselves with the skins of serpents, some with human bones; others array themselves in the garb of women. Their fearful shrieks, and the rollings of their eyes, add to the hideousness of their appearance. Imitating madmen, they generally end by becoming madmen. Some pass their whole lives in iron cages, laden with heavy chains; some clench their fists till their nails grow through the hand; others hold aloft both their arms till they become like withered branches; while others, again, tie their hands and feet together, and roll head over heels for long distances—for thousands of miles in some cases, it is said. Some forms of Christian Asceticism (q.v.) have produced types, such as Simeon Stylites (q.v.), worthy to be compared with Mohammedan fakirs.