VISIT TO THE HOLY TEMPLES. 103 to the bathing places along the Ganges were worn every day by the footsteps of an innumerable multitude of worshipers. The schools and temples drew crowds of pious Hindoos from Hun every province where the Brahminical faith was known. dreds of devotees came thither every month to die, for it was believed that a peculiarly happy fate awaited the man who THE TEMPLES OF BENARES. 105 dition to the temples there are shrines, cavities built in walls containing the image of some god, as sacred as temples. Pious rajahs are always adding to the temples and shrines. One of the rulers of Jeypore offered to present one hundred thousand temples, provided they should be commenced and finished in one day. "The plan hit upon," says the Rev. Mr. Sherring, who tells the story, "was to cut out on blocks of stone a great many tiny carvings, each one representing a temple. The separate blocks, therefore, on the work being completed, exhibited from top to bottom and on all sides a mass of minute temples." It is believed that there are a half million of idols in the city. The effect of the British rule has been to increase the idols and temples, for the law of the British gives protection to all religions, and under this the Hindoo has been able to rebuild the monuments which the Mohammedan invaders pulled down. Aurungzebe, who flourished at the close of the seventeenth century, and to whom Benares owes a prominent and picturesque mosque, was the chief among the destroyers of images. To Aurungzebe the Hindoos attribute the overthrow of most of the shrines which made Benares famous in other days. Since the Hindoos have been guaranteed the possession of their temples the work of rebuilding has gone on with increasing zeal. It is noted, however, perhaps as an effect of what Islam did in its days of empire, that the monuments of the later Hindoo period are small and obscure when compared with what we see in Southern India, where the power of the idol-breakers never was supreme. The temples are small. The Hindoo, perhaps, has not such a confidence in the perpetuity of British rule as to justify his expressing it in stone. And when your imagination is filled with all you have read of the mighty monuments of India, you are disappointed to see so many of their temples toy buildings, which have nothing of the force and grandeur of the Moslem mosques. It is not in the nature of the Hindoo to find an expression for his religion in stone. All nature, the seas, the streams, the hills, the trees, the stars, and even the rocks, are only so many forms of the Supreme Existence. Why then attempt to ex 106 press it in stone? That belongs more particularly to Islam and Christianity, who know only one God, and exhaust the resources of art to magnify and glorify his name. There is more true worship in the dome of St. Peter and the nave of every WORSHIP IN THE TEMPLE. the widest can even an elephant make his way. They are alleys-narrow alleys, not streets-and as you thread your way through them you feel as if the town were one house, the chambers only separated by narrow passages. The absence of carriages makes it a silent town-as silent as Venice-and all you hear is the chattering of pilgrims moving from shrine to shrine. Many of the alleys were so narrow that two of us I am afraid Benares is not a savory could not walk abreast. city. The odors that come from the various temples and courtyards, where curs, priests, beggars, fakirs, calves, monkeys, |