Benares quiet in the recent Mutiny.

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ing their confidence. The news of unsuccessful disarmament threw the city into a great consternation. The Hindoo population trembled for the safety of their lives and properties. The English residents thought it for certain to have their throats cut. But contrary to all apprehension, the rebel Sepoys chose to disperse themselves in different directions. Full twenty-four hours elapsed without any visible sign of the danger. Not one Sepoy was heard to be tarrying in the neighbourhood. Next day, when the city was thought to have tided over its worst crisis, the excitement went down, and a feeling of security began gradually to return to men's business and bosoms.

The people most alarmed had been the Bengalees. They abound here some ten thousand in number. Their quarter is expressly called the Bengalee-tola. Once, in the days of the Pal sovereigns, the Bengalee was a man of conspicuous enterprise and military spirit. He then marched his armies to beyond the Indus, and ruled as the Suzerain of India. From a copper tablet discovered at Monghyr, Rajah Deva Pal Deva appears to have reigned in the ninth century as far as the Carnatic and Thibet. But the most glorious chapter in the history of the Bengalee has been quite forgotten. He is at present the most degenerate of all Indians. His country was regarded by the Moguls as little better than a Botany Bay-a backslum of India peopled by the worst of all men under the sun. The Hindoostanee would not condescend to own a nationality with him. He is particularly hated for aping the English, and was therefore

hounded and hunted by the rebels with a peculiar malignity. Our host, Baboo G, told us that on the great panic-day he expected every moment to be numbered with the dead. He had removed with his family to the house of a confidential Hindoostanee friend, with whom he had previously arranged for an asylum in the event of an extreme crisis. He there kept himself in concealment for one whole day, praying for the speedy return of order. Many such instances had occurred in that dreadful year 'to show the stuff that the Bengalees were made of.' And yet there had been raised the cry to charge them with a sympathy for the cause of the rebels. The Bengalee character is the best defence against that charge. Of all the accused persons, the Bengalees were the most unlikely to have been concerned in the hazardous undertaking. Palsied Bengal is the least of all to be expected to brace its nerves for the most energetic of all human actions. The Bengalee has a talkative humour-no appetite for peril, no taste for cold steel. The most powerful motives which can induce a human being to face danger fail to rouse his sluggish nature, and he watches from a safe distance the battle on which depends his own fate, and the fate of his nation. In nothing is the Bengalee so competent as to take care of himself. The greatest of all his solicitudes is to run the smallest risk of hurt to preserve his neck from a scrape. He can speak daggers, but can look nor use none. The 'hue of his resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.' His most favourite maxim is that 'prudence is the better part of valour.'

Excursion to Sarnath.

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Of his own shortcomings, of his non-military character, none is so well aware as the Bengalee himself. He is fully conscious that his unwarlike habits are incompatible with his state of independence. He knows very well, that if the English were to leave him master of himself this day, he would on the next have to apply to the British Parliament for succour with epistles styled The Groans of the Bengalee. He would have to represent that the Mussulmans and Hindoostanees, on the one hand, chase him into the sea and forests; the sea and forests, on the other, throw him back upon the Mussulmans and Hindoostanees. 'Nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice'-a Young Bengal as yet has only the 'nodosities of the oak without its strength, and the contorsions of the sibyl without the inspiration.'

Excursion to Sarnath, which is about three miles and a half north from the outskirts of the city. It falls within the sacred enclosure of the Panch-kosi road, that, having a circumference of fifty miles, forms the boundary of the jurisdiction of Biseswara, and is guarded and defended by the deified Kotwal Bhoyrubnath, his Dandpan, and other agents, from evil spirits and evil persons-or, in other words, which marks the traditional extent of Benares that covered the area within its circuit in the remote Hindoo ages. The city thus circumscribed refers to that most ancient city of the early Brahminic and Buddhistic epochs-of the Gupta and Pal periods, which occupied a more inland site and extended within more enlarged limits than is done by modern Benares. Of the existence of this great city,

the remains at Sarnath and on the banks of the Barana afford the most convincing proofs. Sarnath is spoken of in the Ceylon annals as having formed an integral part of ancient Benares. It is famous amongst the Buddhists as the scene where Buddha 'turned the wheel of the law,' and may be distinguished as having been the Buddhist Benares from that of the Brahmins. The name of Sarnath, construed to mean the 'Bull-Lord' as well as the Best Lord,' is said to have been derived from a small Brahminical temple of Shiva, on the spot. But, most probably, the appellation is Buddhistic, and has a reference to Buddha under the name of Saranganath, or the 'Lord of Deer,' to confirm which supposition there is still a lake called Sarang Tal, as well as a ramna, or antelope preserve, in the neighbourhood. Sarnath must be supposed to have been in its highest splendour under the Gupta kings of Maghada and the Pal kings of Gour. Its destruction must be traced to the antagonism of the Brahmins, and is to be dated. from the middle of the eleventh or the beginning of the twelfth century. In the lapse of ages, there has accumulated a soil under which lie buried the ruins of the temples, colleges, hospitals, and tombs of a people, who have ceased to exist for eight long centuries. Until lately, numerous statues and idols of Buddhistic worship, together with many carved stones, were strewed about the spot, but which were carted away and thrown into the Barana to serve as a breakwater to the piers of the bridge over that stream.

Dhamek, which is probably an abbreviation of the

Sarnath, the great Buddhist Tower.

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Sanscrit Dharma-opodesaka, or the Teacher of Wisdom, is the great stone Buddhist stupa that forms the principal object of curiosity at Sarnath. It is a solid round tower, 93 feet in diameter at the base, and 110 feet above the surrounding ruins, but 128 feet above the general level of the country. The lower part of the structure, to a height of 43 feet, is built entirely of Chunar stone, and the upper part of large bricks that were in fashion amongst the ancient Hindoos. The building is ornamented with beautiful niches, and richly carved bands forming scrolls of the lotus plant, with graceful stalks, delicate leaves, tender buds, and fullblown flowers.' There are also elegant representations of the Chackra or Brahmini Geese, as well as human figures seated upon lotus flowers, and holding branches of that plant in their hands. With the single exception of the Taj Mahal at Agra,' says General Cunningham, there is no other Indian building that has been so often described as the great Buddhist tower at Sarnath.' It is said to have been built by Asoca on the spot where Buddha first turned the wheel of the law, and forms a building twenty-one centuries old. Fa Hian saw it in the beginning of the fifth century, and distinguishes it as one of the eight divine towers commemorating the acts of Buddha's terrestrial career.' Hwen Thsang visited it a hundred and forty years later, and saw enshrined in it a copper figure of Buddha represented in the act of turning the wheel of the law'

6

-or a statue of Buddha the Teacher, 'with his hands raised over his breast, and the thumb and forefinger of