Returning to Benares from this intensely interesting spot, we dined at the Guest House with our American friend. The rooms were luxuriously upholstered and furnished from Europe, and were occupied by the Prince and Princess of Wales when they were here in 1905. The dinner was excellently cooked and served by native attendants, with the choicest wines and liquors.
There were some lovely old Indian miniatures on vellum framed and hanging on the wall of one of the salons, representing various scenes in the life of a Maharajah—a cock-fight, polo, reception of a foreign embassy (in Dutch seventeenth century costume), and other subjects, each full of charming details of architecture, dress and decoration. Besides these there were the usual official photographic groups, showing English officers, princes, and governor-generals grouped around the Maharajah—in one the Czar of Russia appeared. Indian carpets were on the floor, and English sporting prints on the walls of the dining-room.
The next day, January 23rd, His Highness’s secretary had arranged to send a carriage for us quite early (about 7 A.M.), to take us to see the ghats. When we reached the river side, which is a considerable drive from the Guest House, we found a beautiful state barge awaiting us. It was shaped and painted like a peacock, and had a little pavilion in the centre. In this lovely vessel we embarked, and glided slowly down the river with the stream, guided by the scarlet-jacketed oarsmen, with their long bamboo handled oars, and a broad steering paddle at the stern.
BENARES: VIEWING THE GHATS FROM THE MAHARAJAH’S PEACOCK BOAT
The spectacle of Benares from a boat on the Ganges is perhaps the most extraordinary sight in all India. At every ghat or opening to the river, down the great flights of steps, a throng of natives in all the colours of the rainbow press to the water’s edge. Some plunge in, some approach timidly, and very gradually submerge themselves. Their brown skins shining in the water. The men always have some sort of waist cloth on, but the women go in in their garments, or, at least, clad to their waists. All ages are there—it recalled the mediæval allegories of the Fountain of Youth. One does not often see infants dipped, though they are, occasionally, by their parents, and object to the water in the same natural and vigorous manner as European babies are apt to do at their baptism.
Old tottering women and men may be seen, as well as the young, strong and vigorous, all earnestly washing, or performing strange genuflexions with the most determined devotion. Characteristic features of this wonderful scene are the large matting umbrellas of the priests, who sit on small platforms of bamboo raised on the steps. These expect fees to be paid them by those who come to bathe at the ghats. Rows of snake charmers greet the traveller on landing at the ghats, who turn hissing cobras out of circular boxes and hold them aloft or twine them round their necks, or perhaps, as an extra attraction, empty out a swarm of scorpions to catch the eye of the stranger, all eager to perform the marvels of their art on the slightest encouragement—and a few rupees. Sacred zebu bulls wander about and often lie on the steps.
It seems strange that people should lave and drink of the water, which is fouled one would suppose by all sorts of impurities at the margin. Washing of clothes goes on everywhere, decayed flowers float along, even bodies of drowned dogs are seen occasionally. It must have been at Benares that Æsop’s fable of the two pots was born, for there the earthen and brazen vessels might quite possibly float down the stream together. Pots are scoured on the steps, and at the Burning Ghat they pour the ashes of the dead into the river.
WE SEE SNAKES AT BENARES