CHAPTER XXIII.
HINDU INDIA.
Before beginning the trip through the interior, a paragraph must be given to Indian travel. There are no Pullman sleepers in this country, and the tourist must carry his bedding with him. Night trains have compartments containing broad seats which can be used as couches and hanging shelves upon which one may lie. The traveler carries his own blanket, pillow, sheet, towels, soap, etc., and occasionally has to rely on these at hotels as well as on the trains. The cars are entered from the side, and one must take his chance of waking at the right station, for there is no official to give him warning. In India it is customary for foreigners to take an Indian servant with them who acts as an interpreter and looks after the baggage—and looking after the baggage is no easy task in this part of the British empire. After we had made one short trip without assistance we were glad to yield to the custom, and Goolab, a Calcutta Mussulman, proved himself an invaluable aid in dealing with the baggage coolies, whose language we could not understand and whose charges vary from the legal rate as the minimum to three or four times that if the tourist shows himself a novice at the business.
The hotels of India are declared by the guide books to be bad, and one does not feel like disputing these authorities after having made the trip. I do not mean to say that there is no difference between them, for in several places we found comfortable rooms and in some places palatable food. Everywhere we were so interested in what we saw that we could endure almost any kind of accommodations, but at one place the fare was so unsatisfactory that we were reduced to eggs and toast. Goolab, overhearing some mutterings of discontent, took it upon himself to report in the hope of securing some improvement, and the clerk asked me for particulars. I told him that I had not intended to make any complaint, but that as he was good enough to inquire, I would say that we did not like the cooking; that the crackers were sometimes mouse-eaten and that we found worms in the cabbage. He thought that the mice were inexcusable, but, as if the question disposed of the matter, asked: "The worm was dead, wasn't it?" I was compelled to admit that it was.
Leaving Calcutta, we sought the ancient city of Benares, which bears the distinction of being the center of Hinduism. In fact, it has been the religious capital of India for two thousand years or more.
At Sarnath, just outside Benares, stands the first Buddhist pagoda, said to have been erected nearly five hundred years before the beginning of the Christian era to commemorate a spot in the deer park where Buddha taught his disciples. Recent excavations near there have brought to light one of the Asoka pillars which, though unfortunately broken, still bears testimony to the skill of the sculptor as well as to the zeal of the great Buddhist king. But these ruins are all that is left of Buddhism in this vicinity, where Buddha lived and taught and where his doctrines were once triumphant, or Hinduism has virtually rooted out Buddhism, adopting, it is said, the device of making him one of the incarnations of their own god.
