The dicker with the Dom being concluded, the chief mourner lights a handful of dried reeds at his fire, hurries to the waiting pyre, walks seven times around it, and with the blazing reeds held in the right hand lights the mass at head and foot. The mourners then withdraw to a shaded spot beside a suttee structure, and silently watch the conflagration. In an hour all is over, and the ashes then are strewn far out on the surface of the Ganges and are borne from sight by the current.
From ten to fifteen corpses are disposed of at the burning-ghat daily, and several cremations are usually simultaneously in process. Now and then there is some demonstration of grief, but not often. I saw two men wade to a body in the river, when they pulled away the covering from the face and bathed it with handfuls of water scooped from beloved Ganga, and their every movement denoted affection. Again, I witnessed a tottering and sobbing old man place with every expression of tenderness a garland of yellow and white flowers about the neck of a corpse swathed in red, and imagined it the last office of love to an idolized daughter. I also observed the bare corpse of a man who an hour before had died of plague brought to the ghat by two public scavengers, and committed to the flames of a few logs much too short, until the slender legs had been doubled beneath the body. No sandal-wood perfumed this pauper's pyre, and no interment in potter's field was ever more perfunctory than his burning.
Social distinctions are as marked at the Benares burning-ghat as in the modern American cemetery. An hour spent on the Ganges bank supplies sufficient food to the mind for weeks of serious reflection.
One of the greatest spectacles of India is that of pilgrims bathing in the Ganges. From several ghats devoted to sacred ablutions numerous wooden piers extend into the worshiped stream, and these teem with pilgrims from every section of Hindustan, in every variety of costume, every stage of dress and undress, there to purge themselves of unclean thoughts and wicked deeds, and to wash away bodily impurities. Preaching canopies, shrines for rich and powerful rajahs, and stone recesses for those demanding solitary meditation, make of the river front a place literally teeming with humanity. Devotees are everywhere. Here a pundit is reading the holy law to a half hundred approving Hindus; there a stately chieftain from remote Kashmir ceaselessly mutters prayers beneath a huge spreading umbrella of thatched straw, hired from a Brahmin for an hour; and ten feet away a holy ascetic, naked in the scorching sun, smears his skin with the gray ashes of penitence.
Below this grotesque medley is the multitude of men, women and children, breast deep in the sanctifying Ganges. Thousands have come on foot from far-away villages of this boundless land of paganism; and from all goes up a continuous murmur of prayer and adoration, like a moaning wind emerging from a distant forest. Eye and ear alike are flooded with an indescribable rush of sensations, and the heart is oppressed with the august meanings which lie behind the awe-inspiring sight. All the Hindu-cults are here—the Ganges welds them in her holy embrace. But conspicuous above all others is the Brahmin priest, attracting annas and rupees in devious ways from enthusiasts dazed by the realization that they have bathed in Mother Ganga—some want a certificate of purity, others want seals placed on vessels of water to be carried to loved ones suffering from infirmities. The Brahmin gives certificate, places seals, and performs other acts enabling him to garner a harvest of silver and gold.
Now and again a moribund believer, whose friends seek for him something that may be construed as a last blessing, is hurried to the river's edge. It is a sacrament that cannot be delayed many minutes—and the Brahmin fortunate enough to be appealed to charges at emergency rates. When business slackens this harpy composes his nearly-naked body on a plank overlapping the river, and executes with studied deliberation a program of purification marvelous in detail. Receptacles of brass and silver are brought him, and for an hour or longer he rubs his handsome frame with unguents and perfumes, slowly stripes forehead, biceps and breast with the ash-marks of sanctity, and places a wafer of his caste on his forehead. Later he climbs the ghat to his favorite temple, probably content with the emoluments thrust upon him at the water side, or may be he goes to the bazaar to learn the latest gossip of religious and political India. It is in no sense a losing game to be a member of the Brahministic ring controlling things in Benares, for the flow of coin from the two hundred million Hindus is ceaseless.
BENARES HOLY MEN
A curious sight in Benares is the Monkey Temple, a pretentious and not inartistic structure of carved red sandstone dedicated to Kali, the goddess wife of Siva. The image of Kali within the temple is a black fury of hideous countenance, whose red tongue droops to the waist. She is dripping with blood, and crowned with snakes, while