The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1893-11-30
| tNHuMArroN oFLIvlNo PERSONS
MANY Eastern Nations Indulge In the Hor-
ribIe Practice of Burial Alive.

MANY Eastern Nations Indulge In the Hor-
ribIe Practice of Burial Alive.
The annals of eastern nations fur
nished abundant examples of this Gus
tom, which has been resorted to from
Q variety of motives and under very
different circumstances. The practice
may be employed for the purpose OF
distinguishing life or maintaining life
Tor prolonged period without food or
drink. There is, therefore fatal and
non-fatal kind of living inhumation.
The common description Of burial alive
0amadh) is leper burial, which used to
be very frequently resorted to in India,
often at the request or urgent en-
treaty of the victims of this loathsome
disease. A pit was dug by the relatives
OF the leper or by other lepers, and the
unfortunate cast into it and smothered
with the earth. In some cases the
wretch was burned to death before be-
ing thrown into the pit. Opium water
was freely drunk by executioners on
such occasions. This cpuel rite lin
gered in Kashmir and some parts of
Rajpuntana till within recent years.
Indeed, it is questioned whether it is
even now altogether extinct. Lepers
have been known in the extremity of
their distress and misery to commit
suicide by jumping into pits.
Burial ahve has also in India consti-
tuted mode OF suffice. or voluntary
sacrifice of life, by widows who have
been cast by sympathizing and obliging
'rsfatives. at their own request, into
the same graves as their deceased hus-
bands. Homicidal burial alive has been
used as means of punishment of crime,
torture, revenge, or murder, and the
burial has been in such cases either
complete or incomplete. The non-fatal
form of living burial has always OK
cited more interest than the fatal,
which, however, supplies material for
strange and large chapter in the his
tory of human crime. The phenomenon
of Information yields some sort of coun-
tenance to the idea that the animal
organism is capable, under certain cir
enthusiastically: conservation Of
body heat, perfect inaction, and pres
ervation from all external stimuli--of
living for weeks, if not months, with
out food or drink; and records of pro-
longed fasting, with or without sleep,
are forthcoming with the regularity of
the announcements of gigantic goose
berries, sea serpents and eight-legged
calves.
The alleged proceedings of Indian
fakirs and Persian dervishes are cited
in support of the possibility of human
Information in underground cells. The
proceedings of this gentry must, how
ever, be very literally discounted.
They certainly achieve some very ex-
traordinary feats of endurance and
self-abnegation. Their efforts to set
at defiance the laws and inclinations
of the body, and by contemplation,
fasting and neglect of the ordinary
usages and requirements of life to
mortify the flesh and become absorbed
into the divine soul, which is according
to the tenets of pedantism. the spring
and essence of existence. surpass
physiological possibility and necessar-
lily engender imposture, which may be
conscious or unconscious or both. This
element of imposure, involuntary or
desigWcS,' enters into all their pro-
ceedings, and is seldom either dill
gently looked for or detected The love
of the marvellous is strongly developed
among Orientals, and fakir stories
must be taken with liberal grain of
salt Tales of prolonged living burial
are common enough in India, but in no
case has the proceeding been subjected
to scientific observation or systematic
watching; and in some instances the
grave in which the devotee has pro-
posed to hibernate has been uncovered
after the lapse of few days and its oc-
cupant found dead. When. therefore,
we are told that Seymour, the thought
reader proposes at Chicago to be buried
alive and remain under ground long
enough for a crop of barley to be grown
on his grave" we incline to share the
general impression that, if he carries
out his plan, "he will probably remain
under ground for good. "-British Med
ical Journal.