The Museum Of Jeypore.

The Fort.

Saying fare-well at last to Jeypore, we made our way to one of the oldest and most interesting cities in the world, - Benares. This holy city of the Hindus was at the height of its prosperity at least a thousand years before the birth of Christ, and was already old when Plato taught in Athens and when the earliest Roman fortress rose upon the Palatine.

The first view that I gained of Benares from across the Ganges quickened my pulse and made me catch my breath, not merely from its great antiquity, but from the fact that to a vast proportion of the human race this is the holiest situation upon earth, raised spiritually as far above the ordinary abodes of man as the unrivaled summits of the Himalayas soar above the plains of Hindustan.

Benares.

An Indian Temple.

Among The Temples.

As the Hebrew still fondly turns to Jerusalem, as the Christian kneels adoringly at Bethlehem or at Rome, and as the Moslem crosses the scorching desert to prostrate himself at Mecca, so the Hindu makes his pilgrimage to Benares. Aye, more than this, since here it was, twenty-five centuries ago, that Buddha spoke those words of love which have so transformed the Eastern world, another great religion also claims Benares as its own; and since the Buddhists and the Hindus, combined, form fully seven hundred millions of the human race, this ancient, temple-burdened city-exceeds all others in the world in the vast numbers of its devotees. The principal feature of Benares is the river Ganges, which surpasses all others in sanctity. Here, it is not the town that makes the river sacred - the river sanctifies the town. In indu courts of justice witnesses take their oaths upon the water of the Ganges, as those who testify in our courts do upon the Bible.

To the thoughtful traveler it is a memorable epoch in his life when he first stands beside the Ganges. Other great rivers have, perhaps, more fame; some, like the Tiber and the Rhine, have been politically more important; others again, like the Nile, have been deified and worshiped; but none has ever gained the place which this mysterious river holds, and for three thousand years has held, in the estimation of countless millions. Its source is in the Himalayas, the awful habitation of the Hindu Trinity. At their command it issues forth, to call to life and verdure the vast Indian plains which otherwise would wither beneath the scorching sun. Then, after a course of fifteen hundred miles, having fulfilled its mission, its waters mingle with the boundless sea. But even this is not the end, for all its precious drops are thence drawn upward by the sun, and brought once more in clouds of gold to the resplendent dwelling-place of Brahma. Thus is the river emblematic of the Indian idea, that every human soul is in reality a tiny part of the divine, which, passing through existence as the Ganges passes through these burning plains, completes at last its mighty cycle from infinite to infinite, from God to God.

The Ganges.

The Sacred River.

The Dwelling-Place Of Brahma.

It is a remarkable fact that, though the Ganges itself is so sacred, the two banks which it divides here are as unlike as Paradise and Hades. One holds a stately city, three miles long, revered and visited by millions. The other is a sandy waste, shunned by the natives like a place of pestilence. Upon the northern shore the Hindus long to die, for thence they go at once to heaven; but they believe that any one who expires on the southern bank will, in the subsequent stage of his existence, be a donkey. The priests, however, have a ready device for this calamity: they issue a kind of accident policy against the chance of death on the unlucky shore, by saying that those who make a pilgrimage once a year to a shrine some miles away, and above all give it a little money, will be exempt from asinine transmigration.