ted on the ground, with his back to a column, and his hands on his knees, silent and motionless. He had made a vow never to move or speak, nor to eat, unless food was put in his mouth. By this process he had attained to great sanctity, but very poor condition. His head and body had been liberally anointed with cow-dung and Ganges-mud by some of his admirers, and I saw many persons saláming and making poojah to him, but no one seemed to feed the poor wretch. I gave a bystander a few anas, with which a most bountiful meal was purchased. The old fellow eat it with much appetite, but an expression of countenance which seemed to say, "I despise it while I enjoy it." In old times, this place was a great resort for these performers of self-imposed penances, of which we read so much in tracts; but the practice of selftorture is gradually, but steadily, dying out in Northern India. A great change having been effected by the abolition of the Churruk-poojah by government. This was a festival in which men were swung in the air, supported by iron hooks run under the muscles of the back. The performers used generally to intoxicate themselves by smoking bhung (the Cannabis Indica). We have all read in missionary tracts, of people throwing themselves under the Car of Juggurnath, of men with their limbs fixed in unnatural positions, the nails growing through their hands, &c., and suicide in the Ganges off Benares used to be committed by hundreds every year, who wished to die within the sacred influence of that holy city, and thus secure an immediate transition to eternal felicity. All these barbarous practices, however, are now fast disappearing; and suttees, with the various other forms of selfimmolation, have long been prohibited and abolished by the Honourable Company.

Both Hindooism and Mahommedanism would seem to be gradually breaking up in the Company's territories; not that there has yet been any great impression produced upon the mass of the population, or that any better creed is being substituted; only there are numerous signs to show that neither of the old religions is in as vigourous a state as it was some years ago, or as Hindooism, at least, is still, in the dominions

of some native princes. The musjeeds are mostly out of repair, and in many instances fast going to ruin, except some of them which are kept up by government. The Moosulmans in India have long abandoned the purity of their old faith, and become more or less infected with Hindoo superstitions, and the great bulk of them rarely go to the mosques, or observe those daily prayers which are so striking to the traveller in other Moslem countries. Among the Hindoos the change is seen more in the gradually increasing disregard of caste. A few years ago a Brahmun would have been polluted for the day by the touch of a low-caste man, and would as soon have thought of wearing leather shoes, eating beef, or drinking spirits, as of killing his mother, eating her flesh, and drinking her blood. Now, however, patent leather pumps are very fashionable in the cities among them; the higher classes, whose wealth and position enable them to despise public opinion, eat and drink what they like-especially the latter; and the pollution by touch, if remarked at all, is too inconvenient to be long remembered. It must not be supposed, however, that this disregard of caste is yet at all general. Among the lower classes, that maxim, so general among oriental nations, that "that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man" is still universally and scrupulously observed, and any deviation from the rules of caste is severely punished. Even those illuminati, of whom I spoke above, are in many instances so hampered by the prejudices of their youth, that they would not eat at the same table with one of another caste or drink water from his cup.

I had a little illustration of the inconveniences of caste before reaching Benares, after crossing the river Sốn. The coachman had left the carriage to get a fresh horse, and as he was rather long gone, I took up the bugle, which is carried by all dak-coachmen, to recall him. No sooner, however, had my lip touched it, than all the bystanders groaned in concert. I asked my servant what the matter was, and heard, in reply, that the coachman was a Brahmun, and would be unable henceforth to use the bugle without loss of caste, which, as he was a Brahmun, could not be regained. However it turned

out that he was a very low-caste Brahmun (for they, like all other castes, are broken up into subordinate ranks, according to greater or less purity of blood) and could be reinstated by the payment of a fine, in the shape of a feast to his friends; so he finally made up his mind to blow the bugle, lose caste, and restore himself by standing treat, rather than have the greater expense of buying a new bugle. He would not touch his mouth to it, after all, without heating the mouthpiece in live coals, and scouring it with mud and cow-dung to purify it from the pollution of my lips. It may seem strange to some that a Brahmun should be coachman, but in fact they are found in all positions, and very commonly hire themselves out to natives as cooks, since the food which they prepare can be eaten by men of any caste. There are, however, a very large number, particularly among the higher castes of Brahmuns, who subsist wholly on their religious character-living on the charity and hospitality of one family after another. They are a very licentious race, and the customs of society give this tendency of theirs full swing, as, if a Brahmun leaves his shoes outside the door of a house into which he enters, it is unlawful for the owner of that house to enter until invited; and again there can never be any scandal with respect to them since a Hindoo would rather die than say anything to the disadvantage of a Brahmun. In old times, slandering a Brahmun was punished by cutting out the tongue; and death was the penalty for a blow given to one of the sacred caste. Of course these penalties have been inoperative since the government of the country by the Moosulmans, but the offences, which they were designed to prevent, are none the less rare. The dress of the Brahmuns does not differ from that of other natives, except that they all wear a piece of thread over the shoulder, falling to the hip, tied in a particular knot. This thread is put on the young Brahmun when he is about nine years old. Certain religious acts are performed on this occasion, and he is acquainted with a certain mystic sentence called the gayootree, which is in Sanscrit, and although now well known by foreigners, has at least half a dozen different translations. When all this is done, the novice

is said to be twice born. Under the Hindoo system of government, the Brahmuns occupied a position of superiority which is almost incredible. All the other castes existed only for their use and advantage. If a Soodra (or member of the great caste which comprises the mass of the population, and of which the present castes are only subdivisions) presumed to learn by heart any portion of the Shastras, the penalty was death; if he only repeated a few of the sacred words without learning them, he was let off with a dose of boiling oil poured down his throat. The killing of a Soodra by a Brahmun was the pollution of a day; a blow inflicted on a Brahmun by a Soodra, was, as before stated, a capital offence. These and other exorbitant privileges have been lost, both by the rise in importance of the lower castes, by the degeneracy and impure blood of the present race of Brahmuns, and especially by the effects of the Mahommedan invasions which deposed them from their despotic pre-eminence. They are still, however, universally regarded by the Hindoos with a superstitious reverence, and are permitted to enjoy many privileges which they abuse. For instance, monogamy is the general rule among the Hindoos, except under peculiar circumstances, but the Brahmuns, and especially those of the high class called Kooleen, are allowed to marry several women. A Kooleen Brahmun can have as many wives as he pleases, and frequently weds as many as fifty or even a hundred girls, for the sake of the dowries which the parents are willing to give to secure the honour of so high-caste a husband for their daughter. As these Kooleens are frequently poor, they have no home of their own, but stop with such of their wives as they fancy-frequently never seeing the others after their nuptial day. This is, of itself, a fearful source of immorality, second only perhaps to the Hindoo custom of prohibiting the remarriage of widows. In some parts of India the Brahmuns have attained a social position even higher than that assigned to them by the laws of Menoo, as they are looked upon as deities, and called by the same word which is used for a god.

CHAPTER XIV.

BENARES-CONCLUDED

Religions Ablutions-Aurungzeeb's Mosque-View from Minár-Burning GhatMarket Place-Hindoo College-"Native Gentlemen"-European Manners and Morals in India-Ruins of a Boodhist Monastery-Gold Brocade-Opium.

LEAVING the Golden Temple, we returned to the ghat, re-embarked in our boat, and continued down the river. The ghats were still occupied by bathers, though the crowd was now not so great as earlier in the morning. Bathing in Ganges-water is a religious ceremony, which must be performed every morning, by all who live within any reasonable distance of that river. In case of persons who live more than twenty miles from the Ganges, the rule is so far relaxed as to allow them to bathe in any other river which may be more convenient. Next in sanctity to the Ganges, or Gunga as it is called by the natives, is the Nurbudda in Central India, which indeed is believed, by many of those who live on its banks, to be the Ganges itself, or to have a mysterious underground communication with it. Bathing being, as before remarked, a religious ceremony, is accompanied with prayers, joining of the hands, throwing up the water toward the sun, and numerous other rites. When the religious act is complete, the bather thoroughly washes every part of his person, scours his hair with mud, and cleanses his teeth with a piece of soft wood, which he has previously chewed into a brush, using the mud as tooth-powder. As this act is punctually performed every morning by every Hindoo, they are in person perhaps the cleanest people in the world. After bathing they take off their clothing and wash it, frequently putting it on again without waiting for it to dry. In Bengal, oil is rubbed into