The Boy Travellers in the Far East, Part Third / Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey to Ceylon and India; With Descriptions of Borneo, the Philippine Islands and Burmah

by Thomas Wallace Knox

"Before starting on our boat journey we stepped aside a short distance to see the famous Observatory of Benares. There is a tall flag-staff close by it, and the guide says that the flag waving from it is to indicate that this entire ward of the city belongs to the Rajah of Jeypoor, and that the observatory was erected by his ancestor, Rajah Jay Singh, about the year 1693. The observatory is now very much out of repair, and several of the instruments cannot be used at all. They claim that the Hindoo almanacs are made from the observations taken here, but it is more probable that they help themselves from almanacs of European make.

"The most of the instruments are of stone, and the guide explained their uses; but, as we are not learned in astronomy, we could not make much out of them. We went from the observatory to our boat, and then began our wonderful voyage before Benares.

"We passed in front of the burning ghaut, where three or four bodies were undergoing cremation. Evidently they are not as particular here as at Calcutta, as one of the men in charge of the business threw into the river, while we were passing, a lump of charred flesh that must have weighed several pounds. The sights were the same as at Calcutta, and you can easily understand that we did not stop the boat for a moment. The guide told us that they used to burn widows with their dead husbands at this ghaut, but it was not allowed any more, and had not been in his time. We asked how it was done, and he said the widow who had determined to be burnt was dressed in her finest clothes, and when the funeral pile was ready she lay down on it by the side of her husband, and was tied there with ropes so that she could not get away. Then the eldest son of the dead man came forward with a torch and applied it to the pile, which had been saturated with oil so as to make it burn quickly. As the flames arose the crowd raised a great shout and noise of drums and tom-toms, which they pretended was in honor of the heroism of the woman, but was really intended to drown her cries at the terrible pain of being burnt to death.

"The priests used to say that the woman who thus gave herself for a sacrifice would have 30,000,000 of years in paradise, while if she refused she would not get there at all. Before it was stopped the practice prevailed quite extensively; between the years 1815 and 1826, 7154 cases were officially reported, and there were more than twice that number that the Government never heard of. The laws of India are very severe upon it, and any person who takes part in a suttee or widow burning is liable to be tried and punished for murder in the first degree.

"To prove what he said about widows having been burnt here, the guide pointed out several slabs like gravestones, which had been erected to their memory, and it was said the women were burnt on the spots where these monuments stood. He said there were hundreds of them altogether around the various ghauts of Benares.

TEMPLE AT MANIKARNIKA.

"We landed at the Manikarnika ghaut to see several things of interest, and among others the holy well which is said to have been dug by Vishnu, one of the Hindoo gods. Thousands of pilgrims come to see it every year, and it is said to have the property of bringing immediate forgiveness for every crime, no matter what its character, to any one who washes in its water. The water has a disagreeable smell, but this does not deter the pilgrims who come to it; there is a flight of stone steps on each of the four sides leading down to the water, and these steps were placed there, according to the tradition, by Vishnu's own hands. Close by the mouth of the well are several altars where the pilgrims place their offerings; and if any of them are worth taking, they are carried away by the priests as soon as the worshipper's back is turned.

"The steps of the ghaut were crowded with pilgrims who had come there to bathe, and to say their prayers to the rising sun. The sun was just coming above the horizon as we reached the ghaut and paused to look at the multitude. There were many groups scattered along the ghaut, some of men and others of women, and they showed by their manner that the occasion was a solemn one. They left their heavy garments on the steps farther up, and walked down to the water's edge, clad only in white robes, and repeating their prayers as they went along. Some paused on the steps and stood motionless before small idols, and others, too poor to bring idols, placed little heaps of mud on the steps and worshipped them instead. They brought bunches of jasmine and other flowers to sprinkle on the steps and in the Ganges, and though the morning was frosty, and the water must have been cold, not one of them shivered in the least on entering the sacred river.