Gosavi (Ascetic)
A very early postcard printed in India. Gosavi is a Marathi word that refers to someone who has renounced worldly pleasures and wears garments of the "brick-dust" color shown here.
Fakir
A Mountebank
A curious case of an Italian word finding itself stamped upon a postcard of a characteristic type in India (the fakir, in this case a mendacious one). Mountebank is an old word for a charlatan, or salesman of quack medicines.
The Fakirs at Benares, On the Bank of the Ganges. India.
An rare French postcard of Benares [Varanasi], featuring fakirs debating and listening with the ghats in the background.
Calcutta
A fourth card in Rossler’s 1897 lithographic series of Calcutta features a fakir, the male counterpoint to the nautch dancer. Above the fakir is his spiritual guide along lifelong wanderings, Lord Shiva.
A Mendicant Friar of Behar
A mendicant is a beggar, one who depends on the goodwill of others to survive. Looking at this short gentleman, one can imagine that he probably had little choice with at least one club foot and two walking sticks to get around, slowly.
A Mohamedan Fakir
John Campbell Oman (1841-1911), author of The Mystics, Ascetics and Saints of India (1903) describes the incident that made him take it upon himself to write this encyclopedic work towards the end of his life.
[Fakir Benares]
![[Fakir Benares]](https://www.paperjewels.org/sites/default/files/styles/square_thumbnail/public/slides/varanasi-fakir_0.jpg?itok=555f4V-m "[Fakir Benares]")
A fakir is a hermit who often lives in seclusion and devotes his life to religion.
A Fakir
Hobson-Jobson defines fakir as "s. Hind. from Arab. faḳīr ('poor'). Properly an indigent person, but specially 'one poor in the sight of God,' applied to a Mahommedan religious mendicant, and then, loosely and inaccurately, to Hindu devotees and
