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Dasâsamedh Ghât

The Temple of Sitala

A Sanskrit School

Carved Snakes at Chauki Ghât

An Aghori

A Suttee Stone

"Another venerable hermit, seated on a leopard's skin”.

Shivala Ghật

Balcony of Man Singh's Observatory

The Nepalese Temple

The Shrine of Ganga

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"Like a painted frieze from Pompeii, or the decoration of an antique

vase "

Scindhia Ghât

An Encampment of Sâdhus

The Buildings at Ghôsla Ghât

The Head of Bhima

Bhima completed

Lamps for the Pitris

Lamp-stand at Panchganga

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“Three old women, who pause to barter with a seller of pots and pans, unconsciously posing themselves in their classic drapery like the Fates, or the Weird Sisters"

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In the Ahmêty Temple: a Brahmin performing his sandhya

The Ahmêty Temple

A Sacrificial Spoon

The Temple at Ramnagar

Mask of Bhaironath

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"Thin vaporous clouds of smoke rise from the funeral pyres. The slanting rays of the morning sun cast long shadows across the ghât"

195

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CHAPTER I

IN THE VEDIC TIMES

History, in the conventional European sense, has never possessed much interest for the Hindu mind. Thoroughly permeated with the idea of the unreality of material things, the Brahmin priesthood, while taking extraordinary precautions to preserve their inheritance of spiritual culture, have never troubled themselves to mark the footprints which kings and dynasties leave upon the sands of time. It is chiefly through the exertions of European scholars, with the help of the old Buddhist records, that the main outlines of Indian history, previous to the Muhammadan invasions, have been made intelligible.

The detailed history of the petty kingdoms into which northern India was divided would probably possess little interest, even if it were sifted out of the wild legends which Eastern imagination has woven into it. Benares will always possess supreme interest as the chief centre of the evolution of two of the great world-religions - Brahminism and Buddhism; but while the development of Buddhism can be, to some extent, traced and mapped out with exact dates and events, the history of Brahminism must always be regarded from a different stand-point.

1

Of the antiquity of Benares there can hardly be any question. From its peculiar situation on the banks of a splendid river, with its eastern boundary converted by the current into a magnificent natural amphitheatre, facing the rising sun, it is not unreasonable to conjecture that even before the Aryan tribes established themselves in the Ganges valley, Benares may have been a great centre of primitive sun-worship, and that the special sanctity with which the Brahmins have invested the city is only a tradition of those primeval days, borrowed, with so many of their rites and symbols, from their Turanian predecessors.

The first definite historical event known about Benares is that the Kâsis, one of the Aryan tribes which were then occupying northern India, established themselves in the Ganges valley, near Benares, at a date supposed to be between 1400 and 1000 B.C. The origin of the Aryans is still a much-debated question, but the researches of ethnologists have completely disturbed the theory of philologists, which placed the home of the Aryan people in Central Asia, and point to more northern and western latitudes as the cradle of the race. Certainly the Aryans brought with them into India all the habits and ideas of northern people-they were fair-skinned, ate horse-flesh and beef, and drank fermented liquorthe soma juice, which they held to be the amrita, or nectar of the gods. Like the ancient Britons they were polyandrous. Their religion, at first, was a simple adoration of the beneficent powers of Nature, with little of the mysticism and dread, born of a tropical environment. They worshipped the sky,

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