Jasper County Democrat, Volume 6, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 December 1903 — An Unavailing Rain Penance. [ARTICLE]

An Unavailing Rain Penance.

No country subject to drought is without its own peculiar method of supplicating for rain. That in Kumaon, northern India, is not the least curious of them. In a country where the population Is almost entirely dependent upon grain as a means of subsistence drought means famine and starvation. During a drought in Kumaon a Hindoo fakir Imposed a penance on himself and was suspended by his feet from a wooden beam. In this position he was swung back and forth for a considerable time by means of a rope attached to his body and pulled by a fellow fakir. Both men were besprinkled with ashes and mud and were minus all clothing except for a small cloth around the waist. It is to be regretted that such pious zeal should have gone without the expected reward, for the chronicler sadly related that no rain fell until weeks after.