attitude, daubed with ochre, the face flesh-colour and white; a statue
which is carried away every year by the floods and restored every year
in its pristine grossness.
The palace of the Rajah of Nagpoor, with its two towers, overlooks the
river from above a broad stairway. A balcony quite at the top is
supported on a massive cornice lightly carved into acanthus leaves. The
damp has subdued the red colour of the building, fading it especially at
the base, and from a distance it might be fancied that a veil of thin
gauze had been hung over the palace, and fastened beneath the carved
parapet.
On the bank of the river, where there are no more steps, only beaten
earth, in a little raised pit a pile of wood was slowly dying out. A man
with a cane raked back the sticks as they fell and rolled away. A
squatting crowd were waiting till their relation was altogether consumed
to cast his ashes on the sacred waters.
Then a girl's body was brought out, wrapped in white muslin; the bier,
made of bamboo, was wreathed with marigolds, and on the light shroud
there were patches of crimson powder, almost violet. The bearers, on
reaching the river, placed the body in the water, leaving it there for a
time.
A little way off an old man was wrapping the naked body of a poor woman
in a white cloth; then he fastened it to two poles to dip it in the
river; finally, with the help of another Sudra, he laid the corpse on a
meagre funeral pile, and went off to fetch some live charcoal from the
sacred fire which the Brahmins perpetually keep alive on a stone terrace
overlooking the Ganges. He carried the scrap of burning wood at the end
of a bunch of reeds, and, praying aloud, walked five times round the
pyre, which completely concealed the body. Then he gently waved the
bunch of reeds, making them blaze up, and placed them beneath the wood,
which slowly caught fire, sending up dense curling clouds of white
vapour and slender tongues of flame, creeping along the damp logs that
seemed to go out again immediately. But suddenly the fire flared up to
the top of the pile; the flesh hissed in the flame, and filled the air
with a sickening smell.
The maiden was placed on a very high pile of saplings and dry crackling
boughs. Her father fetched the sacred fire, and then, with the same
ceremonials and prayers, set light to the wood, which flashed up in a
golden glow with a sweet odour. The flame rose clear against the sky for
a long time before the smell of her burnt flesh mingled with that of the
poor woman, whose limbs, under the action of the heat, seemed to stretch
to an inordinate length. One arm, sticking out from the fire, seemed to
clench its fist, which was bright yellow, as if it would clutch at
something; and then all was consumed--the wood pile fell in, the skull
cracking with a dull snap, and nothing was left but a heap of embers,
into which the attendants raked the cinders that rolled down the sloping
bank.
The old woman's bones and ashes were cast into the Ganges, her husband
still vacantly looking on, as all that was left of his life's companion
floated for a few moments, and then was swallowed up in an eddy.
On the remains of the pyre was placed a corpse of spectral emaciation,
which had been lying at the top of the bank since the day before for its
turn, as a pauper, to be cremated at the cost of the municipality. The
head alone was wrapped in a wretched rag, and creeping flies formed a
cuirass on the dark skin, already torn in places by the kites. Petroleum
was poured over the hapless body, and it flared up with the wood in a
livid pink and green blaze, sending up a cloud of acrid red smoke.
And so on, in an endless file, come the bodies of the faithful dead,
some from long distances, so that their souls may rise at once to
paradise from their ashes burnt on the Manumenka.
A dome of smoke hangs like a vault over the fires, motionless, veiling
the sun. The relations of the dead, sitting on their heels, gaze at the
flames with an expression almost of indifference; no one weeps, and they
converse calmly in no subdued tones.
The pile of the girl with marigold wreaths and the shroud stained
crimson and purple flung her ashes to the winds, reduced to mere atoms
of bone and light cinder, and the servants of the place drowned a few
still glowing sticks in the river; the family and friends slowly went
up the yellow stone steps and disappeared through a gateway leading into
the town.
The attendants threw water on the pauper's pyre, and then with their
long bamboos pushed the mass of burnt wood and flesh into the Ganges,
where it looked like some enormous black frog with a white patch for the
head.
They shoved it under water, but it presently rose to the surface and
floated down the stream, followed by a flock of hawks that snatched at
the burnt remains and fought over them in the air, while crocodiles
below swam up and snapped at them, dragging them down in their enormous
jaws, which appeared for a moment above the water.
By the side of the Manumenka stand two stelæ, on which two carved
figures, represented as surrounded by flames, preserve the memory of the
time when the funeral pyre consumed the living wife with the dead
husband.
In the town, at a spot where several alleys meet, stood a mob of people
holding out the ends of their sarees or dhotis to catch handfuls of
grain which a kshatriya was throwing to them from a window, though he
looked almost as ragged as the beggars collected in front of the house.
Close to a shop where I was bargaining for some old bronzes, in an open
booth, and quite alone among the metal jars and trays, sat a boy of
four, his only garment a green silk jacket bordered with blue velvet,
stitched with silver thread; there was nothing between the little vest
and his bright bronze skin. He had a blue cap embroidered with gold, and
his eyes were darkened with khol. He was drawing lines very neatly on a
slate, and then wrote beneath them the pretty Hindoo letters that look
like cabalistic signs, saying them as he went on, _pa_, _pa_, _pa_,
_pi_, _pi_, _pi_, _paï_, _paï_, _paï_, _pom_, _pom_, _pom_, till at
last, seeing that I was looking at him and smiling, quite fascinated by
his pretty ways, he burst out laughing, a hearty, happy, baby laugh, and
then gravely went on with his business again.
Then, under a portico in front of us, a man began to undress. He threw
off his dhoti and his sarong, keeping on his loin-cloth only. With
outstretched arms he placed a heavy copper pot full of water on the
ground, took it up between his teeth, and without using his hands
tilted his head back till the water poured all over him in a shower,
which splashed up from the pavement, sprinkling the spectators in the
front row. Next he tied his dhoti round the jar, which he refilled, and
fastened the end to his long hair. Then, simply by turning his head, he
spun the heavy pot round him. It looked as if it must pull his head off,
but he flung it faster and faster till he presently stopped.
There were people performing their devotional ablutions below stream
from the place of burning, and one old man took a few drops of water in
the hollow of his hand and drank it, quite close to a shapeless black
mass at which a kite was pecking as it floated by.
At sunset, when the glow fired the stones to a semblance of transparent,
burning light, at the top of one of the flights of steps rising from the
river to the town, and in front of a gate with large brass nails,
glittering like sparks, the figure appeared of a holy beggar in yellow
rags, with a copper jar blazing with reflected light; he was set in a
halo of gold, and looked like the vision of some pagan god. He stood
motionless for a long time, and then, as the last sunbeam went out, he
vanished beyond the fire-studded gate, while all the scene faded into
rosy lilac, rapidly dying into blue night.
A distant noise of tom-toms--big drums thumping out minims in the bass,
small ones rattling out semiquavers in very short, sharp notes; and to
this accompaniment came the sharp trill of a metal flute. The music came
nearer at a brisk pace, heralded by two tall baggage camels, a rare
sight in Benares, where the streets are so narrow and straight, and only
foot passengers are to be seen. Then followed saddle-horses, led by
hand, and a large number of men on foot, and after an interval there
appeared a band, atrociously out of tune, immediately in front of a
palankin hung with a shawl embroidered all over in palms of different
shades of gold and beads. In this sat a little bridegroom of eight,
dressed in pale yellow satin, a wreath of marigolds round his neck, and
above his turban a cap made of jasmine, the ends hanging all round his
head--a little bridegroom, eight years old, very solemn, sitting
cross-legged with a huge bouquet in his hand, and facing him his two
little brothers in white silk and necklaces of jasmine.
In the evening the priest would say prayers over the couple--the bride
being probably about five--and the bridegroom would stay with the little
bride's parents. Next day she would spend with the boy's parents, and
after that they would both go back to their lessons and probably never
meet again, unless they were very near neighbours, till he, having
attained the age of fifteen, they would be really married.
The Maharajah of Benares sent his carriage this morning to take me to
him. We went to the Ganges, where a palankin was in waiting to carry me
across the narrow strip of sand between the road and the boat, escorted
by a worthy who held a tall red umbrella, fringed with gold, over my
head.
The barge was screened by a crimson awning and rowed by four men in red.
The water, a broad sheet of silky sheen, seemed motionless, and in the
distance, under a soft, powdery haze, Benares showed like a mass of dim
gold, the two slender minarets of Aurungzeeb's mosque towering above the
town.
We landed at Ramnagar, a marble palace looking like a fortified town,
its massive walls rising from the river and crowned by balconies and
fairy kiosks--a lacework of stone against the brilliant sky.
A crowd of servants in red came down the flight of steps to the
landing-place, and stood on each side, while at the top the Maharajah
stood to receive me, in a tunic of yellow brocaded with silver, and silk
trousers of various shades of violet and gold tissue; his turban was
quite small, with an aigrette and a spray of diamonds.
From the open loggia at the end of the vast reception-room, lined with
white marble and hung with thick carpets, there was an extensive view
over the green plain inundated with water and sunshine to the holy city
of dazzling domes that looked as if they had just risen from the Ganges.
The air was full of heady fragrance; the Rajah described the springtide
festivals, barges carrying troupes of dancing bayadères on the Ganges
sparkling with a myriad lights.
Instead of the usual wreath of flowers for my neck the Rajah gave me a
necklace of silver threads, to which hung a little bag of purple and
green silk, closely embroidered, and looking like a scent-sachet, or a
bag to hold some precious amulet.
We drove across a succession of parks to visit Sumer Mundir, a too
elaborately carved temple, the panels representing scenes from the
Ramayana set in ornamental borders. On the roof, which bristled with
sculptured stone, thousands of blue pigeons were perched asleep, their
iridescent plumage scarcely stirring in the sunshine. Beyond a tank at
the end of the park was a palace in the Arab style with incredibly
delicate ornaments of wrought marble, open halls painted in subdued
colouring, and lighted by the golden reflections from the water. The
pool had steps all round it, in which crowds seat themselves on the
occasions of pilgrimage, and far away the enchanting vision of Benares,
the holy city, in every shade of amber and honey.
Then into a garden with a number of quite narrow, straight paths
bordered with nasturtiums, tall daisies, and geraniums, while a tangle
of jasmine, china roses, bougainvillea, and poinsettia flourished freely
under the shade of tamarind and palm trees. Over a clump of orange trees
in blossom a cloud of butterflies was flitting, white patterned with
black above, and _cloisonnés_ beneath in red and yellow with fine black
outlines.
As we returned past a village--a hamlet of houses gathering round a well
surmounted by a kiosk shading a gaudy idol crowned with red pinks--a
perfectly naked fakir, his straight black hair bound twice round his
head like a turban, stood basking in the sun, leaning against a wall,
and chanting in a rapid monotone, while two babies, under the shade of a
fan-palm leaf, stared up at him and sucked their thumbs.
Then the sunset, in the furnace of heavy purple and red, reflected in
the water in fiery copper-colour streaked with violet, till soon it all
faded together, to gold, to lemon-colour; the mist rising from the river
spread over all the country, and everything looked the same in the
cloudless gloom. One quarter of the sky glowed faintly, through the haze
a crimson globe rose into view, the moon appeared, and soon lighted up
all the sky with a soft greenish glow, pallid but deep, lying on the
tranquil Ganges in broad rippling sheets of gold and green, spangled
with light where a fish leaped, or a white bird dipped its wing as it
skimmed swiftly across without a sound. The gold grew cold and dead, the
moon turned to steel against the intensely blue sky, to cold blue steel
on the lustrous face of the waters.
We went into the observatory, where the servants were sleeping in the
open air on camp beds, lying across each other and blocking the
entrance. I went to gaze at the north star, looking very small, a tiny
spangle of blue in the blue velvet sky, visible at the top of a crazy
flight of steps that goes up to nowhere in the air from the topmost
terrace.
Down in the streets the houses looked ghostly blue in the moonlight, the
cross roads, lighted with the warmer glow of a few lamps in red paper
shades, alternating with the black darkness, in which it was just
possible to discern cows and goats lying on the ground.
Near a temple some bells and tom-toms animated the silence with their
clang and clatter. Worshippers stole in noiselessly, barefoot on the
stones, and entered the sanctuary, within which tapers were burning.
Further away, in another quite small temple, a young Brahmin robed in
white, and very handsome, was reading the Ramayana to two women; the
three quite filled the little building. The entrance was screened by a
curtain composed of jasmine flowers threaded on fine string, and behind
this veil of flowers the three figures looked like the creatures of a
legend. Outside the sanctuary, seated on the steps and flagstones and
obstructing the street, were a score or so of women redolent of lemon
and sandal-wood, and listening to the scripture distinctly chanted out
by the young priest.
In the street were bayadères, and women at every window, the pretty
faces brightly illuminated, the plainer in a skilfully subdued light.
The sound of tom-toms and pipes could be heard, and the guttural,
quavering song of a dancing beauty performing for some amateur; quite
young boys were wandering about the street, almost children, all in
white. Where the roads met, a mosque was illuminated in honour of this
month of Ramadan, and the believers were trooping out in a crowd.
A woman on the river-bank was flinging into the water, with devout
unction, scraps of paper on which the name of Rama was written, rolled
up in a paste made of flour. Not far from her another woman was praying;
she stopped to wash her copper cooking-pots, then prayed again; gave her
baby a bath, and then, squatting on the lowest step, prayed once more,
and for a long time, after which she picked up her pots and her little
one and went her way.
On the shore, on the steps in front of the temples and round the holy
images, in short, everywhere on this day, red powder was sprinkled to
inaugurate the month just beginning; a beggar, to secure the favour of
the gods, had smeared his head and hands with it.
And once more in a barge on the Ganges. The atmosphere seemed faintly
iridescent, like mother-of-pearl, the silence serenely lulled by the
distant sound of a flute. The palaces and temples, reflected in the
still water, looked in the distance like forts crowned with turrets of
gold, and their little windows like loopholes. The broad stairs of the
quays, where the priests' umbrellas glitter, assumed a spacious,
unfamiliar dignity, the red colour shading paler towards the bottom,
where it was washed off by the lapping Ganges, looking as though a fairy
hanging of gauze were spread under the wavelets in honour of the Apsaras
and the divinities of the river.
A kshatriya, a very old man, had seen me yesterday returning from
Ramnagar with my necklet of silver threads. Convinced by this that I
must be "a Europe Rajah," he tormented me to grant him a title. He
wanted to be Raj Bahadur; this was the height of his ambition. After
following me about the bazaar all the morning, he sat for a long time in
my room. So, to get rid of him, seeing that he persisted in hoping that
I should call him Raj Bahadur, I did so; this, however, did not satisfy
him: I must write it down on paper. At last I consented. Quite delighted
now, he went off to shout the words to his friends, who had been waiting
for him in the garden, and then, very solemn, and conscious of his new
dignity, he disappeared down the road.
At the station pilgrims again, bewildered, shouting, rushing about in
search of their lost luggage. One group presently emerged from the
crowd, led by a man bareheaded, who rang a big bell with great
gesticulations, his arms in the air, and the whole party marched off
towards the temples in silent and orderly procession.
Then, from a bridge across the Ganges, for a moment we had a last
glimpse of the sacred city--the gold-coloured umbrellas, the throng of
bathers on the steps to the river--and then Abibulla gravely remarked,
"If only India had three cities like Benares it would be impossible ever
to leave it."
ALLAHABAD
In a wonderful garden, amazing after the sandy waste that lies between
Benares and Allahabad--a garden of beds filled with flowers showing no
leaves, but closely planted so as to form a carpet of delicate, blending
hues--stand three mausoleums, as large as cathedrals, in the heart of
cool silence, the tombs of the Sultan Purvez, of his father Khusru, and
of his wife, the Begum Chasira.
High in the air, in the first mausoleum, at the head and foot of the
white marble cenotaph, covered with letters that look like creepers, are
tablets bearing inscriptions which record the life of the hero; and
above the sarcophagus rises an almost impossibly light and airy
structure--a canopy of white marble supported on columns as slender as
flower-stems.
In the Begum's tomb the sarcophagus is on the ground, surrounded by a
pale-tinted mosaic pavement. The windows, screened by pierced stone,
admit a rosy light, and the walls are painted to imitate Persian tiles,
with tall Cyprus trees in blue and green. Incense was burning in one
corner, the perfume mingling with that of the flowers, wafted in at
every opening. Doors of massive cedar, carved with the patience of a
bygone time, rattle on their hinges as the wind slams them to, but still
endure, uninjured by ages.
There was nobody in the garden of the mausoleums, not even the usual
obsequious and mendicant attendant. Only by the tomb of Purvez a moollah
was kneeling in prayer, motionless, and wrapped in some very light white
material, which the wind gently stirred and blew up. All the time I was
examining the mausoleums he prayed on, prostrate, immovable; and even
from afar, from the road, I could see him still, like a stone among the
marble work, at the feet of the hero who sleeps his last in mid-air.
The fort of Allahabad, the fort of the mutiny of 1857, is a complete
citadel where, in the thickness of the walls, behind screens of acacia
trees, lurk doors into palaces. Among the gardens there are clearings
full of guns and ambulance waggons, and enormous barracks and huts for
native soldiers. Then on the ponderous stonework of the ramparts rise
little kiosks in the light Hindoo-Mussulman style, elaborate and
slender, built by Akbar the conqueror, who took Prayag and razed it, to
build on the site a city dedicated to Allah. And now modern architecture
is slowly invading it, adding to the flat walls which hide under their
monotony the gems of stonework with their elegant decoration.
From the parapet of one of the bastions the Ganges may be seen in the
distance, of a sickly turquoise-blue, shrouded in the haze of dust which
hangs over everything and cuts off the horizon almost close in front of
us, and the tributary Jumna, translucent and green. At the confluence of
the rivers stands a native village of straw and bamboo huts, swept away
every season by the rains. This is Triveni, containing 50,000 souls,
which enjoys a great reputation for sanctity, and attracts almost as
many pilgrims from every part of India as does Benares. The people come
to wash away their sins in the Saravasti, the mystical river that comes
down from heaven and mingles its waters at this spot with those of the
sacred Ganges and the Jumna. The faithful who bathe at Triveni observe
an additional ceremony and cut their hair; each hair, as it floats down
stream in the sacred waters, effaces a sin, and obtains its forgiveness.
In front of the barracks, a relic of past magnificence, there stands
alone on a porphyry pedestal, in the middle of a broad plot trampled by
soldiers on parade, an Asoka column carved with inscriptions to the top,
and decorated half-way up with a sort of capital.
Fakirs, holding out their begging-bowls as they squatted round an
opening in the ground, showed that it was the entrance to a temple; a
few steps down, a long corridor with little niches on each side, and
then hall after hall full of grimacing gods, lighted up by our guide's
torch, till at last we reached an immense vault where impenetrable
darkness filled the angles lost in a labyrinth of arcades converging to
some mystery. Here all the Hindoo gods, carved in stone, have been
crowded together, with their horrible contortions, their stolid
beatitude, their affected grace; and in their midst is a huge idol,
hacked with a great cut by Aurungzeeb, the Moslem emperor, at the time
of his conquest. Suddenly all about us was a crowd of Brahmins,
appearing from what dark corners we could not discover. They looked
nasty and half asleep, and vanished at once with a murmur of whispered
speech that hung about the galleries in an echo.
At the entrance into one of the chapels is the trunk of an _Akshai bâr_
or _bô tree_, a kind of fig such as the Buddhists place in front of
their sanctuaries. The tree is living in the subterranean vault, and
after thrusting its head through the heavy layer of stones forming the
roof of the temple, it spreads its branches under the light of day.
Endless absurd legends have grown up about the mystery of this tree,
which is said to be no less than twenty centuries old; and my guide, who
talks aloud in the presence of the idols he despises, being a
Mohammedan, bows reverently to the tree and murmurs, "That is sacred;
God has touched it."
LUCKNOW
A vision of Europe. Cottages surrounded by lawns under the shade of tall
trees, and against the green the scarlet coats of English soldiers
walking about. And close about the houses, as if dropped there by
chance, tombs covered with flagstones and enclosed by railings, and on
all the same date, June or July, 1857. Further away, under the trees,
are heaps of stones and bricks, the ruins of mosques and forts, hardly
visible now amid the roots and briars that look like the flowery
thickets of a park, varied by knolls to break the monotony of the level
sward. In the native town that has grown up on the site of the palace of
Nana Sahib, built indeed of the ruins of its departed splendour, dwell
a swarm of pariahs, who dry their rags and hang out clothes and reed
screens over every opening, living there without either doors or
windows, in utter indifference to the passer-by.