30 Biography of a Yogiwith a collection of plates offering visual depictions of the same, Oman’s work
attempts to situate these individuals in their cultural context to the best of its
author’s ability. Interestingly, Oman, more so than any other Western interpreter
of Yogis and their austerities, seeks to provide a rationale to make sense of these
activities beyond citing deluded belief in their salvific effects:
But the value of austerities for the attainment of practical ends, com-
mendable or the reverse, and the power for good or evil possessed by the
ascetic, are the considerations connected with asceticism which are most
deeply graven on the Indian mind; and this fact enables us to appreciate
the standpoint from which the Hindu looks up to the sadhu who has prac-
ticed, or may pretend to have practiced, austerities, as one who might help
him to gain his ends, or, on the other hand, might hurl a curse at him with
the most direful consequences.^24In short, the Yogi’s practice of austerities, which captivate the Western imagi-
nation with their surface shock factor, is embroiled in a much larger system of
power. These associations are obvious if one looks at the traditional role of Yogis
in South Asian popular lore and religious systems of practice, but such ideological
linkages do not always successfully translate into Western interpretations. In try-
ing to represent the logic of the “Indian mind,” Oman stumbles upon a millennia-
old association between the metaphysical power of tapas, or ascetic practice, and
Figure 1.1 “Bed of Thorns,” National Geographic 24 (1913)