Extremely beautiful was the constant procession along the causeway of the temple votaries in bright dresses, and the dazzling brilliance of the golden building itself reflected in the surface of the water, one moment as still as a mirror and the next all quivering in a thousand ripples.
I walked round the border of the tank past various other "Bungas," built by princes and rajahs for their use when visiting Amritsar, till I reached the side farthest from the causeway; here, entering a garden, I passed an enclosed well and came to the tall tower called Baba Attal and climbed its seven storeys.
When I had reached Amritsar the evening before the whole place was under a pall. Dense clouds of white dust, choking and almost intolerable, swept along on the wings of a strong wind, hiding the side of the road like a thick fog and even driving along the passage-ways and corridors of the hotel and entering at every door and window; so it was with anxiety that I looked out next morning and with much relief beheld bright sunshine through a clearer air. Though, however, the wind-storm had abated, as I stood on the top of the tower, a pall of dust still hung over the city spoiling what should have been a wide and distant view.
The tower was built to commemorate a son of the sixth Guru who recalled to life a playmate who had died. The Guru is said to have been very wroth with his son for this act, whereupon Baba Attal lay down and died saying he gave his own life to his friend. The inside walls of several of the storeys are covered with painted frescoes, and on one floor true fresco painting upon wet plaster was actually going on. Small boys were grinding the colours, and an artist of skill and invention was covering the surface with scenes of crowded life illustrating sacred stories. His naïveté made me think a little of Benozzo Gozzoli, especially in his frescoes at San Gimignano, but this work was on a very much smaller scale and, for an Oriental artist, strangely lacking in design.
I returned late in the afternoon to the flagged square facing the entrance gate through which the marble causeway leads across the water. I said the pavement was stone—it is all of marble. About it sat many flower-sellers, men in white, red and black robes with baskets heaped with orange-coloured marigolds, blue cornflowers, pink roses and scarlet poppies. The silver doors stand open, and through the white marble gateway a constant stream of people come and go along the causeway with its rows of golden lamps on short marble standards leading to the Golden Shrine itself in the middle of the water.
Close by, from octagonal marble bases rise two tall masts of gold, at least sixty feet high and ending in spear-heads; a yellow flag hangs from each, one pale canary colour and one dark like the marigold flowers. Ropes keep these masts firm, ropes with grand curves that sweep from the iron collars, necking the masts high up, to iron rings fixed in the surrounding buildings.
Under a little shrine in the wall sits a blind man. The water of the sacred tank may bring him inner vision, but to-day has no such virtue as to cure aggravated cataract. A stranger stops a moment at the shrine, and when he is gone the blind man rises and gropes with his hands to feel if any pice had been put down on the small marble ledge that projects before the painting of a Guru.
The sun has now just set and a light that seems to cast no shadows spreads and grows, suffusing all the scene in soft effulgence. Most of the women are dressed in long trousers, close fitting from the ankles to the knees and then bagging out loosely. They all have long veils which they wear like a hood; some are white but others scarlet, crimson, or orange, and some of green silk tissue strewn with silver stars and bordered with a ribbon of bright gold. It is the hour when even humble clothes take on luxurious tints, and richer stuffs show all their utmost beauty in enhanced perfection. One passes near wearing trousers of pale blue with silver pattern, a silk coat of deep rose-pink, and over all a veil of pale canary-coloured tissue painted with roses and bordered deeply with gold. I thought "Was Solomon in all his glory..." but just then some children playing with a ball butted against me in sudden collision, and at the same time I encountered a Sikh gentleman who claimed direct descent from the second Guru, spoke English softly, and in leisured talk deplored to me the vanity of women.
In front of the building called the Akal Bunga, which faces the entrance to the causeway, a great drugget stretched from the upper branches of a tree heavy with leafage to staples set in the wall. The leaves shook and the drugget swayed a little. Old priests with long white beards sat at large window openings chanting—thousands of windows were in sight, but never one pane of glass though sometimes wooden doors or gaily-painted shutters. A woman passed arrayed like some princess of mediæval France, wearing a golden head-dress shaped like a sugarloaf and tapering slenderly to a point whence yards of pale blue tissue floated in the air behind her. In the same clear air a child's kite high above caught glints of light. Oh! golden, golden hour, how often on a wistful thread my thought like that child's kite will float away, borne by easy airs of memory, into that distant scene and dream it all again!