The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1893-10-26
BURIAL ALIVE.
An Inhuman Practice Formerly in Vogue
in India.


in India.
The annals of eastern nations fur
nish abundant examples of this GUS
tom, which has been resorted to from a
variety of motives and under very diff
ferent circumstances. The practice
may be employed for the purpose of
extinguishing life or maintaining life
for prolonged period without food or
drink. There is, therefore, fatal and
non-fatal kind of living inhumation.
The common description of burial alive
is leper burial, which used to be very
frequecAy resorted to in India, often
ct the request or urgent entreaty of
the victims of the loathsome disease.
A pit was dug by the relatives of the
ieper or by other lepers, and the unfor-
tunate cast into it and smothered with
earth. In some cases the wretch was
burned to death before being thrown
into the pit. Opium water was freely
drunk by executioners and executed
on such occasions. This cruel rite lin
gered in kashmir and some parts of
Rajputana till within very recent
years. Indeed, it is questionable
whether it is even now altogether
extinct.
Burial alive has also in India 'con-
stituted a mode of suffice, or voluntary
sacrifice of life, by widows who have
been cast by sympathizing and oblig-
ing relatives, at their own request,
into the same graves of their deceased
husbands. Homicidal burial alive has
been used as a 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
excited more interest than the fatal,
which, however, supplies material for
strange and large chapter in the his
tory of human crime. The phenome-
non of Information yields some sort of
countenance to the idea that the ami
NAL organism is capable, under certain
clrcumstanceS-nam conservation
OF body, heat, perfect inaction. and
preservation from all external stimuli
of living for weeks, if not months,
without food or drink; and records of
prolonged fasting, with or without
sleep, are forthcoming with the regu-
larity of the announcements of gigan-
tic gooseberries, 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 these 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, accord
ing to the tenets of pedantism, the
spring and essence of existence, sur
pass physiological possibility and nee
essarily engender imposture, which
may be conscious or unconscious or
both. This element of imposture, in
voluntarily or designed, enters into all
their proceedings, and is seldom either
diligently looked for or detected. The
love of the marvellous is strongly de-
veloped among the Orientals, and fahir
stories must be taken with a liberal
grain of salt. Tales of prolonged liv-
ing burial are common enough in India,
but in no case has the proceeding been
subjected to scientific observation or
systematic watching; and in some in
stances the grave in which the devotee
has proposed to hibernate has been I'M
covered after the lapse of few days
and it's occupant found Gead.-British
Medical journal.