Mircea Eliade YOGA IMMORTALITY AND ... - Brihaspati.net

logical not to deliver the fire the bodies of those who had obtained the liberation, whose
soul was already identified to God. The ascetics were buried in the position of meditation,
and their graves were raised about Jingo. Many of these later became rumba in tem-ples.
W. Simpson thought he saw in this custom the origin of Indian religious architecture
(Some suggestions of Origin in Indian Architecture, Journal of Royal Asiatic Society,
1888, p. 49-71). "The bodies of the monks, unlike other Hindus are buried, and the
cemetery (the monastery) contains about two hundred graves .- The body is buried in
sitting position, and in the case of mere novice, a construction of bricks from three to four
feet high enough to cover the grave. For most important monks, a temple is necessary:
inside and immediately above the corpse is placed necessarily a lingam. It seems that
even up to novices has been considered necessary to the Lingam ... Buddha Gaya and
Gaya Among several monasteries of Hindu sannyasi, and elsewhere the graves are semejantes
"(op. cit, p. 56).
The ascetics are buried sitting posture or yogi, the same that led to the liberation. His
identification with Siva is attested by the lingam erected on their graves. In the
Archaeological Survey of India, Southern Circle, 1911-1912, we read (p. 5): "The
sannyasi are not burned, but buried and built an altar with a lingam to mark the place",
idem, 1915-1916 , p. 34: "In the case of the sannyasi (...) is sometimes a raised brick
platform on the site of the tomb is placed there (...) and a lingam stone, as if to proclaim
to the world that the body reached buried under the sacred form of Shiva-linga "(A.
Coomaraswamy, Journal Amer. Orient. Soc, 1918, p. 264).
In some places, the skull of the yogi is broken out to allow the "soul and respiration.
Oman describes the ceremony to be attended in the province of Madras, as follows: "The
body was placed in position saddhu sitting in the tomb, were stacked on the specific
amount of salt and covered it with earth. Then, on the crown of his head shaved, even
visible, they proceeded to break large number of coconuts in order to break the skull and
thus allow the soul imprisoned escape. coconuts fragments used for the liberation of the
soul of the dead, were in great demand by the participants "(Oman, Mystics and Ascetics,
p. 157, and also £ Abb Dubois, Morals, Part II, chapter 36). The breaking of the skull the
funeral custom is also proa-tice in other regions. In Malaysia, we say that the soul leaves
the body through the top of his head. " Recall that the pull, the man the Semang
physician, is buried with his head out of the grave: Paul Sche-besta, Lo * Pygmies (trad,
the trances, Paris, 1940), p. 154.
Note V1II, S: yogis and fakirs
It would be interesting to follow the first information that entered Europe about the yogis
and "miracles" of the fakirs, Garbe reproduces some of them (Samkhyauna Yoga, p. 47-
48). Also Ueber den Schein-tod Indischer wiUkurlichen Fakirs in south mdischen
KuUurgeschichte Beitrage, Berlin, 1903, p. 199 and ff. The passage of the pound
Honigberg, Thirty-fiveyears in the East (London, 1852) on the Yogi Haridas who was
buried for four months, is reproduced in the appendix of the Yoga An Introduction to
Philosophy (2nd ed., Allahabad, 1925 , p. 64-70) SIRS Chandra Bahadur Rai Vidyarnava.
Wilson (Skechtofthe Religious Sects of the Hindus, Calcutta, 1846, p. 133, note)-pared,
according to the ASTATIC Monthly Journal (March 1829), the story of a yogi who could
remain airborne for long periods ( twelve to forty minutes). He accepted anywhere repeat
this test, "not for money but for free." That same yogi could spend several hours under