 This is Chapter 48 of Following the Equator. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Following the Equator by Mark Twain, Chapter 48. Starting for Allahabad, lower births in sleepers. Elderly ladies have preference of births. An American lady takes one anyhow. How Smythe lost his birth. How he got even. Grief can take care of itself. But to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with. Puddinhead Wilson's new calendar. We left Bombay for Allahabad by a night train. It is the custom of the country to avoid day travel when it can conveniently be done. But there is one trouble. While you can seemingly secure the two lower births by making early application, there is no ticket as witness of it, and no other producible evidence in case your proprietorship shall chance to be challenged. The word engaged appears on the window, but it doesn't state who the compartment is engaged for. If your Satan and your Barney arrive before somebody else's servants and spread the bedding on the two sofas and then stand guard till you come, there will be well. But if they step aside on an errand, they may find the beds promoted to the two shelves, and somebody else's demons standing guard over their master's beds, which, in the meantime, have been spread upon your sofas. You do not pay anything extra for your sleeping place. That is where the trouble lies. If you buy a fare ticket and fail to use it, there is room thus made available for someone else. But if the place were secured to you, it would remain vacant, and yet your ticket would secure you another place when you were presently ready to travel. However, no explanation of such a system can make it seem quite rational to a person who has been used to a more rational system. If our people had the arranging of it, we should charge extra for securing the place, and then the road would suffer no loss if the purchaser did not occupy it. The present system encourages good manners, and also discourages them. If a young girl has a lower birth and an elderly lady comes in, it is usual for the girl to offer her place to this latecomer, and it is usual for the latecomer to thank her courteously and take it. But the thing happens differently sometimes. When we were ready to leave Bombay, my daughter's satchels were holding possession of her birth a lower one. At the last moment a middle-aged American lady swarmed into the compartment, followed by native porters laden with her baggage. She was growling and snarling and scolding, and trying to make herself phenomenally disagreeable and succeeding. Without a word she hoisted the satchels into the hanging shelf and took possession of that lower birth. On one of our trips Mr. Smythe and I got out at a station to walk up and down, and when we came back Smythe's bed was in the hanging shelf, and an English cavalry officer was in bed on the sofa which he had lately been occupying. It was mean to be glad about it, but it is the way we are made. I could not have been gladder if it had been my enemy that had suffered this misfortune. We all like to see people in trouble if it doesn't cost us anything. I was so happy over Mr. Smythe's chagrin that I couldn't go to sleep for thinking of it and enjoying it. I knew he supposed the officer had committed the robbery himself, whereas without a doubt the officer's servant had done it without his knowledge. Mr. Smythe kept this incident warm in his heart, and longed for a chance to get even with somebody for it. Some time afterward the opportunity came in Calcutta. We were leaving on a twenty-four hour journey to Darjeeling. Mr. Barkley, the general superintendent, has made special provision for our accommodation, Mr. Smythe said, so there was no need to hurry about getting to the train. Consequently we were a little late. When we arrived the usual immense turmoil and confusion of a great Indian station were in full blast. It was an immoderately long train. For all the natives of India were going by it, some with her, and the native officials were being pestered to frenzy by belated and anxious people. They didn't know where our car was and couldn't remember having received any orders about it. It was a deep disappointment. Moreover it looked as if our half of our party would be left behind altogether. Then Satan came running and said he had found a compartment with one shelf and one sofa unoccupied, and had made our beds and had stowed our baggage. We rushed to the place, and just as the train was ready to pull out and the porters were slamming the doors too, all down the line, an officer of the Indian Civil Service, a good friend of ours, put his head in and said, I have been hunting for you everywhere. What are you doing here? Don't you know? The train started before he could finish. Mr. Smythe's opportunity was come. His bedding on the shelf at once changed places with the bedding, a stranger's, that was occupying the sofa that was opposite to mine. About ten o'clock we stopped somewhere, and a large Englishman of official military bearing stepped in. We pretended to be asleep. The lamps were covered, but there was light enough for us to note his look of surprise. He stood there, grand and fine, peering down at Smythe, and wondering in silence at the situation. After a bit he said, Well, and that was all. But that was enough. It was easy to understand. It meant, This is extraordinary. This is high-handed. I haven't had an experience like this before. He sat down on his baggage, and for twenty minutes we watched him through our eyelashes, rocking and swaying there to the motion of the train. Then we came to a station, and he got up and went out muttering, I must find a lower berth or wait over. His servant came presently and carried away his things. Mr. Smythe's sore place was healed. His hunger for revenge was satisfied, but he couldn't sleep, and neither could I. For this was a venerable old car, and nothing about it was taught. The closet door slammed all night, and defied every fastening we could invent. We got up very much jaded at dawn, and stepped out at a way-station, and while we were taking a cup of coffee, that Englishman ranged up alongside, and somebody said to him, So you didn't stop off after all? No. The guard found a place for me that had been engaged and not occupied. I had a whole saloon car all to myself. Oh, quite palatial! I never had such luck in my life. That was our car, you see. We moved into it straight off, the family and all, but I asked the English gentleman to remain, and he did. A pleasant man, an infantry colonel, and doesn't know yet that Smythe robbed him of his berth, but thinks it was done by Smythe's servant without Smythe's knowledge. He was assisted in gathering this impression. The Indian trains are manned by natives exclusively. The Indian stations, except very large and important ones, are manned entirely by natives, and so are the posts and telegraphs. The rank and file of the police are natives. All these people are pleasant and accommodating. One day I left an express train to lounge about in that perennially ravishing show, the ebb and flow and whirl of gaudy natives, that is always surging up and down the spacious platform of a great Indian station. And I lost myself in the ecstasy of it, and when I turned the train was moving swiftly away. I was going to sit down and wait for another train, as I would have done at home. I had no thought of any other course, but a native official who had a green flag in his hand saw me and replied politely, Don't you belong in the train, sir? Yes, I said. He waved his flag and the train came back, and he put me aboard with as much ceremony as if I had been the general superintendent. They are kindly people, the natives. The face and the bearing that indicate a surly spirit and a bad heart seem to me to be so rare among Indians, so nearly non-existent in fact, that I sometimes wondered if Thuggy wasn't a dream and not a reality. The bad hearts are there, but I believe that they are in a small, poor minority. One thing is sure, they are much the most interesting people in the world, and the nearest to being incomprehensible, at any rate the hardest to account for. Their character and their history, their customs and their religion confront you with riddles at every turn, riddles which are a trifle more perplexing after they are explained than they were before. You can get the facts of a custom, like caste and sati and Thuggy and so on, and with the facts a theory which tries to explain, but never quite does it to your satisfaction. You can never quite understand how so strange a thing could have been born, nor why. For instance, the sati. This is the explanation of it. A woman who throws away her life when her husband dies is instantly joined to him again, and is forever afterward happy with him in heaven. Her family will build a little monument to her, or a temple, and will hold her in honour and, indeed, worship her memory always. They will themselves be held in honour by the public. The woman's self-sacrifice has conferred a noble and lasting distinction upon her posterity. And besides, see what she has escaped. If she had elected to live, she would be this graced person. She could not remarry. Her family would despise her and disown her. She would be a friendless outcast and miserable all her days. Very well, you say, but the explanation is not complete yet. How did people come to drift into such a strange custom? What was the origin of the idea? Well, nobody knows. It was probably a revelation sent down by the gods. One more thing. Why was such a cruel death chosen? Why wouldn't a gentle one have answered? Nobody knows. Maybe that was a revelation too? No, you can never understand it. It all seems impossible. You resolve to believe that a widow never burnt herself willingly, but went to her death because she was afraid to defy public opinion. But you are not able to keep that position. History drives you from it. Major Sleeman has a convincing case in one of his books. In his government on the Nerbuda he made a brave attempt on the 28th of March, 1828, to put down Suti on his own hook and without warrant from the supreme government of India. He could not foresee that the government would put it down itself eight months later. The only backing he had was a bold nature and a compassionate heart. He issued his proclamation abolishing the Suti in his district. On the morning of Tuesday—note the day of the week—the 24th of the following November, Umed Singh Upadya, head of the most respectable and most extensive Brahmin family in the district, died, and presently came a deputation of his sons and grandsons to beg that his old widow might be allowed to burn herself upon his pier. Sleeman threatened to enforce his order and punish severely any man who assisted, and he placed a police guard to see that no one did so. From the early morning the old widow of sixty-five had been sitting on the bank of the sacred river by her dead, waiting through the long hours for the permission, and at last the refusal came instead. In one little sentence Sleeman gives you a pathetic picture of this lonely old gray figure. All day and all night she remains sitting by the edge of the water without eating or drinking. The next morning the body of the husband was burned to ashes in a shed eight feet square and three or four feet deep, in the view of several thousand spectators. Then the widow waited out to a bare rock in the river, and everybody went away but her sons and other relations. All day she sat there on her rock in the blazing sun without food or drink, and with no clothing but a sheet over her shoulders. The relatives remained with her and all tried to persuade her to desist from her purpose, for they deeply loved her. She steadily refused. Then a part of the family went to Sleeman's house ten miles away and tried again to get him to let her burn herself. He refused hoping to save her yet. All that day she scorched in her sheet on the rock, and all that night she kept her vigil there, in the bitter cold. Thursday morning in the sight of her relatives she went through a ceremonial which said more to them than any words could have done. She put on the daja, a coarse red turban, and broke her bracelets and pieces. By these acts she became a dead person in the eye of the law, and excluded from her caste forever. By the iron rule of ancient custom, if she should now choose to live, she could never return to her family. Sleeman was in deep trouble. If she starved herself to death her family would be disgraced, and moreover starving would be a more lingering misery than the death by fire. He went back in the evening thoroughly worried. The old woman remained on her rock, and there in the morning he found her with her daja still on her head. She talked very collectively, telling me that she had determined to mix her ashes with those of her departed husband, and should patiently wait my permission to do so. Assured that God would enable her to sustain life till that was given, though she dared not eat or drink. Looking at the sun, then rising before her over a long and beautiful reach of the river, she said calmly, my soul has been for five days with my husbands near that sun. Nothing but my earthly frame is left, and this, I know, you will in time suffer to be mixed with his ashes in yonder pit, because it is not in your nature or usage only to prolong the miseries of a poor old woman. He assured her that it was his desire and duty to save her, and to urge her to live, and to keep her family from the disgrace of being thought her murderers. But she said she was not afraid of their being thought so, that they had all, like good children, done everything in their power to induce her to live, and to abide with them, and if I should consent I know they would love and honour me, but these to them have now ended. I commit them all to your care, and I go to attend my husband, Umed Singh Upadia, with whose ashes on the funeral-pile mine have been already three times mixed. She believed that she and he had been upon the earth three several times as wife and husband, and that she had burned herself to death three times upon his peer. That is why she said that strange thing. Since she had broken her bracelets and put on the red turban, she regarded herself as a corpse, otherwise she would not have allowed herself to do her husband the irreverence of pronouncing his name. This was the first time in her long life that she had ever uttered her husband's name, for in India no woman high or low ever pronounces the name of her husband. Major Sleeman still tried to shake her purpose. He promised to build her a fine house among the temples of her ancestors upon the bank of the river, and make handsome provision for her out of rent-free lands if she would consent to live. And if she wouldn't, he would allow no stone or brick to ever mark the place where she died. But she only smiled and said, My pulse has long ceased to beat. My spirit has departed. I shall suffer nothing in the burning. And if you wish proof, order some fire, and you shall see this arm consumed without giving me any pain. Sleeman was now satisfied that he could not alter her purpose. He sent for all the chief members of the family, and said he would suffer her to burn herself if they would enter into a written engagement to abandon the sati in their family, thanks forth. They agreed. The papers were drawn out and signed, and at noon Saturday word was sent to the poor old woman. She seemed greatly pleased. The ceremonies of bathing were gone through with, and by three o'clock she was ready and the fire was briskly burning in the pit. She had now gone without food or drink during more than four days and a half. She came ashore from her rock, first wetting her sheet in the waters of the Sacred River, for without that safeguard any shadow which might fall upon her would convey impurity to her. Then she walked to the pit, leaning upon one of her sons and a nephew. The distance was a hundred and fifty yards. I had sentries placed all round, and no other person was allowed to approach within five paces. She came on with a calm and cheerful countenance, stopped once, and casting her eyes upwards said, Why have they kept me five days from thee, my husband? On coming to the sentries her supporters stopped and remained standing. She moved on, and walked once round the pit, paused a moment, and while muttering a prayer threw some flowers into the river. She then walked up deliberately and steadily to the brink, stepped into the center of the flame, sat down, and leaning back in the midst as if reposing upon a couch was consumed without uttering a shriek or betraying one sign of agony. It is fine and beautiful. It compels one's reverence and respect. No, has it freely and without compulsion. We see how the custom, once started, could continue, for the soul of it is that stupendous power. Faith. Faith brought to the pitch of effectiveness by the cumulative force of example, and long use, and custom. But we cannot understand how the first widows came to take to it. That is a perplexing detail. Sleeman says that it was usual to play music at the city, but that the white man's notion that this was to drown the screams of the martyr is not correct, that it had a quite different purpose. It was believed that the martyr died prophesying, that the prophecies sometimes foretold disaster, and it was considered a kindness to those upon whom it was to fall to drown the voice and keep them in ignorance of the misfortune that was to come. CHAPTER 49 Pajamas, day seen in India, closed in a turban and a pocket-hankerchief, land parceled out, established village servants, witches in families, hereditary midwifery, destruction of girl babies, wedding display, tiger persuader, hailstorm discouragers, the tyranny of the sweeper, elephant driver, water carrier, curious rivers, arrival at Allahabad, English Quarter, lecture hall like a snowstorm, private carriages, a milliner, early morning, the squatting servant, a religious fair. He had had much experience of physicians and said, The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you drother not. Puddin had Wilson's new calendar. It was a long journey, two nights, one day and part of another day, from Bombay eastward to Allahabad, but it was always interesting and it was not fatiguing. At first the night travel promised to be fatiguing, but that was on account of Pajamas. This foolish night dress consists of jacket and drawers. Sometimes they are made of silk, sometimes of a raspy, scratchy, sleazy, woollen material with a sandpaper surface. The drawers are loose, elephant-legged and elephant-waisted things, and instead of buttoning around the body there is a drawstring to produce the required shrinkage. The jacket is roomy and one buttons it in front. Pajamas are hot on a hot night and cold on a cold night, defects which a night-shirt is free from. I tried the Pajamas in order to be in the fashion, but I was obliged to give them up. I couldn't stand them. There was no sufficient change from day-gear to night-gear. I missed the refreshing and luxurious scents induced by the night-gown of being undressed, emancipated, set free from restraints and trammels. In place of that I had the worried, confined, oppressed, suffocated scents of being a bed with my clothes on. All through the warm half of the night the coarse surfaces irritated my skin and made it feel baked and feverish, and the dreams which came in the fitful flurries of slumber were such as distressed the sleep of the damned or ought to, and all through the cold other half of the night I could get no time for sleep because I had to employ it all in stealing blankets. But blankets are of no value at such a time. The higher they are piled the more effectively they cork the cold in and keep it from getting out. The result is that your legs are ice and you know how you will feel by and by when you are buried. In a sane interval I discarded the pajamas and led a rational and comfortable life thenceforth. Out in the country in India the day begins early. One sees a plain, perfectly flat, dust-colored, and brickyard-y, stretching limitlessly away on every side in the dim grey light, striped everywhere with hard-beaten narrow paths. The vast flatness broken at wide intervals by bunches of spectral trees that mark where villages are, and along all the paths are slender women and the black forms of lanky-naked men moving to their work, the women with brass water jars on their heads, the men carrying hose. The man is not entirely naked, always there is a bit of white rag, a loincloth. It amounts to a bandage and is a white accent on his black person, like the silver band around the middle of a pipe-stem. Sometimes he also wears a fluffy and voluminous white turban, and this adds a second accent. He then answers properly to Miss Gordon Cummings' flashlight picture of him as a person who is dressed in a turban and a pocket handkerchief. All day long one has this monotony of dust-colored dead levels and scattering bunches of trees and mud villages. You soon realize that India is not beautiful. Still there is an enchantment about it that is beguiling, and which does not pawl. You cannot tell just what it is that makes the spell, perhaps, but you feel it and confess it nevertheless. Of course, at bottom you know in a vague way that it is history. It is that that affects you. A haunting sense of the myriads of human lives that have blossomed and withered and perished here, repeating and repeating and repeating, century after century and age after age, the barren and meaningless process. It is this sense that gives to this forlorn, uncomely land power to speak to the spirit and make friends with it, to speak to it with a voice bitter with satire but eloquent with melancholy. The deserts of Australia and the ice-barrens of Greenland have no speech, for they have no venerable history, with nothing to tell of man and his vanities, his fleeting glories and his miseries. They have nothing wherewith to spiritualize their ugliness and veil it with a charm. There is nothing pretty about an Indian village, a mud one, and I do not remember that we saw any but mud ones on that long flight to a lullabod. It is a little bunch of dirt-colored mud hovels jammed together within a mud wall. As a rule the rains had beaten down parts of some of the houses, and this gave the village the aspect of a mouldering and hoary ruin. I believe the cattle and the vermin live inside the wall, for I saw cattle coming out and cattle going in, and whenever I saw a villager he was scratching. This last is only circumstantial evidence, but I think it has value. The village has a battered little temple or two, big enough to hold an idol, and with custom enough to fat up a priest and keep him comfortable. Where there are Mohammedans, there are generally a few sorry tombs outside the village that have a decayed and neglected look. The villages interested me because of things which Major Sleeman says about them in his books, particularly what he says about the division of labour in them. He says that the whole face of India is parceled out into estates of villages, that nine-tenths of the vast population of the land consists of cultivators of the soil, that it is these cultivators who inhabit the villages, that there are certain established village servants, mechanics and others who are apparently paid a wage by the village at large, and whose callings remain in certain families and are handed down from father to son, like an estate. He gives a list of these established servants, priest, blacksmith, carpenter, accountant, washerman, basket-maker, potter, watchman, barber, shoemaker, brazier, confectioner, weaver, dire, et cetera. In his day witches abounded and it was not thought good business wisdom for a man to marry his daughter into a family that hadn't a witch in it, for she would need a witch on the premises to protect her children from the evil spells which would certainly be cast upon them by the witches connected with the neighbouring families. The office of midwife was hereditary in the family of the basket-maker. It belonged to his wife. She might not be competent, but the office was hers anyway. Her pay was not high, twenty-five cents for a boy, and half as much for a girl. The girl was not desired because she would be a disastrous expense by and by. As soon as she should be old enough to begin to wear clothes for propriety's sake, it would be a disgrace to the family if she were not married, and to marry her meant financial ruin. For by custom the father must spend upon feasting and letting display everything he had and all he could borrow. In fact, reduce himself to a condition of poverty which he might never more recover from. It was the dread of this prospective ruin which made the killing of girl-babies so prevalent in India in the old days before England laid the iron hand of her prohibitions upon the piteous slaughter. One may judge of how prevalent the custom was by one of Sleeman's casual, electrical remarks when he speaks of the children at play in villages where girl voices were never heard. The wedding display folly is still in full force in India, and by consequence the destruction of girl-babies is still furtively practiced, but not largely because of the vigilance of the government and the sternness of the penalties it levies. In some parts of India the village keeps in its pay three other servants, an astrologer to tell the villager when he may plant his crop or make a journey or marry a wife, or strangle a child, or borrow a dog, or climb a tree, or catch a rat, or swindle a neighbor without offending the alert and solicitous heavens. And what his dream means, if he has had one, and was not bright enough to interpret it himself by the details of his dinner. The two other established servants were the Tiger Persuader and the Hailstorm Discourager. The one kept away the Tigers, if he could, and collected the wages anyway, and the other kept off the Hailstorms, or explained why he failed. He charged the same for explaining a failure that he did for scoring a success. A man is an idiot who can't earn a living in India. Major Sleiman reveals the fact that the trade union and the boycott are antiquities in India. India seems to have originated everything. The sweeper belongs to the bottom caste. He is the lowest of the low. All other castes despise him and scorn his office. But that does not trouble him. His caste is a caste, and that is sufficient for him, and so he is proud of it, not ashamed. Sleiman says, It is perhaps not known to many of my countrymen, even in India, that in every town and city in the country the right of sweeping the houses and streets is a monopoly, and is supported entirely by the pride of castes among the scavengers, who are all of the lowest class. The right of sweeping within a certain range is recognized by the caste to belong to a certain member, and if any other member presumes to sweep within that range he is excommunicated. No other member will smoke out of his pipe or drink out of his jug, and he can get restored to caste only by a feast to the whole body of sweepers. If any housekeeper within a particular circle happens to offend the sweeper of that range none of his filth will be removed till he pacifies him, because no other sweeper will dare to touch it, and the people of a town are often more tyrannized over by these people than by any other. A note by Major Sleiman's editor, Mr. Vincent Arthur Smith, says that in our day this tyranny of the sweeper's guild is one of the many difficulties which bar the progress of Indian sanitary reform. Think of this. The sweepers cannot be readily coerced, because no Hindu or Muslim would do their work to save his life, nor will he pollute himself by beating the refractory scavenger. They certainly do seem to have the whip-hand. It would be difficult to imagine a more impregnable position. The vested rights described in the text are so fully recognized in practice that they are frequently the subject of sale or mortgage, just like a milk-root, or like a London crossing sweepership. It is said that the London crossing sweepers right to his crossing is recognized by the rest of the guild, that they protect him in its possession, that certain choice-crossings are valuable property and are saleable at high figures. I have noticed that the man who sweeps in front of the army and navy stores has a wealthy South African aristocratic style about him, and when he is off his guard he has exactly that look on his face, which you always see in the face of a man who is saving up his daughter to marry her to a duke. It appears from Sleiman that in India the occupation of elephant-driver is confined to Mohammedans. I wonder why that is. The water-carrier, B. S. D., is a Mohammedan, but it is said that the reason of that is that the Hindu's religion does not allow him to touch the skin of dead kind, and that is what the water sack is made of. It would defile him. And it doesn't allow him to eat meat. The animal that furnished the meat was murdered and to take any creature's life is a sin. It is a good and gentle religion, but inconvenient. A great Indian river at low water suggests the familiar anatomical picture of a skinned human body, the intricate mesh of interwoven muscles and tendons to stand for water channels, and the archipelagos of fat and flesh enclosed by them to stand for the sandbars. Somewhere on this journey we pass such a river, and on a later journey we saw in the Sootledge the duplicate of that river. Curious rivers they are, low shores a dizzy distance apart with nothing between but an enormous acreage of sand-flats with sluggish little veins of water dribbling around amongst them. Saharas of sand, smallpox pitted with footprints punctured in belts as straight as the equator clear from the one shore to the other, barring the channel interruptions. Why shod fairer, you see? Long railway bridges are required for this sort of rivers, and India has them. You approach Alalabad by a very long one. It was now carrying us across the bed of the Jumna, a bed which did not seem to have been slept in for one while or more. It wasn't all river-bed, most of it was overflow-ground. Alalabad means city of God. I get this from the books. From a printed curiosity, a letter written by one of those brave and confident Hindu-strugglers with the English tongue called a babu, I got a more compressed translation. Godville. It is perfectly correct, but that is the most that can be said for it. We arrived in the forenoon and shorthanded, for Satan got left behind somewhere that morning and did not overtake us until after nightfall. It seemed very peaceful without him. The world seemed asleep and dreaming. I did not see the native town, I think. I do not remember why, for an incident connects it with the great mutiny, and that is enough to make any place interesting. But I saw the English part of the city. It is a town of wide avenues and noble distances, and is comely and alluring, and full of suggestions of comfort and leisure, and of the serenity which a good conscience and interest by a sufficient bank count gives. The bungalows, dwellings, stand well back in the seclusion and privacy of large and closed compounds, private grounds, as we should say, and in the shade and shelter of trees. Even the photographer and the prosperous merchant ply their industries in the elegant reserve of big compounds, and the citizens drive in there upon their business occasions, and not in cabs. In the Indian city's cabs are for the drifting stranger. All the white citizens have private carriages, and each carriage has a flock of white-turban black footmen and drivers all over it. The vicinity of a lecture hall looks like a snowstorm, and makes the lecturer feel like an opera. India has many names, and they are correctly descriptive. It is the Land of Contradictions, the Land of Subtlety and Superstition, the Land of Wealth and Poverty, the Land of Splendour and Desolation, the Land of Plague and Famine, the Land of the Thug and the Poisoner, and of the Meek and the Patient, the Land of the Sati, the Land of the Un reinstatable Widow, the Land where all life is holy, the Land of Cremation, the Land where the vulture is a grave and a monument, the Land of the Multitudinous Gods, and if signs go for anything, it is the Land of the Private Carriage. In Bombay the forewoman of a millinery shop came to the hotel in her private carriage to take the measure for a gown, not for me, but for another. She had come out to India to make a temporary stay, but was extending it indefinitely. Indeed she was proposing to end her days there. In London she said her work had been hard, her hours long. For economy's sake she had had to live in shabby rooms and far away from the shop, watch the pennies, deny herself many of the common comforts of life, restrict herself in effect to its bare necessities, as chew-cabs, travel third class by underground train to and from her work, swallowing coal smoke and cinders all the way, and sometimes troubled with the society of men and women who were less desirable than the smoke and the cinders. But in Bombay, on almost any kind of wages, she could live in comfort and keep her carriage and have six servants in place of the woman of all work she had had in her English home. Later in Calcutta I found that the standard oil clerks had small one-horse vehicles and did no walking, and I was told that the clerks of the other large concerns there had the like equipment. But to return to Alalabad, I was up at dawn the next morning. In India the tourist servant does not sleep in a room in the hotel rolls himself up head and ears in his blanket and stretches himself on the veranda across the front of his master's door and spends the night there. I don't believe anybody's servant occupies a room. Apparently the bungalow servants sleep on the veranda. It is roomy and goes all around the house. I speak of men's servants. I saw none of the other sex. I think there are none except child nurses. I was up at dawn and walked around the veranda with the rows of sleepers. In front of one door a Hindu servant was squatting, waiting for his master to call him. He had polished the yellow shoes and placed them by the door, and now he had nothing to do but wait. It was freezing cold, but there he was, as motionless as a sculptured image and as patient. It troubled me. I wanted to say to him, don't crouch there like that and freeze. Nobody requires it of you. Stir around and get warm. But I hadn't the words. I thought of saying, Jaldi Jow! But I couldn't remember what it meant, so I didn't say it. I knew another phrase, but it wouldn't come to my mind. I moved on, proposing to dismiss him from my thoughts, but his bare legs and bare feet kept him there. They kept drawing me back from the sunny side to a point once I could see him. At the end of an hour he had not changed his attitude in the least degree. It was a curious and impressive exhibition of meekness and patience or fortitude or indifference, I did not know which. But it worried me, and it was spoiling my mourning. In fact, it spoiled two hours of it quite thoroughly. I quitted this vicinity then and left him to punish himself as much as he might want to. But up to that time the man had not changed his attitude a hair. He will always remain with me, I suppose. His figure never grows vague in my memory. Whenever I read of Indian resignation, Indian patience under wrongs, hardships, and misfortunes, he comes before me. He becomes a personification and stands for India in trouble. And for untold ages India in trouble has been pursued with the very remark which I was going to utter but didn't, because its meaning had slipped me, Jel-de-Jowl! Come! Shove along! Why? It was the very thing. In the early brightness we made a long drive out to the fort. Part of the way was beautiful. It led under stately trees and through groups of native houses and by the usual village well where the picturesque gangs are always flocking to and fro and laughing and chattering. And this time brawny men were deluging their bronze bodies with the limpid water and making a refreshing and enticing show of it. Enticing for the sun was already transacting business, firing India up for the day. There was plenty of this early bathing going on for it was getting toward breakfast time and with an unpurified body the Hindu must not eat. Then we struck into the hot plain and found the roads crowded with pilgrims of both sexes for one of the great religious fairs of India was being held just beyond the fort at the junction of the sacred rivers, the Ganges and the Juna. Three sacred rivers, I should have said, for there is a subterranean one. Nobody has seen it, but that doesn't signify. The fact that it is there is enough. These pilgrims had come from all over India. Some of them had been months on the way, plotting patiently along in the heat and dust, worn, poor, hungry, but supported and sustained by an unwavering faith and belief. They were genuinely happy and content now. Their full and sufficient reward was at hand. They were going to be cleansed from every vestige of sin and corruption by these holy waters which make utterly pure, whatsoever thing they touch, even the dead and rotten. It is wonderful the power of a faith like that that can make multitudes upon multitudes of the old and weak and the young and frail such incredible journeys and endure the resultant miseries without repining. It is done in love, or it is done in fear. I do not know which it is. No matter what the impulse is, the act born of it is beyond imagination marvelous to our kind of people, the cold whites. There are choice great natures among us that could exhibit the equivalent of this prodigious self-sacrifice, not be equal to anything approaching it. Still, we all talk self-sacrifice, and this makes me hope that we are large enough to honor it in the Hindu. Two millions of natives arrive at this fair every year, how many start and die on the road from age and fatigue and disease and scanty nourishment and how many die on the return from the same causes no one knows. But the tale is great, enormous. Every twelfth year is held to be a year of peculiar grace, a greatly augmented volume of pilgrims' results then. The twelfth year has held this distinction since the remotest times, it is said. It is said also that there is to be but one more twelfth year for the Ganges. After that, that holiest of all sacred rivers will cease to be holy and will be abandoned by the pilgrims for many centuries. The wise men have not stated. At the end of that interval it will become holy again. Meantime, the data will be arranged by those people who have charge of all such matters, the great chief Brahmins. It will be like shutting down a mint. At a first glance it looks most unbrahmanically uncommercial, but I am not disturbed being soothed and tranquilized by their reputation. Rare Fox he lay low, as Uncle Rimas says, and at the judicious time he will spring something on the Indian public which will show that he was not financially asleep when he took the Ganges out of the market. Great numbers of the natives along the roads were bringing away holy water from the rivers. They would carry it far and wide in India and sell it. Cavernier, the French traveller, seventeenth century, notes that Ganges' water is a guest receiving a cup or two, according to the liberality of the host. Sometimes two thousand or three thousand rupees worth of it is consumed at a wedding. The fort is a huge old structure and has had a large experience in religions. In its great court stands a monolith which was placed there more than two thousand years ago to preach Buddhism by its pious inscription. The fort was built three centuries by a Mohammedan emperor, a re-sacrification of the place in the interest of that religion. There is a Hindu temple too with subterranean ramifications stocked with shrines and idols, and now the fort belongs to the English, it contains a Christian church ensured in all the companies. From the lofty ramparts one has a fine view of the sacred rivers. They join at that point the pale blue jhumna apparently clean and clear bloody Ganges, dull yellow and not clean. On a long curved spit between the rivers towns of tents were visible with a multitude of fluttering penins and a mighty swarm of pilgrims. It was a troublesome place to get down to and not a quiet place when you arrived but it was interesting there was a world of activity in turmoil and noise, partly religious, partly commercial for the Mohammedans were there to curse and sell and the Hindus to buy and pray. It is a fair as well as a religious festival. Crowds were bathing, praying and drinking the purifying waters and many sick pilgrims had come long journeys in palanquins to be healed of their maladies by a bath or if that might not be then to die on the blessed banks and so make sure of heaven. There were fakirs in plenty with their bodies dusted over with ashes and their long hair caked together with cow dung for the cow is holy and so is the rest of it. So holy that the good Hindu peasant frescoes the walls of his hut with this refuse and also constructs ornamental figures out of it for the gracing of his dirt floor. There were seated families, fearfully and wonderfully painted, who by attitude and grouping represented the families of certain great gods. There was a holy man who sat naked by the day and by the week on a cluster of iron spikes and did not seem to mind it. And another holy man who stood all day holding his withered arms motionless aloft and was said to have been doing it for years. All of these performers have a cloth on the ground beside them for the reception of contributions and even the poorest of the people give a trifle and hope that the sacrifice will be blessed to him. Last came a procession of naked holy people marching by and chanting and I wrenched myself away. End of Chapter 49 This is Chapter 50 of Following the Equator. This Lebervox recording is in the public domain. Following the Equator by Mark Twain Chapter 50. On the road to Benares, dust and waiting the bejeweled crowd a native prince in his guard Zenana Lady the extremes of fashion the hotel at Benares an annex a mile away doors in India the people tree warning against cold baths a strange fruit description of Benares the beginning of creation pilgrims to Benares a priest with a good business stand Protestant missionary the Trinity Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu religion the business at Benares the man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that wears a fig leaf Putin had Wilson's new calendar the journey to Benares was all in daylight and occupied but a few hours it was admirably dusty the dust settled upon you in a thick ashy layer and turned you into a fakir with nothing lacking to the roll cow manure and the sense of holiness there was a change of cars about mid-afternoon at Mogul Serai if that was the name and a wait of two hours there for the Benares train we could have found a carriage and driven to the sacred city but we should have lost the wait in other countries a long wait at the station is a dull thing and tedious but one has no right to have that feeling in India you have the monster the crowd of bejeweled natives the stir the bustle the confusion the shifting splendors of the costumes dear me the delight of it the charm of it are beyond speech the two hour wait was over too soon among other satisfying things to look at was a minor native prince from the backwoods somewhere with his guard of honor a ragged but wonderfully gaudy gang of fifty dark barbarians in locked muskets the general show came so near to exhausting variety that one would have said that no addition to it could be conspicuous but when this false staff and his motley's march through it one saw that that seeming impossibility had happened we got away by and by and soon reached the outer edge of Benares then there was another wait but as usual with something to look at this was a cluster of little canvas boxes palanquins a canvas box is not much of a sight when empty but when there is a lady in it it is an object of interest these boxes were grouped apart in the full blaze of the terrible sun during the three quarters of an hour that we tarried there they contained senana ladies they had to sit up there was not room enough to stretch out they probably did not mind it because of the adaptivity of their dwellings all their lives when they go a journey they are carried to the train in these boxes in the train they have to be secluded from inspection many people pity them and I always did it myself and never charged anything but it is doubtful if this compassion is valued while we were in India some good hearted Europeans in one of the cities proposed to restrict a large park so that they could go there and in assured privacy go about unveiled and enjoy the sunshine and air as they had never enjoyed them before the good intentions back of the proposition were recognized and sincere thanks returned for it but the proposition itself met with a prompt declination at the hands of those who were authorized to speak for the Zenana ladies apparently the idea was shocking to the ladies indeed it was quite manifestly shocking was that proposition the equivalent of inviting European ladies to assemble scantily and scandalously closed in the seclusion of a private park it seemed to be about that without doubt modesty is nothing less than a holy feeling and without doubt the person whose rule of modesty has been transgressed feels the same sort of wound if something made holy to him by his religion had suffered a desecration I say rule of modesty because there are about a million rules in the world and this makes a million standards to be looked out for Major Sleeman mentions the case of some high cast veiled ladies who were profoundly scandalized when some English young ladies passed by with faces bare to the world scandalized that they spoke out with strong indignation and wondered that people could be so shameless as to expose their persons like that and yet the legs of the objectors were naked to mid-thigh both parties were clean-minded and irreproachably modest while abiding by their separate rules but they couldn't have traded rules for a change without suffering considerable discomfort all human rules are more or less I suppose it is best so, no doubt the way it is now the asylums can hold the same people but if we tried to shut up the insane we should run out of building materials you have a long drive through the outskirts of Benares before you get to the hotel and all the aspects are melancholy it is a vision of dusty sterility decaying temples crumbling tombs mud walls shabby huts the whole region seems to ache with age and penery it must take ten thousand years of want to produce such an aspect we were still outside of the great native city when we reached the hotel it was a quiet and home-like house inviting and manifestly comfortable but we liked its annex better and went thither it was a mile away of a large compound and was built bungalow fashion everything on the ground floor and a veranda all around they have doors in India but I don't know why they don't fasten and they stand open as a rule with a curtain hanging in the door-space to keep out the glare of the sun still there is plenty of privacy for no white person will come in without notice, of course the native men-servants will seem to count they glide in, barefoot and noiseless and are in the midst before one knows it at first this is a shock and sometimes it is an embarrassment but one has to get used to it and does there was one tree in the compound and a monkey lived in it at first I was strongly interested in the tree for I was told that it was the renowned people the tree in whose shadow you cannot tell a lie this one failed to stand the test and went away from it disappointed there was a softly creaking well close by and a couple of oxen drew water from it by the hour super intended by two natives dressed in the usual turban and pocket handkerchief the tree and the well were the only scenery and so the compound was a soothing and lonesome and satisfying place and very restful after so many activities there was nobody in our bungalow but ourselves the guests were in the next one where the table dote was furnished a body could not be more pleasantly situated each room had the customary bath attached a room ten or twelve feet square with a roomy stone paved pit in it and abundance of water one could not easily improve upon this arrangement except by furnishing it with cold water and excluding the hot in deference to the fervency of the climate but that forbidden it would damage the bather's health the stranger is warned against taking cold baths in India but even the most intelligent strangers are fools and they do not obey and so they presently get laid up I was the most intelligent fool that passed through that year but I am still more intelligent now now that it is too late I wonder if the dorian if that is the name of it is another superstition like the people tree there was a great abundance and variety of tropical fruits but the dorian was never in evidence it was never the season for the dorian it was always going to arrive from Burma some time or other but it never did by all accounts it was a most strange fruit and incomparably delicious to the taste but not to the smell its rind was said to exude a stench cautious a nature that when a dorian was in the room even the presence of a pole cat was a refreshment we found many who had eaten the dorian and they all spoke of it with a sort of rapture they said that if you could hold your nose until the fruit was in your mouth a sacred joy would suffuse you from head to foot that would make you oblivious to the smell of the rind but that if your grip slipped and you caught the smell of the rind before the fruit was in your mouth you would faint there is a fortune in that rind some day somebody will import it into Europe and sell it for cheese Benaris was not a disappointment it justified its reputation as a curiosity it is on high ground and overhangs a grand curve of the Ganges it is a vast mass of building compactly crusting a hill and is cloven in all directions by an intricate confusion of cracks which stand for streets tall slim minarets and be flagged temple-spires rise out of it and give it picturesqueness viewed from the river the city is as busy as an anthill and the hurly-burly of human life swarming along the web of narrow streets reminds one of the ants the sacred cow swarms along too and goes wither she pleases and takes toll of the grain shops and is very much in the way and is a good deal of a nuisance since she must not be molested Benaris is older than history older than tradition older even than legend and looks twice as old as all of them put together from a Hindu statement quoted in Rev. Mr. Parker's compact and lucid guide to Benaris I find that the site of the town was the beginning place of the creation it was merely an upright lingam at first no larger than a stovepipe and stood in the midst of a shoreless ocean this was the work of the god Vishnu later he spread the lingam out till its surface was ten miles across still it was not large enough for the business therefore he presently built the globe around it Benaris is thus the center of the earth this is considered an advantage it has had a tumultuous history both materially and spiritually it started Brahmanically many ages ago then by and by Buddha came in recent times two thousand five hundred years ago and after that it was Buddhist during many centuries twelve perhaps but the Brahmins got the upper hand again then and have held it ever since it is unspeakably sacred in Hindu eyes and is as unsanitary as it is sacred and smells like the land of the Dorian it is the headquarters of the Brahman faith and one eighth of the population are priests of that church but it is not an overstock for they have all India as a prey all India flocks thither on pilgrimage and pours its savings into the pockets of the priests in a generous stream which never fails a priest with a good stand on the shore of the Ganges is much better off than the sweeper of the best crossing in London a good stand is worth a world of money the holy proprietor of it sits under his grand spectacular umbrella and blesses people all his life and collects his commission and grows fat and rich and the stand passes from father to son down and down and down through the ages and remains a permanent and lucrative estate in the family as Mr. Parker suggests it can become a subject of dispute at one time or another and then the matter will be settled not by prayer and fasting and consultations with Vishnu but by the intervention of a much more poisoned power an English court in Bombay I was told by an American missionary that in India there are 640 Protestant missionaries at work at first it seemed an immense force but of course that was a thoughtless idea one missionary to 500,000 natives that is not a force it is the reverse of it 640 marching against an entrenched camp of 300 million the odds are too great a force of 640 in binars alone would have its hands over full with 8,000 Brahmin priests for adversary missionaries need to be well equipped with hope and confidence and this equipment they seem to have in all parts of the world Mr. Parker has it it enables him to get a favorable outlook out of statistics which might add up differently with other mathematicians for instance during the past few years competent observers declare that the number of pilgrims to binaris has increased and then he adds up this fact and gets this conclusion but the revival, if so it may be called has in it the marks of death it is a spasmodic struggle before disillusion in this world we have seen the Roman Catholic power dying upon these same terms for many centuries many a time we have gotten already for the funeral and found it postponed again on account of the weather or something taught by experience we ought not to put on our things for this Brahminical one till we see the procession move apparently one of the most interesting things in the world is the funeral of a religion I should have been glad to acquire some sort of idea of Hindu theology but the difficulties were too great the matter was too intricate even the mere ABC of it is baffling there is a trinity Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu independent powers apparently though one cannot feel quite sure of that because in one of the temples where an attempt has been made to concentrate the three in one person the three have other names and plenty of them and this makes confusion in one's mind the three have wives and the wives have several names and this increases the confusion there are children the children have many names and thus the confusion goes on and on it is not worthwhile to try to get any grip upon the cloud of minor gods there are too many of them it is even a justifiable economy to leave Brahma the chiefest god of all out of your studies for he seems to cut no great figure in India the vast bulk of the national worship is lavished upon Shiva and Vishnu and their families Shiva's symbol the lingam with which Vishnu began the creation is worshiped by everybody apparently it is the commonest object in Benares it is on view everywhere it is garlanded with flowers offerings are made to it it suffers no neglect commonly it is an upright stone shaped like a thimble sometimes like an elongated thimble this priapus worship then is older than history Mr. Parker says that the lingams in Benares outnumber the inhabitants in Benares there are many Mohammedan mosques there are Hindu temples without number these quaintly shaped and elaborately sculptured little stone jugs crowd all the lanes the Ganges itself and every individual drop of water in it are temples religion then is the business of Benares just as gold production is the business of Johannesburg other industries count for nothing as compared with the vast and all absorbing rush and drive and boom of the town's specialty Benares is the sacredest of sacred cities the moment you step across the sharply defined line which separates it from the rest of the globe you stand upon ineffably and unspeakably holy ground Mr. Parker says it is impossible to convey any adequate idea of the intense feelings of veneration and affection with which the pious Hindu regards holy Kashi Benares and then he gives you this vivid and moving picture let a Hindu regiment be marched through the district and as soon as they cross the line and enter the limits of the holy place they rend the air with cries of Kashi Ji Ki Chai Chai holy Kashi hail to thee, hail, hail, hail the weary pilgrim scarcely able to stand with age and weakness by the dust and heat and almost dead with fatigue crawls out of the oven-like railway carriage and as soon as his feet touch the ground he lifts up his withered hands and utters the same pious exclamation let a European in some distant city in casual talk in the bizarre mention the fact that he has lived at Benares and at once voices will be raised to call down blessings on his head for a dweller in Benares is of all men most blessed it makes our own religious enthusiasm seem pale and cold in as much as the life of religion is in the heart, not the head Mr. Parker's touching picture seems to promise a sort of indefinite postponement of that funeral End of Chapter 50 This is Chapter 51 of following the Equator by Mark Twain Chapter 51 Benares, a religious temple a guide for pilgrims to save time in securing salvation let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either put in head Wilson's new calendar Yes, the city of Benares is in effect just a big church a great church a religious hive whose every cell is a temple a shrine or a mosque and whose every conceivable earthly and heavenly good is procurable under one roof so to speak a sort of army and navy stores theologically stocked I will make out a little itinerary for the pilgrim then you will see how handy the system is how convenient, how comprehensive if you go to Benares a serious desire to spiritually benefit yourself you will find it valuable I got some of the facts from conversations with the Reverend Mr. Parker and the others from his guide to Benares they are therefore trustworthy 1. Purification at sunrise you must go down to the Ganges and bathe pray and drink some of the water this is for your general purification 2. Protection against hunger next you must fortify yourself against the sorrowful, earthly ill just named this you will do by worshiping for a moment in the cow temple by the door of it you will find an image of Ganesh son of Shiva it has the head of an elephant on a human body its face and hands are of silver you will worship it a little and pass on into a covered veranda where you will find devotees reciting from the sacred books with the help of instructors in this place are groups of rude and dismal idols you may contribute something for their support then pass into the temple a grim and stenchy place for it is populous with sacred cows and with beggars you will give something to the beggars and reverently kiss the tails of such cows as pass along for these cows are peculiarly holy and this act of worship will secure you from hunger for the day 3. The poor man's friend you will next worship this god he is at the bottom of a stone cistern in the temple of Dalbaiswar under the shade of a noble people tree on the bluff overlooking the Ganges so you must go back to the river the poor man's friend is the god of material prosperity in general and the god of the rain in particular you will secure material prosperity or both by worshiping him he is Shiva under a new alias and he abides in the bottom of that cistern in the form of a stone lingam you pour Ganges water over him and in return for this homage you get the promised benefits if there is any delay about the rain you must pour water in until the cistern is full the rain will then be sure to come 4. Fever at the Kedargat you will find a long flight of stone steps leading down to the river halfway down is a tank filled with sewage drink as much of it as you want it is for fever 5. Smallpox go straight from there to the central ghat at its upstream and you will find a small whitewashed building which is a temple sacred to Sitala goddess of smallpox her understudy is there a rude human figure behind a brass screen you will worship this for reasons to be furnished presently the fate for certain reasons you will next go and do homage at this well you will find it in the Dantpan temple in the city the sunlight falls into it from a square hole in the masonry above you will approach it with awe for your life is now at stake you will bend over and look if the fates are propitious you will see your face pictured in the water far down in the well if matters have been otherwise ordered you will see nothing this means that you have not six months to live if you are already at the point of death your circumstances are now serious there is no time to lose let this world go arrange for the next one handily situated at your very elbow is opportunity for this you turn and worship the image of Mahaka the great fate and happiness in the life to come is secured if there is breath in your body yet you should now make an effort to get a further lease of the present life you have a chance there is a chance for everything in this admirably stocked and wonderfully systemized spiritual and temporal army and navy store you must get yourself carried to the seven well of long life this is within the precincts of the mouldering and venerable Brithkal temple which is one of the oldest in Benares you pass in by a stone image of the monkey god Hanuman and there, among the ruined courtyards you will find a shallow pool of stagnant sewage it smells like the best Limburger cheese and is filthy with the washings of rotting lepers but that is nothing bathe in it bathe in it gratefully and worshipfully for this is the fountain of youth these are the waters of long life your grey hairs will disappear and with them your wrinkles and your rheumatism will disappear and with them your wrinkles of care and the weariness of age and you will come out young, fresh, elastic and full of eagerness for the new race of life now will come flooding upon you the manifold desires that haunt the dear dreams of the morning of life you will go with her you will find eight fulfillment of desire to it to the Kameshwar temple sacred to Shiva as the lord of idols among the pack and jam of temples there you will find enough to stock a museum you will begin to commit sins now with a fresh new vivacity therefore it will be well to go frequently to a place where you can get nine temporary cleansing from sin to it to the well of the earring you must approach this with the profoundest reverence for it is unutterably sacred it is indeed the most sacred place in Benares the very holy of holies in the estimation of the people it is a railed tank with stone stairways leading down to the water the water is not clean of course it could not be for people are always bathing in it as long as you choose to stand and look you will see the files of sinners descending and ascending descending soiled with sin ascending purged from it the liar, the thief and the adulterer may hear wash and be clean," says the reverend Mr. Parker in his book very well I know Mr. Parker and I believe it but if anybody else had said it I should consider him a person who had better go down in the tank and take another wash the God Vishnu dug this tank he had nothing to dig with but his discus I do not know what a discus is but I know it is a poor thing at the time this one was finished it was full of sweat Vishnu's sweat he constructed the site that Benares stands on and afterward built the globe around it and thought nothing of it yet sweated like that over a little thing like this tank one of these statements is doubtful I do not know which one it is but I think it difficult not to believe that a God who could build a world around Benares would not be intelligent enough to build it around the tank too and not have to dig it youth, long life temporary purification from sin salvation through propitiation of the great fate these are all good but you must do something more you must ten make salvation sure there are several ways to get drowned in the Ganges as one but that is not pleasant to die within the limits of Benares is another one because you might be out of town when your time came the best one of all is the pilgrimage around the city you must walk also you must go barefoot the tramp is forty four miles for the road winds out into the country a piece and you will be marching five or six days but you will have plenty of company you will move with throngs and hosts of happy pilgrims whose radiant costumes will make and whose glad songs and holy pans of triumph will banish your fatigues and cheer your spirit and at intervals there will be temples where you may sleep and be refreshed with food the pilgrimage completed you have purchased salvation and paid for it but you may not get it unless you eleven get your redemption recorded you can get this done at the Saki Benayak Temple and it is best to do it you may be able to prove that you had made the pilgrimage in case the matter should someday come to be disputed that temple is in a lane back of the cow temple over the door is a red image of Ganesh of the elephant head son and heir of Shiva and Prince of Wales to the theological monarchy so to speak within is a god whose office it is to record your pilgrimage and be responsible for you you will not see him who will attend to the matter and take the money if he should forget to collect the money you can remind him he knows that your salvation is now secure but of course you would like to know it yourself you have nothing to do but go and pray and pay at the twelve well of the knowledge of salvation it is close to the golden temple there you will see sculptured out of a single piece of black marble which is much larger than any living bull you have ever seen and yet is not a good likeness after all and there also you will see a very uncommon thing an image of Shiva you have seen his lingam fifty thousand times already but this is Shiva himself and said to be a good likeness it has three eyes he is the only god in the firm that has three one canopy of stone supported by forty pillars and around it you will find what you have already seen at almost every shrine you have visited in Benares a mob of devout and eager pilgrims the sacred water is being ladled out to them with it comes to them the knowledge, clear, thrilling absolute that they are saved and you can see by their faces that there is one happiness in this world which is supreme and to which no other joy is comparable you receive your water you make your deposit and now what more would you have gold, diamonds power, fame all in a single moment these things have withered to dirt, dust, ashes the world has nothing to give you now for you it is bankrupt I do not claim that the pilgrims do their acts of worship in the order and sequence above charted out as itinerary of mine but I think logic suggests that they ought to do so instead of a helter-skelter worship we then have a definite starting place and a march which carries the pilgrims steadily forward by reasoned and logical progression to a definite goal thus his Ganges bath in the early morning gives him an appetite he kisses the cow tails and that removes it it is now business hours and longings for material prosperity rise in his mind and he goes and pours water over Shiva's symbol this ensures the prosperity but also brings on a rain which gives him a fever then he drinks the sewage at the Kedargat to cure the fever it cures the fever but gives him the smallpox he wishes to know how it is going to turn out he goes to the Dhanpan temple and looks down the well a clouded sun shows him that death is near logically his best course for the present since he cannot tell at what moment he may die is to secure a happy hereafter this he does through the agency of the great fate he is safe now for heaven his next move will naturally be to keep out of it as long as he can therefore he goes to the Brithkal temple and secures youth and long life by bathing in a puddle of leper pus which would kill a microbe logically youth has re-equipped him for sin and with a disposition to commit it he will naturally go to the Fein which is consecrated to the fulfillment of desires and make arrangements logically he will now go to the well of the earring from time to time to unload and freshen up for further banned enjoyments but first and last and all the time he is human and therefore in his reflective intervals he will always be speculating about his past he will make the great pilgrimage around the city and so make his salvation absolutely sure he will also have record made of it so that it may remain absolutely sure and not be forgotten or repudiated in the confusion of the final settlement logically also he will wish to have satisfying and tranquilizing personal knowledge that that salvation is secure therefore he goes to the well adds that completing detail and then goes about his affairs serene and content serene and content for he is now royally endowed with an advantage which no religion in this world could give him but his own for henceforth he may commit as many million sins as he wants to and nothing can come of it thus the system properly and logically ordered is neat compact clearly defined and covers the whole ground I desire to recommend it to such as find the other systems too difficult exacting and irksome for the uses of this fretful brief life of ours however let me not deceive any one my itinerary lacks a detail I must put it in the truth is that after the pilgrim has faithfully followed the requirements of the itinerary through to the end and has secured his salvation although the personal knowledge of that fact there is still an accident possible to him which can annul the whole thing if he should ever cross to the other side of the Ganges and get caught out and die there he would at once come to life again in the form of an ass think of that after all this trouble and expense you see how capricious and uncertain salvation is there the Hindu has a childish and turned into an ass it is hard to tell why one could properly expect an ass to have an aversion to being turned into a Hindu one could understand that he could lose dignity by it also self respect and nine tenths of his intelligence but the Hindu changed into an ass wouldn't lose anything unless you count his religion and he would gain much release from his slavery to two million gods and twenty million priests Fakirs, holy mendicants and other sacred Basili he would escape the Hindu hell he would also escape the Hindu heaven these are advantages which the Hindu ought to consider then he would go over and die on the other side Benares is a religious Vesuvius in its bowels the theological forces have been heaving and tossing rumbling, thundering and quaking boiling and weltering and flaming and smoking for ages but a little group of missionaries have taken post at its base and they have hopes there are the Baptist missionary society the church missionary society the London missionary society the Wesleyan missionary society and the Zenana Bible and medical mission they have schools and the principal work seems to be among the children and no doubt that part of the work prosper is best for grown people everywhere are always likely to cling to the religion they were brought up in this is chapter 52 of following the equator this LibriVox recording is in the public domain following the equator by Mark Twain chapter 52 a curious way to secure a salvation the banks of the Ganges architecture represents piety a trip on the river bathers and their costumes drinking the water a scientific test of the nasty purifier Hindu faith in the Ganges a cremation remembrances of the Suthi all life sacred except human life the goddess Bhavani and the sacrifices sacred monkeys ugly idols everywhere two white minarets a great view with a monkey in it a picture on the water wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been put in head Wilson's new calendar in one of those Benares temples a devotee working for salvation in a curious way he had a huge wad of clay beside him and was making it up into little we gods no bigger than carpet tax he stuck a grain of rice into each to represent the lingam I think he turned them out nimbly for he had had long practice and had acquired great facility every day he made two thousand gods then threw them into the holy Ganges this act of homage profound homage of the pious also their coppers he had a sure living here and was earning a high place in the hereafter the Ganges front is the supreme show place of Benares its tall bluffs are solidly caked from water to summit along a stretch of three miles with a splendid jumble of massive and picturesque masonry a bewildering and beautiful confusion of stone platforms temples, stair flights rich and stately palaces nowhere a break nowhere a glimpse of the bluff itself all the long face of it is completely walled from sight by this crammed perspective of platforms soaring stairways sculptured temples, majestic palaces softening away into the distances and there is movement motion, human life everywhere and brilliantly costumed streaming in rainbows up and down the lofty stairways massed in metaphorical flower gardens on the miles of great platforms at the river's edge all this masonry all this architecture represents piety the palaces were built by native princes whose homes as a rule are far from Benares but who go there from time to time to refresh their souls with the sight and touch of the Ganges the river of their idolatry the stairways are records of acts of piety the crowd of costly little temples are tokens of money spent by rich men for present credit and hope of future reward apparently the rich Christian who spends large sums upon his religion is conspicuous with us by his rarity but the rich Hindu who doesn't spend large sums upon his religion is seemingly non-existent with us the poor spend money on their religion but they keep back some to live on apparently in India they bankrupt themselves daily for their religion the rich Hindu can afford his pious outlays he gets much glory for his spendings yet keeps back a sufficiency of his income for temporal purposes but the poor Hindu is entitled to compassion for his spendings keep him poor yet get him no glory we made the usual trip up and down the river seated in chairs under an awning on the deck of the usual commodious hand-propelled arc made it two or three times and could have made it with increasing interest and enjoyment many times more for, of course, the palaces and temples would grow more and more beautiful every time one saw them for that happens with all such things also I think one would not get tired of the bathers nor their costumes nor of their ingenuities in getting out of them and into them again without exposing too much bronze nor of their devotional gesticulations and absorbed bead-tellings but I should get tired of seeing them wash their mouths with that dreadful water and drink it in fact I did get tired of it and very early too at one place where we halted for a while the foul gush from a sewer was making the water turbid and murky all around and there was a random corpse slopping around in it that had floated down from up-country ten steps below that place stood a crowd of men women and comely young maidens waist deep in the water and they were scooping it up in their hands and drinking it faith can certainly do wonders and this is an instance of it those people were not drinking that fearful stuff to swage thirst but in order to purify their souls and the interior of their bodies according to their creed the Ganges water makes everything pure that it touches instantly and utterly pure that was an offence to them the corpse did not revolt them the sacred water had touched both and both were now snow-pure and could defile no one the memory of that sight will always stay by me but not by request a word further concerning the nasty but all-purifying Ganges water when we went to Agra by and by we happened there just in time to be in at the birth of a marvel a memorable scientific discovery the discovery that in certain ways the foul and derided Ganges water is the most pucent purifier in the world this curious fact as I have said had just been added to the treasury of modern science it had long been noted as a strange thing that while Benares is often afflicted with the cholera she does not spread it beyond her borders this could not be accounted for Mr. Henkin, the scientist the employee of the government of Agra concluded to examine the water he went to Benares and made his tests he got water at the mouths of the sewers where they empty into the river at the bathing-gates a cubic centimeter of it contained millions of germs at the end of six hours they were all dead he caught a floating corpse towed it to the shore and from beside it he dipped up water that was swarming with cholera germs they were all dead he added swarm after swarm of cholera germs to this water within the six hours they always died to the last sample repeatedly he took pure well water which was barren of animal life and put into it a few cholera germs they always began to propagate at once and always within six hours they swarmed and were numberable by millions upon millions for ages and ages Hindus have had absolute faith that the water of the Ganges was absolutely pure could not be defiled by any contact whatsoever and infallibly made pure and clean whatsoever thing touched it they still believe it and that is why they bathe in it and drink it carrying nothing for its seeming filthiness and the floating corpses the Hindus have been laughed at these many generations but the laughter will need to modify itself a little from now on did they find out the water secret in those ancient ages had they germ scientists then we do not know we only know that they had a civilization long before we emerged from savagery but to return to where I was before I was about to speak of the burning gut they do not burn fakirs those revered mendicants they are so holy that they can get to their place without that sacrament provided they be consigned to the consecrating river we saw one carried to midstream and thrown overboard he was sandwiched between two great slabs of stone we lay off the cremation gut half an hour and saw nine corpses burned I should not wish to see any more of it unless I might select the parties the mourners follow the beer through the town and down to the gut then the beer-bearers deliver the body to some low-cast natives to the dorms and the mourners turn about and go back home I heard no crying and saw no tears there was no ceremony of parting apparently these expressions of grief and affection are reserved for the privacy of the home the dead women came draped in red the men in white they are laid in the water at the river's edge while the beer is being prepared the first subject was a man when the dorms unswathed him he proved to be a sturdily-built well-nourished and handsome old gentleman with not a sign about him to suggest that he had ever been ill dry wood was brought and built up into a loose pile the corpse was laid upon it and covered over with fuel then a naked holy man who was sitting on high ground a little distance away began to talk and shout with great energy and he kept up this noise right along it may have been the funeral sermon but it certainly was I forgot to say that one of the mourners remained behind when the others went away this was the dead man's son a boy of ten or twelve brown and handsome grave and self-possessed and closed in flowing white he was there to burn his father he was given a torch and while he slowly walked seven times around the pier the naked black man on the high ground poured out his sermon more clamorously than ever when the work had completed the boy applied the torch at his father's head then at his feet the flames sprang briskly up with a sharp crackling noise and the lad went away Hindus do not want daughters because their weddings make such a ruinous expense but they want sons so that at death they may have honourable exit from the world and there is no honour equal to the honour of having one's pier lighted by one's son the sunless is in a grievous situation indeed and is pitted life being uncertain the Hindu marries while he is still a boy in the hope that he will have a son ready when the day of his need shall come but if he have no son he will adopt one this answers every purpose meantime the corpse is burning also several others it is a dismal business the stokers did not sit down in idleness but moved briskly about punching up the fires with long poles and now and then adding fuel sometimes they hoisted the half of a skeleton into the air then slammed it down and beat it with a pole breaking it up so that it would burn better they hoisted skulls up in the same way and banged and battered them the sight was hard to bear it would have been harder if the mourners had stayed to witness it I had but a moderate desire to see a cremation so it was soon satisfied for sanitary reasons it would be well if cremation were universal but this form is revolting and not to be recommended the fire used is sacred of course for there is money in it ordinary fire is forbidden there is no money in it I was told that this sacred fire is all furnished by one person and that he has a monopoly of it and charges a good price for it sometimes a rich mourner pays a thousand rupees for it to get to paradise from India is an expensive thing every detail connected with the matter costs something and helps to fatten a priest I suppose it is quite safe to conclude that that fire bug is in holy orders close to the cremation ground stand a few time-worn stones which are remembrances of the sati each has a rough carving upon it representing a man and a woman standing or walking hand and marks the spot where a widow went to her death by fire in the days when the sati flourished Mr. Parker said that widows would burn themselves now if the government would allow it the family that can point to one of these little memorials and say she who burned herself there was an ancestress of ours is envied it is a curious people with them all life seems to be sacred except human life even the life of vermin is sacred and must not be taken the good Jain wipes off a seat before using it lest he cause the death of some valueless insect by sitting down on it it grieves him to have to drink water because the provisions in his stomach may not agree with the microbes yet India invented thuggery and the sati India is a hard country to understand we went to the temple of the thug goddess boani or kali or durga she has these names and others she is the only god to whom living sacrifices are made goats are sacrificed to her monkeys would be cheaper there are plenty of them about the place being sacred they make themselves very free and scramble around wherever they please the temple and its porch are beautifully carved but this is not the case with the idol boani is not pleasant to look at she has a silver face and a projecting swollen tongue painted a deep red she wears a necklace of skulls in fact none of the idols in banaras are handsome or attractive and what a swarm of them there is the town is a vast museum of idols and all of them crude, misshapen and ugly they flock through one's dreams at night a wild mob of nightmares when you get tired of them in the temples and take a trip on the river you find idol giants flashily painted, stretched out side by side on the shore and apparently wherever there is room for one more lingam a lingam is there if Vishnu had foreseen what his town was going to be he would have called it idolville or lingamberg the most conspicuous feature of banaras is the pair of slender white minarets which tower like masts like the great mosque of Aurangzeb they seem to be always in sight from everywhere those airy graceful inspiring things but masts is not the right word for masts have a perceptible taper while these minarets have not they are 142 feet high and only 8.5 feet in diameter at the base and 7.5 at the summit scarcely any taper at all these are the proportions of a candle and fairy-like candles these are will be anyway someday when the Christians inherit them and top them with the electric light there is a great view from up there a wonderful view a large grey monkey was part of it and damaged it a monkey has no judgment this one was skipping about the upper great heights of the mosque skipping across empty yawning intervals which were almost too wide for him and which he only just barely cleared after each time by the skin of his teeth he got me so nervous that I couldn't look at the view I couldn't look at anything but him every time he went sailing over one of those abysses my breath stood still and when he grabbed for the perch he was going for I grabbed too in sympathy and he was perfectly indifferent perfectly unconcerned and I did all the panting myself he came within an ace of losing his life a dozen times and I was so troubled about him that I would have shot him if I had had anything to do with it but I strongly recommend the view there is more monkey than view and there is always going to be more monkey while that idiot survives but what view you get is superb all Benares, the river and the region round about are spread before you take a gun and look at the view the next thing I saw was more peaceful it was a new kind of art it was a picture painted on water it was done by a native he sprinkled fine dust of various colors on the still surface of a basin of water and out of these sprinklings a dainty and pretty picture gradually grew a picture which a breath could destroy somehow it was impressive after so much browsing among massive and battered and decaying feigns that rest upon those ruins and those ruins upon still other ruins and those upon still others again it was a sermon an allegory a symbol of instability those creations in stone were only kind of water pictures after all a prominent episode in the Indian career of Warren Hastings had Benares for its theater wherever that extraordinary man set his foot he left his mark he came to Benares in 1781 to collect a fine of five hundred thousand pounds which he had levied upon its raja Chait Singh on behalf of the East India Company Hastings was a long way from home and help there were probably not a dozen Englishmen within reach the raja was in his fort with his myriads around him but no matter from his little camp in a neighboring garden Hastings sent a party to arrest the sovereign he sent on this daring mission a couple of hundred native soldiers sepoys under command of three young English lieutenants the raja submitted without a word the incident lights up the Indian situation electrically and gives one a vivid sense of the strides which the English had made and the mastership they had acquired in the land since the date of Clive's great victory in a quarter of a century from being nobodies and feared by none they were become confessed lords feared by all, sovereigns included and served by all sovereigns included it makes the fairy tales sound true the English had not been afraid to enlist native soldiers to fight against their own people and keep them obedient and now Hastings was not afraid to come away out to this remote place with a handful of such soldiers and send them to arrest a native sovereign the lieutenants imprisoned the raja in his own fort it was full the pluckiness of it the impudence of it the arrest enraged the raja's people and all bannars came storming about the place and threatening vengeance and yet but for an accident nothing important would have resulted perhaps the mob found out a most strange thing an almost incredible thing that this handful of soldiers had come on this hardy errand with empty guns and no ammunition this has been attributed to but it could hardly have been that for in such large emergencies as this intelligent people do think it must have been indifference an overconfidence born of the proved submissiveness of the native character when confronted by even one or two stern Britons in their war paint but however that may be it was a fatal discovery that the mob had made they were full of courage now and they broke into the fort and massacred with soldiers and their officers Hastings escaped from Bannaris by night and got safely away leaving the principality in a state of wild insurrection but he was back again within the month and quieted it down in his prompt and virile way and took the raja's throne away from him and gave it to another man he was a capable kind of person was Warren Hastings this was the only time he was ever out of ammunition and left stains upon his name which can never be washed away but he saved to England the Indian empire and that was the best service that was ever done to the Indians themselves those wretched heirs of a hundred centuries of pitiless oppression and abuse End of Chapter 52