At the Burning Ghat they pile up logs of wood to form the pyre, and the white turbaned dark figures, with nothing on but waist cloths, are kept busy at their ghastly work. Some of the bodies are brought down with flowers and chanting: others lie there with no following or ceremony: some are swathed in red or white cloth like mummies, others as they were born are lifted on to the piles of logs, which being set alight, soon reduce all to the same condition. Some of the bodies are carefully dipped in the Ganges before being burned, and are often left at the water’s edge while the pyre is being prepared. Wood was placed over as well as under the bodies, and a torch was put to the mouth. Other bodies, again, are taken out in boats unburned and apparently dressed and seated in chairs, and suddenly in mid-stream are toppled over into the water. We saw an old man disposed of in this way. Our boatman pointed him out as a specially holy person, and we did not realise he was a corpse. The bodies of infants, swathed in white, are also treated in this way.
The Maharajah’s secretary explained that the Ganges water had been analysed by European experts and pronounced to be the best water in the world, having a peculiar property of destroying the germs of disease. It was difficult, however, to see how even “the best water” could avoid getting fouled with such operations constantly going on; but of course there is a strong stream all the time, so that everything must eventually be carried down to the sea.
A continuous many-coloured stream of pilgrims, bearing huge bundles of bedding, were constantly moving along behind this busy life of the bathing ghats, ascending or descending the great flights of steps leading up through the various gates to the city. It seemed to be part of that universal exodus we had witnessed at every railway station in India. It is said that representatives from every village in the peninsula may be found at Benares.
Then, as a no less striking background to these extraordinary human groups, rise the domes of temples and minarets of palaces, their golden vanes and finials glittering against the deep blue sky. Windows, balconies and terraces placed high up, with vast walls below them. These great walls, which give so much distinction and breadth to the river front of Benares, have a practical reason, inasmuch as it is a necessity thus to raise the temple and palace floors, owing to the sudden rising of the Ganges in the rainy season, when these walls are sometimes hidden in the waters.
The musical accompaniments of the spectacle consist in the weird and wandering notes which issue from the temples, produced by a sort of hautboy, and the subdued thud of the tom-toms. I saw a dusky long-haired fakir stand on the steps at the Mahikarunika ghat and sound a long straight brass trumpet.
After voyaging in the peacock boat the whole length of the ghats, we returned to our carriage-in-waiting at a convenient point from which to approach the Golden Temple. From the main street of the Bazaar we were conducted by the secretary down a very narrow passage crowded with worshippers, and then up a dark staircase to a terrace from which we could see the cluster of gilded copper domes. Afterwards in the sacred precincts we saw the “well of knowledge,” but did not drink of it, having too much foreknowledge of the condition of its water.
Our next excursion was to pay a visit to the Maharajah at his palace. We were conducted by his secretary in the carriage as before, driving to the river side opposite the palace some six miles off. On the road we stopped to see the famous Monkey Temple—a Hindu Temple in an arcaded court of the usual type. This court was full of monkeys—a sandy-brown coloured sort with pink faces, probably Macaques—not so handsome as the wild silver grey ones we had seen at Ahmedabad. They accepted offerings, but not so greedily, as they were evidently well fed, and dried peas lay about untouched. They gambolled about the temple at their sweet will. These monkeys are sacred to Vishnu, and represent Hunuman the monkey god.
There was a fine tank with steps to the water’s edge, close by the temple. Just before this we passed the Hindu College which Mrs Annie Besant has established for the higher education of native children of both sexes—but not a mixed school. This work has been liberally endowed by the Maharajah of Benares, who also granted the site. Mrs Besant is the principal, but owing to the illness of Colonel Alcott, she was not then there, being at Madras nursing the Colonel in what proved to be his last illness.
Reaching the river side, a boat was in waiting to take us across to the palace, rowed by two Hindu boys—at least they started rowing, but soon we got into shallows, where they took to poling, and finally had to get out and push the boat along, until getting into deeper water again they rowed us to the palace steps.
It was quite a high steep flight, no doubt existing for the same river reason as the high walls of Benares—to be out of the reach of the floods. There were numbers of natives ascending and descending or grouped on the steps.