Merthil Swami, the man who was chosen by Bhaskara to take his place in the Anundabagh after he died, does not abjure all clothing like his master, but was dressed in a long plain woollen gown. Smiling courteously, he received me on the veranda of the house in the garden where he had been talking to a number of young men. He has deep brown eyes, a wide forehead and a narrow chin somewhat disguised by a slight grey beard, and his skin is light in colour.
I asked Merthil Swami of the present state of Bhaskara, and Mahmud interpreted his answer:—"Bhaskara's spirit will be in no more man; he has gained Heaven and is with the god Brahma."
It must be a difficult task to wear the halo of a saint so generally revered as Bhaskara, and I was not surprised to hear that Merthil Swami is not yet as popular as his predecessor.
Late that evening a heavy hailstorm made terrifying play on iron roofs with large stones, and blustering weather continued the next day. I determined to try to paint in spite of it, and went early to the Aurungzebe Mosque. Far above the river on the paved space outside the mosque at the top of the great ghat, a fakir was sitting on a bed of iron nails. They were iron spikes about four inches long, and he perched on one end of the bed, with a loin-cloth which afforded considerable protection. As the spikes were very blunt and close together there seemed to me no great difficulty in the man's performance. For eight years, people said, he had sat there; but a few yards from him, under a peepul tree, was a low umbrella tent closed to the ground on every side, and into this the fakir is carried on his spike bed every night. Mahmud gave no account of him, and although I had no religious bias he looked to me a peculiarly nasty person. "He hides his money somewhere under the ground like other fakirs," Mahmud added, "and if it could be found after his death it would be Government property, as he would have no heir," which may or may not be true.
Swallows were flying back and forth in the mosque. The stone walls were whitewashed, and the ceilings within the cupolas were decorated with a dull red pattern on plaster once white and now a creamy grey. This is the mosque which shows from the river, with its minarets high up above the vast flight of steps of the Panch Ganga Ghat, the best known scene at Benares. I painted it from the water, but the wind was too strong to keep the boat still, even close to shore, while occasional sudden showers of rain increased the difficulties.
The last time I went upon the river at Benares was one evening just after sunset, when the clouds were dove-coloured above the long line of ghats and palaces, sweeping along in a majestic curve which continued above the white flat sand of the farther bank. Mahmud and I had reached the Ganges at the Assi Ghat, the farthest upstream, and on the opposite shore rose the palace of the Maharajah of Benares, one of the few buildings upon that side. A police boat was waiting—and leaving the carriage by a golden tract of mustard to drive round and pick us up lower down the river, we were taken swiftly down-stream by four Hindoo rowers. In the far distance over the curve of sand the Dufferin Bridge was visible. The water looked blue-green and clear, and I thought that evening the usual accounts of its pollution must be exaggerated. Swiftly the rowers urged the boat along till I stopped them at a palace of yellow sandstone, in which some old Delhi kings yet drag out with their harems and opium pipes squalid pensioned lives. We pulled up to the great steps called Sivati Ghat, where a man sat cleaning his goriaya, a Benares pipe. Pigeons were flying about the walls and cupolas above, and a faint rose-colour just flushed the clearer spaces of the sky. On the wall a marble tablet was inscribed:—
"This was the residence of Rajah Chait Singh where he was arrested by the order of Warren Hastings, on the 16th August, 1731 (sic), and where, on the same date, after the massacre of two companies of native troops with their British officers, he was rescued by his adherents."
There was the window by which Chait Singh escaped—he went off on an elephant.
Re-embarking we sped down the stream again past the Hanuman Ghat, above which showed the neem trees about the largest of the temples in Benares—that to Hanuman, the monkey-friend of Rama, who rescued Sita, his wife, from a king of Ceylon who had carried her away. On—past a little burning ghat called Masan with broken steps and past the Kedar Ghat and the building of one Tivwa, a rich Bengali, and a large charity house for fakirs, and past little lamps that floated on the water in front of a stone lingam on the wall. All along the edge of the river many similar lights were now twinkling. People were putting them to float for worship, lamps with butter and not oil in them. In the twilight lines of pilgrims were still distinguishable trooping along in robes of green and rose and white and purple. Temple music sounded, drums and cymbals and wind instruments. Against the walls like great targets hung now many of the huge mushroom-like grass umbrellas of the selling stalls. The same obese fakir I had seen the day before in the Golden Temple sat now gazing at the sacred river with a crowd of gapers watching as before.
We passed more neem trees, and then in rapidly increasing darkness once more approached the famous burning-ghat. One pile was almost burnt out, while another was flaming high. Two of the dead man's relations tended the fire; higher up the steps fifteen or twenty of his relatives and friends sat watching the last scene of his life's little drama.