19o BENARES CITY
is identified with the country round SARNATH, that Gautama Buddha
commenced to preach. In the seventh century A.D., Hiuen Tsiang
found the kingdom of Benares inhabited mostly by Hindus, and only
a few followers of the law of Buddha. The city at that time contained
twenty Hindu temples, with a gigantic copper image of Siva. It is
probable that Benares was sacked by Mahmad of Ghazni early in the
eleventh century, and nearly 200 years later it fell into the hands
of Muhammad Ghori. Throughout the Musalman period its political
importance was slight, and the active cultivation of the Hindu religion
was forcibly restrained. In the eighteenth century, as has been shown
in the history of BENARES DISTRICT, the city and surrounding country
gradually came under the Raja of Benares, and finally in 1775 were
ceded to the British.
Benares or Kasi is at the present time one of the holiest places to the
orthodox Hindu, and attracts great concourses of pilgrims, while many
of its inhabitants are persons who have settled there in the hope
of salvation through a death within its sacred precincts. The native
town lies for four miles along a kankar ridge on the north-west bank of
the Ganges, which forms a slightly curved reach below it, thus permit-
ting the eye to take in at a single sweep the long line of picturesque
ghats surmounted by irregular buildings of various styles and propor-
tions, the slender white minarets of Aurangzeb's mosque rising high
above the general level. For a distance of from one to two miles from
the bank the city consists of winding labyrinths and narrow alleys, lined
by many-storeyed buildings used as shops or private houses, with
innumerable shrines in every part, ranging from a shapeless fragment
of stone smeared with vermilion to magnificent temples. Raja Man
Singh of Jaipur is said to have presented Ioo,ooo temples to the city
in a single day.
The ordinary throng of a large city is swollen by the presence
of strings of pilgrims being conducted from one to another of the more
important shrines, and by the number of sacred bulls which wander
about the streets. Along the ghdts strange figures of religious mendi-
cants and ascetics are to be seen, some superintending the ablutions of
the pilgrims in the sacred stream of the Ganges, while others practise
devotions or various forms of austerity. Within the city there are many
handsome houses substantially built and elaborately decorated; but the
narrow, dirty, and crowded environments usually disappoint the visitor,
after the high expectations aroused by the view from the river. Even
the temples are generally small, and are not more than a few hundred
years old. From a religious point of view, the Bisheshwar or Golden
Temple, dedicated to Siva, is the most important. Siva in the form
of Bisheshwar is regarded as the spiritual monarch of the city, and this
is the holiest of all the holy places in the sacred city. It contains
|
![[Digital South Asia Library]](/graphics/thirdlevel.gif)
