We halted late that night at Buxar, far short of Allahabad, and took slower train next morning to Moghul Serai. For to have remained on board the express would have been to pass in the darkness the holy city of Benares.
The pilgrim train was densely packed with wildly-excited natives and their precious bundles. Not once during the seven-mile journey across the arid plateau did a vista of protruding brown feet greet us as we looked back along the carriages. The windows of every compartment framed eager, longing faces, straining for the first glimpse of the sacred city. To many of our fellow-travelers this twentieth of April had been in anticipation, and would be in retrospect, the greatest day of their worldly existence. For the mere sight of holy “Kashi” suffices to wipe out many sins of past decades. Even the gods of the Brahmin come here to consummate their purification.
Bankipur’s chief object of interest is a vast granary built in the time of the American Revolution to keep grain for times of famine. From its top the traveler catches his first glimpse of the Ganges
Women of Delhi near gate forced during the Sepoy rebellion. One carries water in a Standard Oil can, another a basket of dung-cakes
As we rounded a low sand dune, a muffled chorus of exclamations sounded above the rumble of the train, and called me to the open window. To the left, a half-mile distant, the sacred river Ganges swept round from the eastward in a graceful curve and continued southward across our path. On the opposite shore, bathing its feet in the sparkling stream, sprawled the holy city. Travelers familiar with all urban dwelling places of man name three as most distinctive in sky-line,—New York, Constantinople and Benares. The last, certainly, is not least impressive. Long before Gautama, seeking truth, journeyed thither, multitudes of Hindus had been absolved of their sins at the foot of this village on the Ganges. To the bathing ghats and shrines of the Brahmin the Buddhist added his temples. Then came the Mohammedan conquerors with new beauties of Saracenic architecture. In the toleration of British rule Jain and Sihk and even Christian have contributed their share to this composite monument to the world’s religions. Through it all, the city has grown without rhyme or reason. Temples, monasteries, shrines, kiosks, topes, mosques, chapels have vied with each other and the huts and shops of the inhabitants in a wild scramble for place close to the absolving waters of the Ganges, until the crescent-shaped “Kashi” of to-day lies heaped upon itself, as different from the orderly cities of the western world as a mass of football players in hot scrimmage from a company of soldiers. From the very midst of the architectural scramble, giving center to the picture, rise two slender minarets of the Mosque Aurunzebe, needing but a connecting bar to suggest two goal posts.
The train rumbled across the railway bridge and halted on the edge of the city. No engineering genius could have surveyed a line through it. We plunged into the riot of buildings and were at once engulfed in a whirlpool of humanity. Damascus and Cairo had seemed over-populated; compared with Benares, they were deserted. Where the chattering stream flowed against us, we advanced by short spurts, pausing for breath when we were tossed aside into the wares of bawling shopkeepers, or against a façade decorated with bois de vache. Worshipers, massed before outdoor shrines, blocked the way as effectually as stone walls. Cross currents of pilgrims, bursting forth from Jain or Hindu temple, bore us away with them through side streets we had not chosen to explore. Pilgrims there were everywhere, of every caste, of every shade, from the brass-tinted hillman to the black Madrasi, representatives of all the land of India from the snow line of the Himalayas to Tuticorin by the sea. Among them the inhabitants of Benares were a mere handful.
Sacred bulls shouldered us aside with utter indifference to what had once been the color of our skins. Twice the vast bulk of a holy elephant loomed up before us. On the friezes and roofs of Hindu temples monkeys wearing glittering and apparently costly rings on every finger scampered and chattered with an audacity that to the natives was an additional proof of their divinity.
We had been buffeted back and forth through the tortuous channels for more than an hour when a frenzied beating of drums and a wailing of pipes bore down upon us.