Winter India/Chapter 12

by Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore

 

CHAPTER XII
BENARES

T did not seem possible that the Ganges banks could ever show such another sight; yet a second and a third morning we rose by starlight, drove through streets all blue and lilac with frost haze, to the ghats where the rising sun again glorified the whole fantastic, picturesque line; turning adobe, sandstone and grimy whitewashed buildings into the richest temples and palaces of dreams, and lighting the faces of the thousands of believers standing in the swirling mud stream, as thousands have stood at sunrise for centuries. Even then, one can figure it out that many thousands shirk their religious duties—a cheering sign in a way—for, if the two thousand temples of Benares with their five hundred thousand idols are tended by eighty thousand priests, the sacerdotal company alone would exceed the crowds we saw on any one morning. The priests are supposed to be driven all day, to have time for nothing but sacred observances, the bathing, buttering, garlanding, tiring, fanning, and tending of the idols, and always to begin the day with the dip in the Ganges. Many of them surely omit it on these frosty mornings. While the mummery goes on in the temples, the babus and pundits, even those who have taken degrees in Western universities, insist that this worship is not idolatry, that these images of Vishnu, Shiva, Parvati, Krishna, Ganesha, and the rest, the stone bulls, the sacred cows, sacred wells, and sacred monkeys, are but symbols—symbols of the purest and simplest creed, of the noblest faith, the highest philosophy—a symbolism that the masses of course recognize. One has all of a Mohammedan's impatience and contempt for the puerilities, the grossness, the unreasonable imbecility of it all.

One remembers the Scala Santa in Rome, the scenes at Assisi and Lourdes, when he sees fakirs and fanatics making the rounds of all the shrines of Benares on their knees, and measuring with their bodies the fifty miles of sacred road that sweeps in a semicircle around the suburbs of the holy city of the Brahman's soul, known to the pious Hindu as Kasi the Magnificent—a city which rests, not on the earth, but on the point of Shiva's trident.

The bazaars of Benares, particularly the noisy brass bazaar, are picturesque in a general way, but the wares exposed are the coarsest and crudest that the debased taste and careless hand of the day can produce. Heavy, ill-shapen, vulgar brass pieces scratched over with thin and poor designs replace the deeply cut and finely chased brass-work that used to distinguish Benares. But the glint and glow and color of the base metal in its myriad forms make of the narrow street of brass-beaters' dens a long genre picture. The fruit and flower bazaar carries on the dominant, decorative yellow note, and the orange of marigolds blends well with the rich reds of earthenware in the pottery bazaar, where the lotas and chatties have preserved the same lines from earliest times recorded in sculptures. The kincobs, or gold brocades, of Benares are tawdry and tinselly past belief, commonplace in design and color.

If anything could further disenchant one with Hindu forms of worship, it is provided at the temple of Durga, the Monkey Temple. One steps into a red sandstone and pink stucco court, where priests wait for gifts and gray apes with red faces sit in rows on the parapets, cornice, and roof, swarm up and down columns, drop noiselessly beside one and stretch long, lean, gray arms over his shoulder and clutch at his garments. The big apes chatter and mouth and make faces, and the little ones run screaming to safety, for when gift cakes are impending, the big apes are violent. The priests seem little more intelligent than the other sacred servitors, and as more and more apes drop noiselessly to the crowded pavement the tourist turns and flees.

I had unceasingly demanded the great mahatma, a certain holy man and miracle-worker who was reported as living in some palace garden of Benares, and but a little way beyond the Monkey Temple. We left the carriage, disputed passage with a sacred cow in a narrow lane, and found the green paradise of the Annanbag Garden, where dwelt Swamji, the living god. This aged seer and sage, a Brahman of so high a caste and sphere that no touch or deed can defile him, to whom no sin is possible, sits in his garden, "air clad," summer and winter alike, indifferent to heat and cold, hunger and thirst, feeling neither joy nor sorrow, a soul uplifted beyond all further test or trial. He sits there imparting wisdom to his disciples and followers, as Gautama Buddha taught once in the Deer Park, presenting the same old unchanging picture of religious life in the East. Like the Prince Siddhartha, Swamji left home and wife upon the birth of a son. His duty to the world was then done, and all the years since have been given to study, meditation, and the welfare of his soul, learning the great yoga mysteries and passing continually to higher stages. Two disciples early attached themselves to him, begged for him, and devoutly served him, accompanying the holy man on his pilgrimages to sacred places, and finally to his home, where with tearless indifference he learned of the death of his son, and addressing words of wisdom to his parents and wife, passed on. Without money, with only a shred of clothing, and no care for the morrow, he traveled all India, and, preserved through heat and snow, flood, storm, cold, hunger, and sickness, he came finally to Benares when he felt that he had attained supreme wisdom and triumphed over the world. A pious raja put the beautiful Annanbag (Garden of Happiness) at his disposal, and, dropping the one bit of raiment, his last earthly possession, Paribrajakacharya Sri Bhaskarananda Saraswati Swamji lives, air clad, in the same state of nature as primeval man, sitting beneath the trees by day discoursing to the

 

FAKIRS AT BENARES

 

circle of disciples, sleeping uncovered on the bare earth at night, and eating only the offerings of fruit and rice which his devotees bring him. A jeweled youth with a great caste-mark on his brow was sitting with the holy man when we were announced by Chaturgam Lal and the favor of an audience asked; and the worshiping youth threw his own silky white chudda around the saint as we advanced down the garden path. The holy man sat there with knees bent, soles turned upward, and hand lifted in precisely the attitude of the Buddha in art. Birds twittered and the rustling trees overhead cast checkered shadows on the lean and wrinkled old ascetic beneath. He had a kindly face, a gentle, benevolent manner; he was very gracious, courteous, and human, and the living god began at once to talk of the impermanence of the world, of the delusions and fleeting joys of which we mistakenly make so much. His richly turbaned native visitors soon forgot our interruption, listening with rapt attention, and each one bowed reverently whenever the saint's eyes were directly turned in his direction. At Swamji's request, a disciple led us to a little marble shrine in the garden to see a portrait statue of the holy man, for this living god is worshiped in the flesh and in the image, there and in other cities.

When we returned to the teacher, he had evidently had more information concerning us from the omniscient Chaturgam Lal. "You write books," said the living god. "So do I. My books are commentaries on the Vedas and encouragements to the true religious life. I like your spirit. I will give you my book. And you shall learn Sanskrit and read it. You will give me your book. I already know English."

"You are yogi, you are mahatma. You are all-knowing and can perform miracles. Can you see to America and tell me what happens there?" I asked, "you can read my mind."

The smile faded from the venerable face. He looked pityingly, kindly at me. "No, my daughter. No one in India can see to America. Put away care. Do not think sorrow. Do not think money." And the renowned seer of seers, sage of sages, the living god, the Brahman above caste laid his hand in blessing like any noble old bishop. We spent a charming half-hour under the Annanbag trees, eating the saint's oranges, talking with him and his visitors as at any garden tea. When we were leaving, the saint threw over our shoulders the jasmine garlands his worshipers had laid at his feet, wound the borrowed chudda around him, and, rising, stalked with the swaying gait of extreme age to the gateway. He shook hands with us fearlessly and conventionally, for he was beyond defilement, and urged us to come again and talk with him in his garden.

Then Chaturgam Lal's tongue was loosened and he told us more of the great mahatma and of the miracles he had performed. "Why, once they sent officials to invite him to come to America. They wished him to perform miracles at the World's Fair in Chicago." This was shock and anticlimax, surely.

 

ON THE GANGES

 

We took a boat at the next ghat, and were towed up-stream by a rope made fast to the tip of the mast, in the crazy Yang-tse and Asiatic fashion, and then were rowed quickly across to the marble palace of the Maharaja of Benares. Instead of landing at the inviting marble steps, we climbed the mud bank and walked around to an untidy back gate, the land entrance, seeing there an ill-kept menagerie and the frowzy soldiers of the body-guard. We passed through several courts and marble halls to the state apartments, where splendid rugs, tawdry European ornaments, and mechanical toys made extreme contrasts, and came out on the marble terraces and latticed loggias overlooking the river and the city's long line of palaces and temples. The jeweled beauties of the zenana should have been lounging there to complete the picture, but they were shut up behind latticed windows looking on the inside court. This Ramnuggur palace would seem to be the most desirable place to live in, but there is a strong prejudice against dying there or anywhere on that opposite bank of the Ganges. Generations ago, the maharaja tormented a Brahman by asking ninety-nine times where his soul would go to from the palace, and the Brahman, at the hundredth query, assured the great man that his soul would enter a donkey if he died there. Now when an illness becomes at all serious in Ramnuggur precincts, the victim is hurried to a boat and frantically ferried across.

As we were leaving the palace a fanfare of trumpets and bugles announced the arrival of the maharaja, and we stopped to watch the passing of the handsome young Hindu in his white and gold turban, a becoming red chudda wound around his shoulders. He stopped in front of us, bowed inquiringly, and Chaturgam Lal, in his flowered dressing-gown, introduced us by name, as democratically as any constituent might stop and introduce one to his congressman on the court-house steps. After a short conversation on lines of democratic equality, the maharaja asked us to return and see more rooms of the palace and take a cup of tea; but it was then sunset, darkness soon to follow, and we had instead to hurry around to the mud-bank landing, and drift back to the ghats by twinkling lamplights, a last dull glow indicating where the domri were burning the bodies of the poorest believers.