Winter India/Chapter 11

by Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore

 

CHAPTER XI
THE GREATEST SIGHT IN THE WORLD

T Mogul Sarai junction, three Englishmen stood over as many hillocks of leather- and tin-covered luggage, directing its removal to the Benares train. The servants bore it off and flung it through doors and windows, covering the floor, heaping the seats, filling all the racks and hooks, until the owners themselves, looking in, said: "Oh, I say, now. There is no room left for us. We had best sit in this next carriage, where we can watch them." When I spoke of this dilemma of the men and their luggage to others of their nationality, they said bewilderedly: "For the life of me, I do not see why you Americans should laugh at that. I thought you always traveled with so much luggage. Those enormous trunks—Saratogas, you call them." It argued nothing to them, no matter how much we explained it, that we sent the Saratogas to the baggage-car and never sat with malodorous sole-leather heaped around us in our richly finished and furnished cars.

We crossed a muddy river by a high bridge with fortress turrets at either end—the very bridge of "Voices in the Night"—and were then in the usual glaring, sun-baked European suburb, where broad roads and waste spaces, new houses in large grounds, and dusty lines of banian-trees certainly did not go to make up the Benares of one's dreams. The hotel was more like the hotels of Java, the dining-room in a central building by itself, and long rows of bedrooms in adjacent buildings. Peddlers, guides, jugglers, and snake-charmers haunted the long, flagged porches all the afternoon. Cobras were drawn out from small, round baskets like so many yards of sausage, and made to dance on their tails to plaintive pipings, and then crowded back into their baskets with as little ceremony; and a weary little mongoose was shaken and cuffed and made to battle with the hooded horror.

Chaturgam Lal, in a flowered and cotton-wadded chintz overcoat, a worsted comforter around his neck, large spectacles under a fat turban, the caste-mark freshly painted on his brow, and an unctuous smile set for the day, rapped on our door long before dawn. We looked out to see a long line of sleeping bearers on the brick-floored portico, each before his master's door, every turban-topped bundle rolled in a stripped dhurrie with a pair of bare brown legs protruding. The air was keen and frosty, and I wondered if any estate on earth, any future reincarnation, could be more replete with bodily misery and discomfort than the regular life of an Indian bearer or traveling servant—sleeping on cold stone porches, snatching bits of food at irregular hours, traveling all day and all night, and as often standing for hours in the crowded compartments.

 

THE "WOMEN'S GHAT, BENARES

 

The greatest human spectacle in India, the chief incident and motive of Benares life, and the most extraordinary manifestation of religious zeal and superstition in all the world, begins at sunrise by the Ganges bank and lasts for several hours. We started in the first gray light of the dawn, drove two miles across the city, and, descending the ghats, or broad staircases, to the water's edge, were rowed slowly up and down the three-mile crescent of river-front, watching Brahmans and humbler believers bathe and pray to the rising sun, repeating the oldest Vedic hymns. That picturesque sweep of the city front—a high cliff with palaces, temples, and gardens clinging to its terraced embankments and long flights of steps descending to the water—is spectacle enough when lighted by the first yellow flash of sunlight, without the thousands of white-clad worshipers at the Ganges brink and far out in its turbid flood. After three sunrise visits to the river bank, the spectacle was as amazing and incomprehensible as at first, as incredible, as dreamlike, as the afternoon memory of it. I saw it with equal surprise each time, the key-note, the soul of India revealed in Benares as nowhere else,—since all India flocks to Benares in sickness and health, in trouble and rejoicing, to pray and to commit crimes, the sacred city being the meeting-place and hiding-place of all criminals, the hatching-place of all conspiracies.

We sped through empty cantonment streets, but in the native city every thoroughfare was crowded. All were streaming one way, and a hum of voices filled the air as we reached the ghats and came upon sight of the multitude standing waist-deep in the sacred stream or crouching on platforms built out over the water. From twenty-five to fifty thousand people regularly—on special occasions one hundred thousand bathers and worshipers, Brahmans and believers of every caste—perform their daily rites in the Ganges, They are so rapt, ecstatic, bent on and absorbed in the mechanical formula, the endless minutiæ of their worship, that they are unconscious of the few curious strangers who may drift up and down the river-front in the brief tourist season. A Brahman cannot let eye or mind wander for one moment lest, omitting something, or changing the order of invocation, prayers, and movements, he should have to begin the long ritual afresh. The daily religious observances should occupy nearly twelve hours, so that a repetition is something of a penance.

The lowlands across the river were veiled in haze as, seated in our comfortable arm-chairs on the boat's deck, we floated off into the stream. Just as the sun's disk rose above the hazy, blue plain, a louder murmur arose, a general chant, the measured responses of a great congregation. Each one standing in the stream lifted up an offering of water, tossed a handful three times in the air, dipped the body beneath the surface, repeating the while the sacred mantras, the ancient Vedic hymns, the names of the gods, and the sacred syllable "Om." They sipped handfuls of the holy water, rinsed their mouths, lifted the water and let it stream through their fingers or pour back down the arm, facing always to the east, and moving their lips in prayer. They filled their water-jars and poured it over their heads, and they drank it "to purify themselves," our mentor said, although one group of purity-seekers stood two feet from the mouth of a rapidly discharging sewer, every sort of city filth floating to their hands and water-jars, the bodies of men and animals and decaying flowers floating by. They drank the pestilent fluid, they carried it home for household use, and bottles were being filled to be sent and carried to the remotest parts of India. Western education and sanitary science avail nothing against the Ganges superstition. The British have provided a pure water supply for Benares, but the people prefer the sacred dilution of sewerage and cremation-ground refuse, thus inviting and encouraging every disease.

Whole platforms of Brahmans went through their morning ceremonies before us as if on a theater stage. Some sat with fixed or upraised eyes, some with eyes closed—all absorbed, as if in hypnotic trance, slowly whispering and muttering their prayers, lost in contemplation of their fingers, symbols of different gods, dipping each one in the river many times and praying to it fervently as the water trickled off. They dipped wisps of grass in the river and contemplated them prayerfully, meditating on the one hundred and eight manifestations of Shiva, the ten hundred and eight manifestations of Vishnu. They emptied their jars by rule; they prayed, touching their arms, breasts, knees in slow callisthenics as they vowed themselves to one and another of the pantheon; they produced boxes of ashes of sacred cow-dung and painted their foreheads and smeared their arms and breasts for the day. Others, standing in the stream, drew in deep breaths, closed first one nostril, then the other, and then held both nostrils with the fingers for uncounted seconds. "They hold the nose so. It is a prayer. It is a ceremony," said Chaturgam Lal, beaming with proud omniscience. "Sometimes they pray with the right nose, sometimes with the left nose."

There were some serious and thorough ablutions going on also, vigorous scrubbings and tubbings that were good imitations of the Anglo-Indian form of godliness. Men waded out to their shoulders, removed their garments, and washed them in the holy water, assuming dry garments as they dropped the wet ones at the steps. Others energetically shampooed their heads with river mud, for soap is impure to their notion. Women came down to the river's edge, scoured their brass jars, rinsed, filled them, and walked away in never-ending processions upon the broad steps. Even babus in gold spectacles and worsted comforters carried off jars of water to pour over some chosen image. The high-caste women had bathed and gone before sunrise, the wives of rajas and potentates rowed off in curtained boats to bathe and pray far from the common horde. The women specially congregate at one ghat, barely uncovering their faces to the rising sun, and gracefully and ingeniously draping the fresh sari over the wet one as they reach the steps again. "These are nearly all widows," said our guide, condescendingly; and certainly no people in the world have more need to implore divine aid than these Indian widows, accursed things who, as they themselves and all others believe, have brought the calamity of death upon their husbands.

And then there were the fakirs; the real things of one's Sunday-school books, ragged, unkempt, ash-smeared objects that seemed hardly human, sitting rigid in their insane, consequential sanctity. Some were so utterly absurd and ridiculous with their fantastic ash powderings, that the young American boy on our boat vented peal after peal of laughter that continued to tears as one ash-heap, crouched like Humpty Dumpty on a sunny wall, mouthed and gibbered back at him spitefully. There were lean old fakirs, mere wrinkles of skin laid loosely over some bones, and strapping young fakirs, whom the police should move on or put to road-making. One able-bodied specimen of lazy holiness sat with clenched hand and uplifted arm, wearing the most consciously self-righteous air; another posed like a dirty salt image on a broken stone pedestal at a corner of the ghat; and a row of toothless old relics sat in their dirt and ashes waiting for certain Brahman princes to come along, as in a stage tableau, and distribute daily alms of rice—"to acquire merit." Each whining, mumbling old fakir held out his hands, his begging-bowl, or a dirty end of rag drapery, the almoner doled out a few spoonfuls of cheap rice, and the rich man moved on to a chorus of blessings, conspicuously well pleased with himself and the increased assets of acquired merit—precisely the Pharisee of Judea. There are more than two million fakirs in India, all leading lives of leisure and comparative plenty; but the prize fakir of them all on the Ganges bank was surely the well-fed and plumped out one who had all his bones painted in white outline on his brown skin, and sat comfortably in the sun, waiting for his breakfast to come to him—a living skeleton of the impressionist school. There was finally a dead fakir, propped up against a wall, covered with flower garlands, and soon to be richly spiced and committed to the Ganges, since fire is not needed to purify such holy men.

At sunrise the ghouls of the cremation-ground or burning-ghat began heaping funeral piles for the day's work, and others of this lowest caste were carrying yesterday's ashes to the water's edge, washing them in sieves and pans like any placer- miner to recover the gold, silver, and jewels burned with the bodies. The domri, who conduct cremations, surpass the Occidental undertakers in their extortionate charges—for firewood, oil, and the flaming brand for starting the blaze. Shrouded and flower-decked bodies, lashed to litters of poles, were borne down the steps and laid at the water's edge, the feet resting in the sacred river while the pyre was made ready and the relatives paid the domri and paid for prayers by the "Sons of the Ganges"—a legion of fat priests shouting under great umbrellas—brigand Brahmans of the river bank, no less mercenary and rapacious than the outcast domri, A dead woman shrouded in white and roped over with marigold chains was laid whore the foul waters

 

THE BURNING-GHAT, BENARES

 

could lave the feet, a sewer arch discharging but a yard away, and the evil domri panning out their treasure close by. When the pyre was ready, the body was completely immersed for a moment, carried up and laid on the fagots, and a sobbing, frightened little boy, his tunic wet in Ganges water, laid sandalwood and spices on his mother's body, ran five times around the pile as priests and relatives pushed and pulled him through his part, and, touching the torch to the oil-drenched fagots, ran shrieking to a servant's arms. The flames leaped and crackled, jets of thick smoke curled around, the fire lapped over the edges of the grave-clothes, and smoke mercifully concealed the rest. The domri stood by with long irons arranging the fire, adding wood and oil, while the family group waited there until all should be consumed. A prisoner's body from the jail was laid by the sewer's mouth, and instead of being burned in the later, cheaper hours of the afternoon, was to be cremated at once at the expense of a rich Brahman, who waited to commit the ashes to the river and thereby "acquire merit."

At the near-by ghat a boy's body had been laid on the lowest step, and without cover or shroud, clothed as in life, his relatives wailed and dashed Ganges water over him. He had probably died within the hour. He might even have been gasping as they hurried him through the streets to be burned and committed to the Ganges before noon. The body was not yet rigid as the relatives poured and sprinkled water over the graceful young statue, wrapped it in a Ganges-soaked sheet, fastened it to a litter of boughs, and bore it off to the burning-ghat. The group of women remained behind, and standing in a circle facing inward, wailed and tossed their arms. Some were dry-eyed and watched us while they wailed and beat their breasts, but the mother was unmistakable in the group—her cries and gestures in pathetic contrast to those of the others.

When we had twice gone the length of the ghats, drifting down to the railroad bridge and rowing back to the upper ghats, reviewing seven miles of bathing, praying, misguided people, we landed where the crowds were thickest, the din loudest. The well filled with Vishnu's perspiration, and in which Devi dropped her ear-jewel, and the stone foot-print of Vishnu make this spot the center of busiest religious life on the river bank. There priests and people swarmed thickest, all bellowing the history of the pool in one's ears; and the sick and the well, the diseased and the robust, crowded the inclosing steps of this tank of filth, an abominable ooze of Ganges slime, decaying flowers, spices, sweetmeats, butter, and milk. They sipped and drank this liquid death, and we hastened from the noisy crowd of priests, pilgrims, fakirs, beggars, Brahmans, jugglers, snake-charmers, money-changers, and idlers with sacred cows wearing bead and flower necklaces, pushing their way when it was not obsequiously cleared for them.

Processions of people carrying water to their homes and the temples, and spilling it as they went, made walking dangerously slippery, and we barely looked into the court of the Golden Temple, where worshipers crowded to jangle the bells, sprinkle grease, and garland the images. The courtyard of the Well of Knowledge, in which Shiva resides, was so offensive that we had no wish to approach the curb and see the pit of decaying food, flowers, incense, milk, and butter. We took a peep at the Temple of the Stick, where sugar dogs are the acceptable offering, and a greedy Brahman whips repentent sinners and then grants them absolution and indulgence—whips them with peacock feathers—even gives the unbeliever a swish of the feathers for two annas and laughs with him at the deluded divinity he serves!

It was then ten o'clock, and after four hours in the headquarters of heathendom we were glad to return to the quiet, empty spaces of the cantonment, realizing more than before what an appalling task confronts the missionaries, and what generations of such blindly bigoted Ganges worshipers must pass away before any change can be hoped for. A century of British law, order, cleanliness, and sanitary improvement avails nothing against the superstitions and practices of twenty-five centuries. Yet in this same center of bigotry and superstition Gautama Buddha won the people from their idolatry, their superstitions and caste creed, and for eight hundred years his doctrines prevailed. With this precedent, the ultimate conversion of the Hindus need not be despaired of. We drove out that afternoon by a dusty, tamarind-shaded road to Sarnath, the Deer Park of Benares, where the Buddha preached, defied the Brahmans, and built up his great following. Only a few ruins remain of the great group of buildings, the crumbling tope in a deserted common the only object above ground described by Fahien and Hiouen Thsang. "Did Sarnath pay?" asked my table d'hôte neighbor that night, and I stammered for an answer. "Because," she said, "they told us there was nothing to see, that it would n't pay us to drive out there just to see some rubbishy old stones and brick heaps."