Note 163 — Chapter XVI
Reading edition
It need hardly be said that the oft-quoted story of the European who came late and unobserved to the performance of an Indian Fakir, and from a distant tree saw him cutting up a pumpkin when the crowd saw him cutting up a child, is merely ben trovato. Nor, indeed, until we have contemporaneous accounts of these performances from carefully trained observers is there need of any such hypothesis to explain the feats of Indian jugglery. See Mr. Hodgson's article in Proc. S.P.R., vol. ix. p. 354.