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NEPALI GHAT

133

The rich carvings with which the wood-work is ornamented are disfigured with many gross obscenities not usually found in Shivaite temples in northern India

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CHAPTER VIII

THE GHÂTS—FROM MANIKARNIKA TO BARNA

SANGAM

At Manikarnika we reach the central point of the ghâts the very pivot of the religious life of Benares. There is perhaps no more extraordinary sight in the whole world than this ghât presents any morning in the month of Kartik, or at the time of a great Hindu festival. Shrines innumerable, cut in the stone piers and terraces which project into the stream; temples at the water's edge, half-sunk in the stream; temples on the ghât steps; the five-spired temples of Durgâ crowning the high ridge above. The burning ghât, black with the smoke of funeral pyres; corpses laid out by the river on their rough biers of bamboo. A few yards away, the women's bathing ghât, glowing like a flowergarden with the colours of their saris. Further on, a forest of palm-leaf umbrellas, where men in crowds are bathing, praying, muttering their mantras, marking their bodies with the signs of Shiva or Vishnu, or sitting self-absorbed as if the world and its illusions had vanished from their eyes. Pilgrims from every quarter of India, carrying their bundles with them, are arriving at the sacred well, brought there by the Gangaputras to begin their round of devotions, which is often preceded by clamorous disputes for the fees their spiritual preceptors demand.

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