The old world and its ways

by William Jennings Bryan

When we reached the burning ghat, we found one body on the funeral pyre and another soaking in the water as a preparation for burning. So highly is the Ganges revered that aged people are brought there that they may die, if possible, in the water. While we were watching, a third body was prepared for the burning, and it was so limp that death could not have occurred long before. While the flames were consuming those three corpses, we saw coming down the steps a man carrying the body of a child, apparently about two years old, wrapped in a piece of thin cotton cloth. (The children of the poor are buried in the stream because of the cost of wood.) The man bore his lifeless burden to a little barge and made the corpse fast to a heavy stone slab. The boatman then pushed out from the shore, and when the middle of the stream was reached the man in charge of the body dropped it overboard, and the burial was over.

PUNDIT SAKHARAM GANESH.

No one has seen India until he has seen the Ganges; no one has seen the Ganges until he has seen it at Benares; and no one who has seen the Ganges at Benares will ever forget it.

In the suburbs of the city stands the Durga Temple, better known as the Monkey Temple, because it is the home of a large family of monkeys, which are regarded as sacred. Photographs of the temple present rather an attractive appearance, but the original is anything but beautiful, and the monkeys and general filth of the place deprive it of all appearance of a place of worship.

The Golden Temple, however, is the one most visited by tourists, and it would be difficult to picture a less inviting place. The buildings are old and greasy, and the narrow streets are filled with images and thronged with beggars. One finds his interest in missionary work quickened if he wanders through these streets and sees the offering of incense to the elephant god and the monkey god, and to images innumerable. The air is heavy with perfume and the odor of decaying flowers, and one jostles against the sacred bulls as he threads his way through the crowd. We have not seen in any other land such evidences of superstition, such effort to ward off evil spirits and to conciliate idols. The educated Hindus, and there are many learned men among the Hindus, regard these idols as only visible representations of an invisible God, but the masses seem to look no farther than the ugly images before which they bow.

It was a relief to find near this dark pool of idolatry an institution of learning, recently founded, which promises to be a purifying spring. I refer to the Central Hindu College, of which Mrs. Annie Besant, the well known theosophist, is the head. Although the school is but seven years old, it already includes a valuable group of buildings and has some five hundred students. Among the professors are several Englishmen who serve without compensation, finding sufficient reward in the consciousness of service.

Next to Benares Allahabad is the most important Hindu center. The city is on the Ganges, at its junction with the Jumna, one of its longest branches. There is an old tradition that another river, flowing underground, empties into the Ganges at this point, and the place is referred to as the junction of the three rivers. The great Mogul Akbar built a splendid fort where the Ganges and the Jumna meet, and probably on this account Allahabad is the capital of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. Within the walls of the fort there is another of the Asoka pillars, a very well preserved one, forty-nine feet high and bearing numerous inscriptions, among which are the famous edicts of Asoka, issued in 240 B. C., against the taking of life. Within the fort in a subterranean room is another object of interest, the Akhshai Bar or undecaying banyan tree. As this tree is described by a Chinese pilgrim of the seventh century, it is either of remarkable antiquity or has been renewed from time to time.

The religious importance of Allahabad is largely due to a fair which is held there every year and which on every twelfth year becomes a national event. It is called the Mela, and last January brought to the city a crowd estimated at from one and a half to three millions. This every-twelfth-year fair brings together not only the devout Hindus, who come as a matter of religious duty, and innumerable traders, who at such times find a market for their wares, but it draws large numbers of fakirs (pronounced fah-keers, with the accent upon the last syllable) or holy men. They wear full beards and long hair and no clothing except the breech cloth. They put ashes and even manure upon their heads, and their hair and whiskers are matted and discolored. These men are supposed to have raised themselves to a high spiritual state by asceticism and self-punishment. They undergo all sorts of hardships, such as hanging over a fire, holding up the arm until it withers, and sitting upon a bed of spikes. We saw many fakirs at Benares and Allahabad and some elsewhere (for they are scattered over the whole country), and at the latter place one accommodated us by taking his seat upon the spikes.