(Adhika-māsa), has its Māhātmya or excellence. When the intercalary month comes round every third year, preachers make the most of their opportunity, and read its Māhātmya in large towns, hoping thereby to stimulate the generosity of the people. Then, again, if a conjunction of the moon (or in some places a full moon) fall on a Monday, this is an astronomical coincidence that must be turned to the best account. It is a conjuncture peculiarly favourable to charitable acts. The same may be said of eclipses. A single rupee given at such seasons is worth a thousand rupees at other times. Moreover, every day of the week has its sacred character. Monday is especially sacred to Šiva (Mahā-deva). Pious persons often fast on this day and worship the Linga in the evening. Saturday is Hanuman's day, and offerings are especially made to him on that day. Then the eighth day in every lunar fortnight is sacred to Durgā. This is a day when no study is allowed, and therefore called An-adhyāya, Indeed holy days or non-reading days may be multiplied indefinitely. Thus a pupil will stop reading and go home if it happens to thunder, if any person or animal chances to pass between himself and his teacher, if a guest arrives, and often during the greater part of the rainy season. No less than four eras are commonly current among the Hindūs in India :-1. Samvat (of King Vikramaditya), reckoned from 57 B.C.; 2. Šaka (of King Šālivāhana), reckoned from 78 A.D.; 3. San, current in Bengal, reckoned from 593 A.D.; 4. The era of Parašu-rāma, current in Malabar, reckoned from 1176 B.C. In almanacks it is usual to state how many years of the present age of the world or Kali-yuga (p. 398) have elapsed; thus at present 4984 out of 432,000 years have gone by. The three previous ages are the Krita or Satya, Tretā, and Dvāpara. Almanacks which follow the Šaka era begin the year with the light half of the month Ćaitra, but the Samvat year usually commences with Kārttika. Ff CHAPTER XVII. Temples, Shrines, and Sacred Places. IT is well known that the principal seat and great centre of the cultus of Šiva is Benares (Vārāṇasī)—a city whose world-wide celebrity has earned for it the title of Kāšī, ‘the resplendent.' In the Käsi-khanda of the Skanda-purāņa it is recorded how the god himself chose that city for his special abode, and how after having undergone severe austerities in the neighbourhood he made it sacred to himself and to his sons Gaṇeśa and Skanda (p. 211). Elsewhere Benares is described as a special creation of the Creator, who formed it of pure unpolluted earth, separated it from the rest of the world, and caused it to rest on one of the points of Siva's trident. No doubt Benares was one of the first cities to acquire a reputation for sanctity, and is still regarded as the most sacred spot in all India. It is the Hindu's Jerusalem and Mecca. Here, temples, shrines, and idols are multiplied beyond all calculation. Here every inch of ground, every clod of earth is hallowed, and the very air believed to be holy. No wonder, then, that every pious Hindū is ambitious of accomplishing at least one pilgrimage to what he regards as a portion of heaven let down upon earth, and if he can happily manage to die within the magic circle of what is called the 1 The popular name is more properly written Banaras. The name Vārāṇasī, of which it is a corruption, is said to be derived from two small rivers outside the city, the Varaṇā or Varṇā and the Asi. Pañćakosi-that is to say, within a circuit of ten miles round the centre of the holy city-nay, if the most desperate criminal from any part of the world-be he of any religious denomination, Christian, Buddhist, or Muhammadan-die there, no amount of the most heinous guilt, not even the deadly sin of eating beef, can prevent his immediate transportation to the heaven of Siva. Yet Benares is by no means exclusively dedicated to Šiva; nor are its inhabitants exclusively devoted to the worship of any one deity in particular. Benares is the very citadel of Brahmanism-the stronghold of every form of Hinduism-the great central focus from which all the lines of the most complicated religious system in the world diverge, and to which they again converge. Here priestcraft reigns supreme in all its plenitude and power. Here a population of above 200,000 persons, men, women and children, and a countless number of pilgrims deliver themselves up to be deluded, defrauded, and kept in moral and religious slavery by 25,000 arrogant Brāhmans. Picturesquely situated on the Ganges and stretching for three or four miles along this most sacred of all rivers, with magnificent Ghāts or flights of steps conducting pilgrims by thousands into the very midst of the hallowed waters, Benares is the home of every form of Hindu religious earnestness and enthusiasm, combined with every conceivable variety of hideous superstition and fanaticism. No description indeed can give the slightest idea of the reality of the sight presented to the eye by this unique city. The traveller bent on investigating its inner mysteries, and eager to solve for himself the riddle of the grosser forms of its superstition and fanaticism, finds that his only hope of traversing its tortuous streets, or penetrating the living tide which daily ebbs and flows in its leading thoroughfares, is by trusting to his personal powers as a pedestrian. Pushing his way through the seething throng he beholds everywhere, as he advances, the most striking contrasts and curious incon gruities-princely mansions and mean tenements, handsome edifices and fantastic freaks of architecture, crowded shrines and empty sanctuaries, bright new temples and dilapidated fanes, freshly gilded domes and mildewed pinnacles, graceful minarets and unsightly cupolas, open streets and impassable lanes, dirty squares and well-kept quadrangles—everywhere and from every point of view a strange intermingling of the beautiful and the grotesque, the tasteful and the bizarre, the simple and the extravagant. The living objects which meet his eye as he proceeds are not less interesting, odd, and incongruous. Now he is jostled by sacred bulls which wander everywhere free and uncontrolled; now a number of impudent monkeys bound over his head or spring from roof to roof; now a dozen sacred pigeons fly fearlessly almost into his face, or a flight of parrots circle noisily around his head. In one part of the city he is hemmed in before some sacred pool or noted temple by a motley throng of pilgrims, some pressing forward to perform their ablutions, some carrying Ganges water for use at the idolshrines, some vociferating the name of their favourite gods. In another quarter he is surrounded by groups of half-naked mendicants and dirty devotees, many of whom parade their bodily austerities in a manner highly repulsive to European eyes. Here he struggles with difficulty through streets of coppersmiths and workers in brass. There his path is obstructed by the stalls of vendors of coarse sweetmeats, sellers of flowergarlands, or money-changers sitting behind heaps of cowries and piles of gold and silver coins. Everywhere temples, shrines, mosques, images and symbols, holy wells, pools, and sacred trees present themselves in bewildering confusion. The number of principal temples is at least two thousand. Smaller shrines are, of course, innumerable. Of Muhammadan mosques the total is said to amount to three hundred. The tale of idols is computed at about half a million. The chief temple called the 'golden temple,' dedicated to Šiva or Mahā-deva (see p. 78), is disappointing to any one who has seen the South Indian temples; for although Šiva is specially worshipped and propitiated at Benares he has nowhere so many earnest votaries as in the South, and the Benares temple in respect of size, external appearance and importance is to the great temples of Tanjore, Madura and Tinnevelly, what a village church is to St. Paul's Cathedral. The fact is that the waves of Muhammadan invasion which swept over the North-west and Central provinces of India, and seemed at one time likely to obliterate Brahmanism altogether, were either arrested in their onward course or else spent themselves before reaching the South. This is remarkably illustrated at Benares, where the most conspicuous building is the great mosque of Aurangzīb with its lofty minarets on the Ganges. Even the old original Šaiva temple of Visvesvara does not exist. It was pulled down by the ruthless Aurangzib and a mosque built on its foundations1. Another temple, however, speedily arose close at hand and rivalled the old one in picturesque beauty, if not in size. It stands at a distance of two or three hundred yards from its predecessor. Between them is the Jñana-vāpī, or holy well of knowledgea spot greatly frequented and held in the highest veneration by pilgrims from all parts of the country-a legend being universally current that when Aurangzib destroyed the Hindu temple its idol took refuge of its own accord at the bottom of this holy well. Thither therefore a constant throng of worshippers continually resort, bringing with them offerings of flowers, rice and other grain, which they throw into the water thirty or forty feet below the ground. A Brahman is perpetually employed in drawing up the putrid liquid, the smell or rather stench of which from incessant admixture of dccaying flowers and vegetable matter makes the neighbourhood 1 According to Mr. Sherring--whose book on Benares is well worthy of perusal-there was a still earlier temple on a site not far distant. |