CHAP. IV - BENARES

Summary

In the comparative cool of early morning, I sallied out on a stroll through the outskirts of Benares. Thousands of women were stepping gracefully along the crowded roads, bearing on their heads the waterjars, while at every few paces there was a well, at which hundreds were, waiting along with the bheesties their turn for lowering their bright gleaming copper cups to the well-water to fill their skins or vases. All were keeping up a continual chatter, women with women, men with men: all the tongues were running ceaselessly. It is astonishing to see the indignation that a trifling mishap creates—such gesticulation, such shouting, and loud talk, you would think that murder at least was in question. The world cannot show the Hindoo's equal as a babbler; the women talk while they grind corn, the men while they smoke their water-pipes; your true Hindoo is never quiet; when not talking, he is playing on his tomtom.

The Doorgha Khond, the famed Temple of the Sacred Monkeys, I found thronged with worshippers, and garlanded in every part with roses: it overhangs one of the best holy tanks in India, but has not much beauty or grandeur, and is chiefly remarkable for the swarms of huge, fat-paunched, yellow-bearded, holy monkeys, whose outposts hold one quarter of the city, and whose main body forms a living roof to the temple.