A CITY OF AMAZING CONTRASTS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXII, Issue 46, 23 February 1901, Page 4 (Supplement)

A CITY OF AMAZING CONTRASTS.

More than any other In India, Benares is the city of amazing contrasts. Bewildered eye and bewildered mind are tossed frbm filth to cleanliness, from horror to joy of beauts*, shrink from loathsome evil, and are touched by simple devoutness and sincerity. To penetrate into Its labyrinth of temples is to give yourself into the clutch of a nightmare; to wade through streams of foul mud; to wind along narrow and horrible passages heavy with wicked smells, sweetened with tfie yet

worse sweetness of putrid flowers; to face the presence of repulsive priests, hideous fakirs, unholy gods, and audacious monkeys. Beauty is here, but it is next to impossible to realise It

IN THE DKBASED SURROUNDINGS

where Shiva, Implacable destroyer, reigns, or his yet more terrible wife, Durgn, claims her daily blood-offering. But when you have escaped from the nightmare of the city streets, you may, ff you will, drift into a gorgeous and never-to-be-forgotten dream. It is in the soft

tenderness of the young morning that you go to the riverside to find this splendid pageant, for it is provided by Mother Ganges herself, the sacred, the cleanser. Broad, untidily picturesque boats, with things sticking out of them at every point, clamour to take you off, and, making your way down the steps of the landing ghat, you go on board, climb to an upper deck, where squat a few rickety chairs; the rowers pull slowly down thn grey stream, the old steersman, crouched on his hips, lays a skinny hand on the tiller, and the pageant has begun.

For now the long stone steps run steeply up some hundred feet from the water to a ridge of vast palaces of all heights and all varieties of architecture, palaces belonging to the great native rulers, and used by them when Mewar, Jaipur, Gwalior, or others, seek the purification and cleansing which the sacred city offers. And these buildings, with their broken and beautiful sky-line, with

CARVED BALCONY, BRACKET, and balustrade, Jeef Singh's strange observatory, Aurungzeb's light and lovely minarets, form the summit up to which the broad steps always climb, growing wider, narrower, piercing alleys into which the light of day can hardly penetrate, and thronged here and there by crowds wearing the most vivid colours the eye can conceive. How can words alone paint tho/e colours—those scarlets, those saffrons, those whites, those splendid russets, that orange—splashed as they are upon the grey stone, with the brown of face and limb accentuating their clearness, with the heart of th; 3 sun shining out upon them, always shifting and always grouping harmoniously! Close to the river's edge is a jumble of stone canopies and shrines and large straw umbrellas, these last tilted in any direction which may offer shelter from wind or sun. Here the upper garment is usually left, and then, heedless of the cold of a winter morning, the brown legs step into the clasp of Mother Ganges, and men and women dip and invoke, stretching out their slender hands, and invoke and dip again, carefully washing their jars and drinking vessels, and purifying themselves from a'i the stains of this workaday world, and its contact with unbelievers. The sick are l^pre, the very old are here, tottering and shivering in the blast of a keen wind, but what matters suffering, what matters death itself, when death comes

WITH THE SMILE OF FORGIVENESS and the kiss of the mother? Yesterday it came—so—to more than one, and to-day-look further up where between the spars of the flat-bottomed boats and the spreadIng umbrellas, as their blue curl of smoke eddies into the air from the burning ghat —there, close to the curve of the stream in the pyre built out of trio as&af faggots which lie ready near the water's edge. And there in the lap of the consuming fire lies the pilgrim. As for his ashes, Mother Ganges herself will sweep them on her strong breast away from the haunting fear of Shiva and Ka-li, and all the vengeful idols which hold the Hindoo's soul in terrified bondage. The great river is more merciful than they.

But now the clumsy boat swings round to row up stream past the wonderful crowd of the stream and the> Bteps, and back to the Dasasamedh ghat. As you land a sacred bull stalks by, free to go where he likes, and just above are the snake .charmers, thrusting their hooded cobras upon your notice. The T^eam is over, the squalor of the city re-asserts itself, and brown naked children swarm at the doors of the hovels with the marigold wreath of the gods hanging over their heads.—F.M.P., in "Pilot."