A CITY OF PRIESTS
Surely you have never before seen anything like this, there is nothing
to be seen like it anywhere else!
We are at Benares, the sacred city of the Hindus, which stands on their
sacred river, the Ganges. We have taken a boat and have floated out into
the current, and are looking up with amazement at the spectacle before
us. The city rises high on the banks, and towers and minarets and domes
of a curious long-drawn-out shape, glittering in the sun like gold,
arise out of the flat roofs. Down to the river at every opening between
the houses stretch stairways, as you know called _ghauts_, some broad
and some narrow. We judge that they are there, though we cannot see the
steps, for every inch is covered by a moving mass of people, clothed in
the colours of the rainbow. You have often turned a kaleidoscope over
and over, and watched the bits of coloured glass falling into strange
patterns. Half shut your eyes and make a tube of your hands and see if
this doesn't remind you of a kaleidoscope.
Thousands and thousands of people are passing and repassing up and down,
or sitting on every scrap of available building. They flow out over the
steps and down into the water itself. They are standing there knee-deep,
waist-deep, shoulder-deep, with hardly any clothes on their glistening
brown and yellow bodies, diligently throwing the water over themselves,
washing their long, straight, black hair in it, or even drinking it!
Ah, what is that gruesome object? Take care, don't touch it as it floats
by; it looks like a bit of charred stick, but indeed it is half-burnt
human bones!
We have already seen a few sacred rivers in our wanderings--the gigantic
Nile, the tiny Jordan, and now we see the Ganges, which in size comes
between the two, being one thousand four hundred and fifty-five miles in
length. Quite a respectable-sized river that! The Hindus regard it with
such reverence that they count bathing in it a religious act, and when
they die their one desire is to be burned beside it so that their bones
may be cast into its waters. If we row a little way up we shall see this
ceremony at the Burning Ghauts. There are funeral pyres of wood where
the relatives are carrying out the last offices for the dead. Some
prowling pariah dogs, of the lean yellow breed, and a few impertinent
crows are hovering about, hoping that some scraps may fall to their
share. The dead bodies are rolled up in white and red cloth and lie with
their feet in the blessed water awaiting their burning.
Men are bringing logs of wood to pile upon the pyres, others are poking
about in the ashes of the last burned to see if maybe an anklet or
ear-ring has fallen off and may be scavenged.
The red flames rise and lick up the sides, while the enveloping smoke
wreathes around the corpse. Remember that at one time the miserable
widow of the dead man would have mounted that gruesome throne and be
sitting there to be burnt alive. This is forbidden by law now, as indeed
it was forbidden by some of the wisest of the Indian kings too, only
until the British came there never was any power strong enough to
enforce it.
Benares is the religious capital of India; it takes the place that
Canterbury does with us, and it has been the place of pilgrimage for
generations.
We have met with Buddhists in Ceylon and Mohammedans in Egypt. There are
Buddhists among the natives of India too, though not many, considering
the population; there are many more Mohammedans, but by far the largest
number of the people, outnumbering the Mohammedans by three to one, are
the Hindus, and it is as a Hindu capital that Benares mainly exists.
British rule throws protection alike over all races and all religions;
never was there a broader based dominion; be a man a Hindu, Sikh,
Mohammedan, Parsee, Buddhist, or Christian, the law protects him in the
exercise of his faith so long as it does not lead to cruelty such as in
the burning of widows, or so long as it does not encroach upon the
rights of others.
The Hindu religion is an extraordinary one. At first sight, seeing the
jumble up of strange gods,--the cow-goddess, the monkey-god,
elephant-god, and others,--it seems rather to resemble the religion of
the ancient Egyptians, but it is not a real resemblance. The highest
idea of the Hindu, as of the Buddhist, is to pass out into a sort of
painless existence of nothingness. And to overcome the flesh and to
arrive at a placid state, where nothing matters, is attempted here on
earth by some. Some of the old men, fakirs as they are called, like the
one we met in Delhi, do astonishing things merely by force of an iron
determination. They will sit so long holding an arm in one position that
it shrivels. Others will lie for years on a bed of spikes. They eat very
little, live on charity, and are often lost in a state of trance.
[Illustration: A FAKIR.]
As we row slowly back along the river we see countless flat umbrellas,
like those known as Japanese umbrellas, studding the gay crowd; under
each one of these there is a "holy man," and there are thousands of them
altogether in this city, living on the offerings of the pilgrims.
Look at that fellow seated cross-legged on a plank running out into the
river. He pours water over his feet every now and again out of a little
copper bowl, and mutters something. He is so much absorbed in what he
is doing that he never looks up or turns his head. Another, close by,
has hung his gaily-coloured turban on a post and proceeds to unwind his
garment and cast it from him before he steps into the water with hardly
a rag upon him. This lady in an orange scarf, dripping wet, seats
herself on the end of the board, and winds a dry scarf round herself so
adroitly that it is like a conjuring trick; she stands up and the wet
one falls from her. She would get well paid as a quick-change artiste at
a music hall, and such a gift would be invaluable for bathing on the
Cornish coast!
The men along the edge are very jolly, they chatter all the time and
splash and wash and enjoy themselves. No English seaside place on a
trip-day can beat this crowd. The fact that dead bones and skulls are
constantly thrown into the water, and that the ashes of dead people, and
much else that is indescribably filthy, mingles with it, doesn't seem to
disturb them at all.
When you have wearied of watching them we will go and visit one of the
innumerable temples in the city, but we shall need a guide for that, as
it is not safe to wander in these streets alone.
No sooner have we landed and fought our way into one of the narrow
alleys, than the road is blocked by an enormous bull who stands placidly
before a greengrocer's stall sampling his wares. The man makes no
attempt to drive him away, but tries to tempt him by holding a choice
bunch of his best stuff. The beast has slavered over much that will be
sold for human food afterwards. What? A good smack on the flank! For
goodness' sake take care! The animal is supposed to be sacred; to touch
him would be to bring out all the inhabitants of these houses on to us
like a swarm of hornets. Luckily the beast is so well fed that he soon
moves on and we can get past.
Now we have reached the most important temple of all, known as the
Golden Temple, and as we pass into the cloisters we see a couple more
animals standing inside, as much at home as if they were in a byre,
which, indeed, the place smells like, with a strange scent of sweet
flowers on the top of it. It is a wonderful place, but oh, so dirty! It
is dedicated, of all things, to the poison-god, Shiva! It stands in a
quadrangle, roofed in, and above rise some of those curious elongated
domes we saw from the boat. If we climb up through that flower-stall
where blossoms are being sold for offerings, we can see these domes,
which really have cost a lot of money, as two of them are gilt all over;
the gilding keeps its glitter here and rises dazzlingly against the hot
sky.
There are other temples by the dozen and mosques too for the
Mohammedans. If we wander round we shall see many strange sights; in one
shrine is the image of the god Saturn, a silver disc, in another that of
Ganesh, the elephant-god, surely the most hideous of all! Look at him! A
squatting dwarf with an elephant's trunk! At another place is the image
of Shiva himself; it has a silver face, though made of stone, and
possesses four hands; it is guarded by a dog, and you can buy little
imitation dogs made of sugar anywhere near. There is even an image of
the goddess of smallpox, and if you ask why the Hindu chooses such
repulsive and revolting things to worship, the answer is, because he is
afraid. He says, "If the gods are good they will not injure me, but if
they are evil I must propitiate them!"
Everywhere we go we have copper bowls or even the half of coco-nut
shells thrust at us for offerings; the priests tolerate the strangers
entering their temples only because they hope to get something out of
them.
* * * * *
We are now far from Benares; we have left behind the narrow crowded
alleys, the violent smells, and the gay colours, and are in the train
speeding toward Calcutta, whence we will take a steamer to Burma. The
train has just stopped at a wayside station and there is a chance to
stretch our legs. Ramaswamy appears and tells us they are going to stop
here for a time. He doesn't seem to know why,--something about a sahib
is all we can gather,--so we get out and wander along the village
street. We have only gone a short way when we see a kind of litter
coming along slung on bearers' shoulders. It is screened by curtains,
and beside it rides a white man in a helmet, followed by natives. Why,
that is the very man who came up in the train from Delhi with us! I
wonder what he is doing here. That must be a sick woman in the litter.
This is evidently what the train was waiting for, so we might as well go
back.
We get to the station just in time to see the curtains pushed aside by
the sahib, who very tenderly and skilfully raises in his arms the sick
person inside, and supports him into the station. It is a gaunt
scarecrow of a man, a skeleton of a creature, whose big pathetic eyes
look dark in his hollow face. He is evidently very ill. He is
half-carried across to a carriage next to ours that has been prepared
for him, and is laid down on a couch on the seat, and it is not long
before we get under way again. Going out a little later on to the
platform between the two compartments we find our friend, the tall
Englishman, standing there smoking. He recognises us at once and asks us
about our experiences; it is not difficult to find out about the
invalid.
"One of the best chaps going," he says shortly. "Simply broken up by the
work he's been doing in the plague-camp up there. He is a doctor, so am
I, and I've just got back from leave. I went up-country to relieve
Jordan, but the work is nearly over, and I found him played out. He has
hardly had his clothes off for weeks. The difficulty is to persuade
these people to get out of their infected houses into a camp until the
place is made sanitary and the plague stayed. He was single-handed at
first, now there are two other men up there, so I can be spared to take
him down to the coast. He'll get over it; oh yes, he's got the turn now,
though he was nearly gone once or twice, but he'll never be the same man
again. He is invalided home for a bit, and the voyage will pull him up,
but even as he is he's sore at leaving it. He wants to finish his job."
"Then when you've left him at Calcutta you'll go back to the infected
district?"
"Yes, of course, why not? It's all in the day's work, and you know we've
actually had only thirty deaths in a month since the beggars were got
out into camp, and they were dying at the rate of hundreds a week
before. Grand, isn't it?" His face lights up with enthusiasm.
India is full of such men; they don't play for safety, they take their
lives in their hands at a moment's notice, and go blithely to grapple
with death.
[Illustration: BURMESE VILLAGE.]