The Critic in the Orient

by George Hamlin Fitch

Bathing and Burning the Dead at Benares

It is estimated that one million pilgrims visit the sacred city of Benares every year, and it is these pilgrims that furnish the largest income which the city receives from any source. Here are the most holy shrines of Buddhism; here Vishnu and Siva have their strongholds, and here must come Hindoos from all parts of India to bathe in the sacred waters of the Ganges and to offer up prayers at the many holy shrines in the city's temples.

Benares is sacred because here Buddha first made his residence. The place that he selected was ancient Sarnath, six miles from Benares, which is now a heap of ruins, in which British government experts are delving for remains of the great city that was founded six centuries before the Christian era. At Sarnath Buddha built a great temple and founded a school from which his disciples spread to all parts of India. But after 750 A.D. Buddhism disappeared gradually from India, and Hindooism took its place. The fine temples that now line the Ganges for three miles were built by Maratha princes in the seventeenth century. They also built the scores of bathing ghats that now furnish one of the most picturesque spectacles that the world affords. A ghat in Hindustani is a stone stairway that leads down to the water, and Benares has a succession of these magnificent stairways leading down to the Ganges, overlooked by palaces of many Maharajas and temples built by rulers and priests. No sight more splendid could be conceived than that of these domes and minarets flashing in the rays of the early morning sun while thousands of devout believers crowd the bathing ghats and offer prayers to Vishnu, after they have bathed in the waters of the Ganges; and mourning relatives burn the bodies of their dead after these have had the sacred water poured over their faces.

Hindoos Bathing in the Ganges at Benares. This is a View of the Dasaswamedh Ghat, the Most Popular Bathing Place in the Sacred City. Note the Holy Men Under the Umbrellas, Who Take Tribute of All Bathers

The visitor who wishes to see the pious Hindoos bathe in the Ganges goes to the river in the early morning soon after the sun has risen. He descends one of the large ghats and takes a boat, in which he may be rowed down the river past the bathing ghats and the one ghat where the dead are burned. The scene is one that will never be forgotten. Against the clear sky is outlined a succession of domes and spires that mark the position of a score of sacred shrines, with two slender minarets that rise from the mosque built by the great Moslem Emperor, Aurunzeb. The sunlight flashes on these domes and spires and it lights up thousands of bathing floats and stands that line the muddy banks of the river. The floats are dotted with hundreds of bathers and the number of these increases every few minutes. They come by hundreds down the great stone stairways to their favorite bathing places, where, after a thorough bath, they may be shaved or massaged or may listen to the expounding of the Hindoo sacred books by a learned Brahmin sitting in the shade of a huge umbrella. A characteristic feature of this hillside is the number of these large umbrellas, each of which marks the place of a priest or a holy man who has done some marvels of penance that give him a strong hold on the superstitious natives and induce them to pay him well for prayers or a sacred talisman.

With my boat moored near the bank and directly opposite the Manikarnika ghat, the favorite place on the river, I watched the stream of bathers for nearly an hour. The fanatical devotion that will induce a reasonable human being to bathe in the waters of the Ganges seems incredible to anyone from the Western World. The water of the sacred river is here of the consistency of pea soup. The city's sewer pipes empty into the Ganges just above the bathing ghats, and the current carries this filth directly to the place which the Hindoos have selected for their rites. The water is not only muddy and unclean, but it offends the nose. Yet Hindoos of good family bathe here side by side with the poverty stricken. They use the mud of the Ganges in lieu of soap; they scrub their bodies thoroughly, and then they actually take this foul-smelling water in their mouths and clean their teeth with it. This creed of Buddha is a pure democracy, for there is no distinction of class in bathing. Women bathe by the side of men, although they remain covered with the gauze-like garments that are a sop to modesty.

The Manikarnika ghat is the most picturesque of all these bathing places along the Ganges, as the long flight of stone steps is in good preservation and the background of temples and palaces satisfies the eye. The river front for thirty feet is densely crowded with bathers who stand on small floats or go into the shallow water. With a Western crowd so dense as this there would be infringments of individual rights that would lead to quarrels and fights, but the Hindoo is slow to anger, and, like the Japanese, he has great courtesy for his fellows. Hundreds bathed at the ghat while I watched them and no trouble ensued. Nothing could be more striking, nothing more Oriental than the picture of scores of bathers, in bright-hued garments, moving up and down these long flights of massive steps. In the background were a half-dozen temples, the most noteworthy of which is the red-domed temple of the Rajah of Amethi, whose beautiful palace overlooks this scene. Near the water is a curious leaning temple, whose foundations were evidently unsettled by the severe earthquake which destroyed several temples farther down the river.

The busiest men on these bathing ghats are the Hindoo priests, who reap a harvest from the hundreds of pilgrims who visit the ghats during the day. These priests cannot be escaped by the poorest Hindoo. They levy toll from every one who descends these long flights of stairs. One fellow I watched as he sat under his great umbrella. He had his sacred books spread before him, but he was given no leisure for reading them, as a constant stream of clients passed before him. Some of these were regular daily visitors from Benares, who pay a certain rate every week or every month, according to their financial standing. Others were pilgrims who, in their enthusiasm over the sacred Ganges (which they had traveled hundreds of miles to bathe in), were not careful in regard to their fees. Others were mourning relatives who applied for prayers for the corpse which they had brought to the waterside, and still others demanded hurried prayers for the dying, whose last breath would be drawn by the bank of the sacred river. Incidentally the priests sold charms and amulets guaranteed to bring good fortune. Most of the payments were in copper pice, four of which make one of our cents, but many of these priests had great heaps of this coin in front of them, showing that though India may be suffering from a bad harvest the faker may always feed on the fat of the land.

The spectacle, however, which stamps Benares upon the memory is the burning of the dead at a ghat by the Ganges. This ghat is reserved exclusively for the cremation of Hindoo dead. No Mussulman can use it. It was about eight o'clock in the morning when my boat reached this burning ghat. Already one body had been placed on a funeral pyre of wood. The guide said this body was that of a poor man who had no relatives or friends, as the place where the relatives sit until the cremation is complete was empty. Soon, however, two men came rushing down the stone steps with a corpse strapped to a bamboo stretcher. The body was that of a woman, dressed in red garments, which signified that she was a married woman. Unmarried women are arrayed in yellow and other colors, while men must be content with white. The stretcher-bearers placed their burden with its feet in the Ganges and then went in search of wood which is purchased from a dealer. Soon they had a supply, which they piled up in the form of a bier, and on this they placed the woman's corpse. Then one of the men, who, the guide said, was the dead woman's husband, with tears streaming from his eyes, bore some of the water of the Ganges to the bier, exposed the face of the dead and poured the sacred water upon her mouth and her eyes. Then while his companion piled wood above the body the husband sought the low-caste Hindoos who sell fire for burning the body. He soon returned with several large bundles of coarse straw, one of which was smoking. Seven times the husband passed around the bier with the smoking straw before he applied the flame to the wood. The fire licked greedily at the wood, and soon the flames had reached the body. Then the husband and his friend repaired to a stand near by, from which they watched the cremation.