Word: sadhus
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...jungle shrine in Ceylon last week, a group of local sadhus celebrated a rite of Hindu holy men: walking barefoot over a bed of glowing coals. To the Rev. Eric Robinson, a British Methodist missionary, it was the opportunity he had long been waiting for. Pulling off his shoes and socks, he stepped on the coals, walked the length of the burning pit himself. The doctor's verdict: severe burns on the feet, which confined Missionary Robinson to his bed for a week...
...Kumbh Day, April 13, at 3:48 p.m., the day and time calculated by astrologers as most auspicious for bathing, the pool was reserved for holy men (Sadhus). It took the 15,000 Sadhus three hours to march down the three-mile route to the water. Most wore saffron robes or loin cloths, but 2,000 of the holiest were naked. Each of the seven Akharas (orders) had its painted elephant, and at the head of each order rode its leader, shaded by a red umbrella. Six of the leaders were in palanquins carried by six men; the chief...
...join-the muddy Ganges, the blue Jumna, and the Saraswati, which, according to Hindu legend, wells up from underground. At the Triveni Sangam (Meeting of the Three Rivers) last week, a tumultuous tent city had grown up, peopled by 3,000,000 Hindus. By thousands of fires, breech-clouted sadhus (holy men) chanted Vedic hymns. Around the clock a clangor of raucous songs mingled with hymns, flutes with elephant bells, caterwauls with the keening of sacred recitations. The millions had come for the religious festival of Ardh Kumbh Mela, to revel and to bathe where the sacred rivers meet...
...Martyr's Grave. By week's end, the 600 sadhus who had gathered on the Jumna's banks had a martyr,* if not a program for India. Swami Krishnanandji, like many another holy picketer, had been taken to jail. The police took away his trishool (5-ft. wooden staff with three points, known as the "stick of righteousness"), without which no sadhu can take food. So Krishnanandji went on a hunger strike. The police released him, but too late. He trudged wearily back to the sadhu camp. The next day, while a score of fellow ascetics chanted...
...holy men. Instead they piled demonstrators into a van (although many holy men had vowed always to walk and never to ride on wheels), drove them 20 or 30 miles out into the country. Some wondered if even a Jinnah would show the single-minded stubbornness of the sadhus; many of them plodded back to Delhi through the blistering heat (113°), chanting "Good understanding among all living beings...