The best time to see this striking sight is at sunrise. Then the crowds are thickest, for all wish to enter the water at that instant when the sun springs into the cloudless Indian sky and pours a flood of golden splendour over the wide stream, and lights up the long row of temples and palaces which face him as he rises.
Viewed from a boat on the river, the scene is one of wonderful animation and of most brilliant colour. The broad stone steps come down the bank in stately sweep and vanish into the stream. They run on down to the river-bed, and the saying goes among the natives that the river is here so deep that it would cover the back of one elephant standing on the top of another. Each ghat is crowded with Hindoo worshippers, and their robes of bright and delicate colours make the flight of stairs look like a huge bed of flowers. But it is a bed where the flowers are on the move, and mingle with each other to form new pictures at every moment, ever-changing combinations of the most delicate pinks, blues, greens, yellows, of silk and muslin, with snowy turbans and white robes intermingled with the brighter shades.
At the foot of the great flight many worshippers are already in the water. The men cast aside their robes, and the sunlight strikes upon their brown bodies and makes them glitter like figures cast in bronze, and then flashes brighter still as the bronze glistens with the sacred water flung by the hands or poured from a brazen ewer; the women slip a bathing-robe over their shoulders, and then remove their ordinary dress, and not only bathe themselves but their garments also in the sacred water. Many of the devotees throw offerings of sandal-wood, betel, sweetmeats, and flowers into the stream, and some of them have great garlands of flowers round their necks. These have been worshipping at a temple which gives such garlands to those who frequent it, and now these worshippers go into the stream and bend lower and lower until the garlands are raised by the water from their necks and float away down the river.
At one place clouds of smoke rise into the air, and huge fires are burning fiercely. This is the burning ghat, where the dead bodies of Hindoos are burned, and their ashes cast into the sacred Ganges. Every Hindoo wishes for this, but only the rich can have their bodies carried to Benares; for the poor it is impossible. Yet, if the poor Hindoo has a faithful friend who is going on pilgrimage, this may, in some degree, be accomplished. A frequent sight is that of a man earnestly pouring into the water a stream of ashes from a brazen vessel. The ashes are those of a friend who has died far from the sacred river, and have perhaps been brought many hundreds of miles by the pilgrim.
BENARES. Page 46.
And so our boat might move along the stream past ghat after ghat and temple after temple, the steps packed with those who wish to bathe and those who have bathed. The latter spread out their clothes to dry in the sun, and sit near them, reciting prayers or reading sacred books or in the perfect silence of deep meditation, their bodies rigid and unmoving as figures cast in bronze. For miles this wonderful scene of devotion stretches along the river, and the bank is crowned with a broken line of minarets, domes, and towers, which rise against the deep blue of the sky.
The first thing for a pilgrim to do is to bathe. After that he must make the round of the city—a walk of about ten miles—and pay a visit to the temples. The ten-mile walk is more easily done than the latter task, so innumerable are the temples of the sacred place. Some, of course, are more famous than others, and every one goes to see the Monkey Temple, where offerings are made to a concourse of chattering monkeys; and the holy Golden Temple, whose dome is plated with gold, and whose shrine is always crowded with devotees. Near by is the Well of Knowledge, where the god Shiva is said to live, and this well is half filled with flowers thrown in as offerings to the god.
For twenty-five centuries Benares has been a holy city. Through this vast stretch of time an unceasing throng of pilgrims has swept to it across the great plain in which it lies. They bathe in the Ganges, and visit the temples. Then they depart for their distant homes, satisfied that they have set their eyes on the sacred places of their faith, and in sweep fresh thousands to take the place of each departing band.
CHAPTER XII