Round the Wonderful World

Surely you have never before seen anything like this, there is nothing to be seen like it anywhere else!

We are at Benares, the sacred city of the Hindus, which stands on their sacred river, the Ganges. We have taken a boat and have floated out into the current, and are looking up with amazement at the spectacle before us. The city rises high on the banks, and towers and minarets and domes of a curious long-drawn-out shape, glittering in the sun like gold, arise out of the flat roofs. Down to the river at every opening between the houses stretch stairways, as you know called ghauts, some broad and some narrow. We judge that they are there, though we cannot see the steps, for every inch is covered by a moving mass of people, clothed in the colours of the rainbow. You have often turned a kaleidoscope over and over, and watched the bits of coloured glass falling into strange patterns. Half shut your eyes and make a tube of your hands and see if this doesn't remind you of a kaleidoscope.

Thousands and thousands of people are passing and repassing up and down, or sitting on every scrap of available building. They flow out over the steps and down into the water itself. They are standing there knee-deep, waist-deep, shoulder-deep, with hardly any clothes on their glistening brown and yellow bodies, diligently throwing the water over themselves, washing their long, straight, black hair in it, or even drinking it!

Ah, what is that gruesome object? Take care, don't touch it as it floats by; it looks like a bit of charred stick, but indeed it is half-burnt human bones!

We have already seen a few sacred rivers in our wanderings – the gigantic Nile, the tiny Jordan, and now we see the Ganges, which in size comes between the two, being one thousand four hundred and fifty-five miles in length. Quite a respectable-sized river that! The Hindus regard it with such reverence that they count bathing in it a religious act, and when they die their one desire is to be burned beside it so that their bones may be cast into its waters. If we row a little way up we shall see this ceremony at the Burning Ghauts. There are funeral pyres of wood where the relatives are carrying out the last offices for the dead. Some prowling pariah dogs, of the lean yellow breed, and a few impertinent crows are hovering about, hoping that some scraps may fall to their share. The dead bodies are rolled up in white and red cloth and lie with their feet in the blessed water awaiting their burning.

Men are bringing logs of wood to pile upon the pyres, others are poking about in the ashes of the last burned to see if maybe an anklet or ear-ring has fallen off and may be scavenged.

The red flames rise and lick up the sides, while the enveloping smoke wreathes around the corpse. Remember that at one time the miserable widow of the dead man would have mounted that gruesome throne and be sitting there to be burnt alive. This is forbidden by law now, as indeed it was forbidden by some of the wisest of the Indian kings too, only until the British came there never was any power strong enough to enforce it.

Benares is the religious capital of India; it takes the place that Canterbury does with us, and it has been the place of pilgrimage for generations.

We have met with Buddhists in Ceylon and Mohammedans in Egypt. There are Buddhists among the natives of India too, though not many, considering the population; there are many more Mohammedans, but by far the largest number of the people, outnumbering the Mohammedans by three to one, are the Hindus, and it is as a Hindu capital that Benares mainly exists. British rule throws protection alike over all races and all religions; never was there a broader based dominion; be a man a Hindu, Sikh, Mohammedan, Parsee, Buddhist, or Christian, the law protects him in the exercise of his faith so long as it does not lead to cruelty such as in the burning of widows, or so long as it does not encroach upon the rights of others.

The Hindu religion is an extraordinary one. At first sight, seeing the jumble up of strange gods, – the cow-goddess, the monkey-god, elephant-god, and others, – it seems rather to resemble the religion of the ancient Egyptians, but it is not a real resemblance. The highest idea of the Hindu, as of the Buddhist, is to pass out into a sort of painless existence of nothingness. And to overcome the flesh and to arrive at a placid state, where nothing matters, is attempted here on earth by some. Some of the old men, fakirs as they are called, like the one we met in Delhi, do astonishing things merely by force of an iron determination. They will sit so long holding an arm in one position that it shrivels. Others will lie for years on a bed of spikes. They eat very little, live on charity, and are often lost in a state of trance.

As we row slowly back along the river we see countless flat umbrellas, like those known as Japanese umbrellas, studding the gay crowd; under each one of these there is a "holy man," and there are thousands of them altogether in this city, living on the offerings of the pilgrims.

Look at that fellow seated cross-legged on a plank running out into the river. He pours water over his feet every now and again out of a little copper bowl, and mutters something. He is so much absorbed in what he is doing that he never looks up or turns his head. Another, close by, has hung his gaily-coloured turban on a post and proceeds to unwind his garment and cast it from him before he steps into the water with hardly a rag upon him. This lady in an orange scarf, dripping wet, seats herself on the end of the board, and winds a dry scarf round herself so adroitly that it is like a conjuring trick; she stands up and the wet one falls from her. She would get well paid as a quick-change artiste at a music hall, and such a gift would be invaluable for bathing on the Cornish coast!

The men along the edge are very jolly, they chatter all the time and splash and wash and enjoy themselves. No English seaside place on a trip-day can beat this crowd. The fact that dead bones and skulls are constantly thrown into the water, and that the ashes of dead people, and much else that is indescribably filthy, mingles with it, doesn't seem to disturb them at all.

When you have wearied of watching them we will go and visit one of the innumerable temples in the city, but we shall need a guide for that, as it is not safe to wander in these streets alone.

No sooner have we landed and fought our way into one of the narrow alleys, than the road is blocked by an enormous bull who stands placidly before a greengrocer's stall sampling his wares. The man makes no attempt to drive him away, but tries to tempt him by holding a choice bunch of his best stuff. The beast has slavered over much that will be sold for human food afterwards. What? A good smack on the flank! For goodness' sake take care! The animal is supposed to be sacred; to touch him would be to bring out all the inhabitants of these houses on to us like a swarm of hornets. Luckily the beast is so well fed that he soon moves on and we can get past.

Now we have reached the most important temple of all, known as the Golden Temple, and as we pass into the cloisters we see a couple more animals standing inside, as much at home as if they were in a byre, which, indeed, the place smells like, with a strange scent of sweet flowers on the top of it. It is a wonderful place, but oh, so dirty! It is dedicated, of all things, to the poison-god, Shiva! It stands in a quadrangle, roofed in, and above rise some of those curious elongated domes we saw from the boat. If we climb up through that flower-stall where blossoms are being sold for offerings, we can see these domes, which really have cost a lot of money, as two of them are gilt all over; the gilding keeps its glitter here and rises dazzlingly against the hot sky.

There are other temples by the dozen and mosques too for the Mohammedans. If we wander round we shall see many strange sights; in one shrine is the image of the god Saturn, a silver disc, in another that of Ganesh, the elephant-god, surely the most hideous of all! Look at him! A squatting dwarf with an elephant's trunk! At another place is the image of Shiva himself; it has a silver face, though made of stone, and possesses four hands; it is guarded by a dog, and you can buy little imitation dogs made of sugar anywhere near. There is even an image of the goddess of smallpox, and if you ask why the Hindu chooses such repulsive and revolting things to worship, the answer is, because he is afraid. He says, "If the gods are good they will not injure me, but if they are evil I must propitiate them!"

Everywhere we go we have copper bowls or even the half of coco-nut shells thrust at us for offerings; the priests tolerate the strangers entering their temples only because they hope to get something out of them.

We are now far from Benares; we have left behind the narrow crowded alleys, the violent smells, and the gay colours, and are in the train speeding toward Calcutta, whence we will take a steamer to Burma. The train has just stopped at a wayside station and there is a chance to stretch our legs. Ramaswamy appears and tells us they are going to stop here for a time. He doesn't seem to know why, – something about a sahib is all we can gather, – so we get out and wander along the village street. We have only gone a short way when we see a kind of litter coming along slung on bearers' shoulders. It is screened by curtains, and beside it rides a white man in a helmet, followed by natives. Why, that is the very man who came up in the train from Delhi with us! I wonder what he is doing here. That must be a sick woman in the litter. This is evidently what the train was waiting for, so we might as well go back.

We get to the station just in time to see the curtains pushed aside by the sahib, who very tenderly and skilfully raises in his arms the sick person inside, and supports him into the station. It is a gaunt scarecrow of a man, a skeleton of a creature, whose big pathetic eyes look dark in his hollow face. He is evidently very ill. He is half-carried across to a carriage next to ours that has been prepared for him, and is laid down on a couch on the seat, and it is not long before we get under way again. Going out a little later on to the platform between the two compartments we find our friend, the tall Englishman, standing there smoking. He recognises us at once and asks us about our experiences; it is not difficult to find out about the invalid.

"One of the best chaps going," he says shortly. "Simply broken up by the work he's been doing in the plague-camp up there. He is a doctor, so am I, and I've just got back from leave. I went up-country to relieve Jordan, but the work is nearly over, and I found him played out. He has hardly had his clothes off for weeks. The difficulty is to persuade these people to get out of their infected houses into a camp until the place is made sanitary and the plague stayed. He was single-handed at first, now there are two other men up there, so I can be spared to take him down to the coast. He'll get over it; oh yes, he's got the turn now, though he was nearly gone once or twice, but he'll never be the same man again. He is invalided home for a bit, and the voyage will pull him up, but even as he is he's sore at leaving it. He wants to finish his job."

"Then when you've left him at Calcutta you'll go back to the infected district?"

"Yes, of course, why not? It's all in the day's work, and you know we've actually had only thirty deaths in a month since the beggars were got out into camp, and they were dying at the rate of hundreds a week before. Grand, isn't it?" His face lights up with enthusiasm.

India is full of such men; they don't play for safety, they take their lives in their hands at a moment's notice, and go blithely to grapple with death.

CHAPTER XXI

THE GOLDEN PAGODA

It is hot and still, we have passed across a place of broken tangled undergrowth and come out into a rather untidy courtyard, where some sneaking yellow pariah dogs barked at us until I cut at them with my stick, when they ran away and barked again from a safe distance. There seems to be no one else here but ourselves. A great tree covered with glorious magenta flowers stands on one side. It is our old friend the bougainvillea, but here it grows into a great tree instead of a creeper. It is backed up by the dark foliage of many mango trees. In front of us is a large house which seems to rise in many storeys, and the roof of each storey is carved and decorated, so that it shows up like lacework against the sky. The house stands on legs, so that the under part is quite open, and a broad flight of wooden steps leads up to a verandah on the first floor. Stop to examine the carving on the balustrade. It is wonderful! Figures of tigers, dragons, peacocks, monkeys, and elephants are all set among foliage and cut out very deeply.

When we arrived in Burma yesterday we came up the river Irrawaddy, which at its mouth is called the Rangoon River. What seemed like low green banks are really swamps filled with rushes growing high and strong; as we passed between them suddenly we saw afar off a gleam of gold, and by staring hard we made out a great tower against the sky. We are going to visit it presently, but just now I want you to see something else quite funny. Step softly on the broad wooden verandah and peep round that corner.

There squats an old man with a perfectly bald head, smooth as a billiard ball; he wears a loose garment of dull yellow stuff which forms a sort of skirt and is draped across one shoulder as well, falling over his honey-coloured chest. He is all yellow, except for his round, shining black eyes, very like glistening balls of jet. On the ground in front of him, lying full length on their little stomachs, are about a dozen small boys. You thought they were girls? I don't wonder! Each one has a feathery tuft of hair in the middle of his head standing up like carrot tops, except for this the little skull is closely shaven all round. They all have skimpy white jackets and skirts from which their skinny little yellow legs stick out kicking in the effort to master their tasks. In a loud sing-song jabber they are repeating something which they read off the slates they hold in front of them. It would be funny to learn lessons lying flat on the floor, wouldn't it? But these boys have never sat on chairs in their lives; they will have to learn that as an accomplishment if they go into business offices when they are older.

The old poongyi, or monk, is the teacher. This beautiful carved wooden building is the house where the monks live, and it is called a choung. In the morning, very early, the monks wander forth, dressed in yellow robes and carrying begging-bowls and fans. They do not beg, however, they are much too proud; they merely stop and stand about where there are houses, and the people rush to pour food into their bowls. It is a privilege for them to be allowed to do this, as they are supposed to "gain merit" by so doing. Nearly all the Burmese are Buddhists, and these men are Buddhist monks.

You would never guess what the fans are for; they are to put up as screens to shield the faces of the monks when they pass a woman, for they are not supposed ever to look at a woman, it is too frivolous! When the begging-bowls are full they generally contain a strange mixture, for everyone pours in anything he or she happens to have; there will certainly be rice, both cooked and raw, peas, perhaps fish, and this may be wrapped up in a leaf to keep it separate, which is necessary when it is curried; then there will be some cakes or cucumbers; possibly, in the season, mangoes and plantains. One of the greatest delicacies of the Burmese is a horribly smelly stuff called ngapé, made of rotten fish laid in salt; no feast is complete without it.

The monks are supposed to live on what they get in their begging-bowls, but, as a matter of fact, in wealthy monasteries they don't; they empty it out for the pariah dogs, which explains why so many dogs always hang around the monasteries.

The Burmese have some funny notions; one is that they do not like anyone else's feet to be above their heads, so they build their houses on posts and do not use the ground floor. It looks as if there were many more storeys rising above the first floor where they live, but that is a sham; the roof is only built to look like that, and is hollow inside. In most of the monasteries there are schools, and the little boys are taught in them, as you see here. Besides this, every boy, when he gets to a certain age, must spend a time, longer or shorter, in the monastery. It may be only a few days or weeks and it may be years, according to the ideas of his parents, but while he is there he has to wear the yellow robe and carry the begging-bowl, and what to a growing boy must be most trying of all, he is not allowed to eat anything after midday!

That old fellow has caught sight of us; he is getting up and seems quite pleased to welcome us. It is a good thing we brought Ramaswamy with us, for he can speak Burmese and interpret for us; the monk knows no English. The little boys spring to their feet and stand gazing at us with wide eyes, delighted, as any boys would be, at getting an interruption to their lessons. They gradually come round us and begin to laugh and even to touch our clothes, but the old monk sends them all away and leads us into the wooden rooms of the monastery that open off the verandah. Several monks here are lying lazily about on mats half-asleep, but in a moment they all surround us, and for the first few minutes we experience rather an eerie sensation. Coming in from the bright sunshine outside everything seems very dim, and these curious men with their shaven heads and beetle eyes come close up to us and press upon us, pawing us and pointing to a great image of Buddha shining out in a ghostly way from a shrine at the end of the hall.

There are many little candles burning before it, most of them sticking to the ground by their own grease. One of the monks takes one up and holds it so that we can see the image, about twice life-size, seated in that calm attitude of the sitting Buddha, with crossed legs and one hand on the lap, while the other hangs loosely down. There is a serene self-satisfied smirk on the marble face, which looks more like that of a woman than a man. Ramaswamy explains to us that this is a very specially holy Buddha, and that the little dabs of gold splashed here and there about him are the offerings of the faithful; they are simply bits of gold-leaf stuck on. Gold-leaf is expensive, for it is real gold beaten very thin, and these little bits represent much self-denial on the part of many poor people. A Burman's great object in life is to "gain merit" for a future existence, for he thinks that he will live again and again many times in different forms, and that as he behaves in this life so he will be born again into a better or worse state in the next; if he is very bad he runs the risk of becoming a snake or some other repulsive reptile. He is not afraid of overdoing the merit, as the ancient Egyptian was; the more he can pile up for himself the better, and the way in which he does this is to feed the poongyis, build choungs and pagodas, and set up or adorn figures of Buddha.

The priests at this choung own a priceless relic; it is no less than a hair of Buddha! After some persuasion they are induced to show it to us. They bring a great casket, which is solemnly unlocked, showing another inside, and again another, and at last we get down to a little glass box with an artificial white flower in it, round which is wound a long and very wiry white hair. I should say many of the same sort could be got from any long-tailed white horse!

On a table near are various offerings, and among them we see a rather greasy pack of ordinary playing-cards and a soda-water bottle, besides several saucers of waxy white blossoms of the frangipani flower, such as we saw in Ceylon, emitting a very strong scent. The soda-water bottle and playing-cards look rather dissipated, but they are quite serious offerings, given by somebody who thinks them rare and interesting. Our ears for some time past have told us that an extraordinary amount of ticking is going on, and now that our eyes have become accustomed to the light, we can see numerous clocks on brackets and tables; these are of all sorts and sizes, including a 2s. 11d. "Bee" clock, cuckoo clocks, and even one large "grandfather." In between and about them, on the floor and on the shelves, are lamps large and lamps small, some brass, some china, and some glass!

The clocks are all going hard, ticking away as if they were running a race to see which could get ahead of the other. It is a funny medley! The monks are lazy enough and pass half their days asleep, but if they keep all these clocks wound up someone must have something to do. These are all offerings, and the more the better; no monk can ever get enough lamps or clocks to satisfy him!

We pass down and out into the courtyard, and all the monks follow us in a body and gently edge us toward some ponds or tanks where fat tortoises lie on the banks or float lazily in the stagnant water.

There is a man sitting on the side selling balls of rice and bits of bread. Just as we come up a graceful Burmese woman buys a ball and throws it into the water. In an instant what looks like a voracious army of huge spiders floats up from below and attacks it, and as the ball of rice dissolves and falls apart every grain disappears. Looking more closely we see that they are not spiders at all, but a curious kind of fish with long feelers growing out all round his mouth and nose. As he thrusts up his mouth to the surface, with all the feelers wriggling, the rest of his body is unseen, and the appearance is exactly that of a round spider with wriggling legs. Buy a bit of crust and see the fish dart at it and simply tear it to pieces; they scramble at it from all sides, pushing and nibbling, and in less time than you could imagine every crumb is gone!

The woman is laughing, and we laugh back at her. She is short and very neat, with her shining black hair coiled round her head and secured by two big pins, while a dainty spray of flower falls down on one side. Her face looks quite light coloured, for it is thickly covered with a kind of soft yellow powder, and she has a brilliant gauzy scarf across her little white jacket and falling down over her tight rose-pink silk skirt. As she walks away with a curious shuffle we see that she has on the quaintest shoes, with red velvet caps and no heels; but the caps are so much too small for her feet that she has had to leave the little toe outside! This is a fine dodge, and Mah Shwe can say she takes twos or threes in shoes with truth, even if her feet are much larger!

The monks are standing in a solemn group near their staircase when we go back, and when I suggest to Ramaswamy we should give them something he disagrees vigorously. "Not touching money, Master, only food and rice, no money." All right, we won't tempt them, and I put back the rupee I had taken out. You must have noticed already that the money here is the same as in India. Then we climb into the miserable little box on wheels which is waiting for us; it is the only cab we can get here, and calls itself a ticca-gharry. The little rat of a pony seems a very long way off; it is a tight squeeze for us inside, and there is certainly no room on the box beside the hairy-legged native for Ramaswamy, but he hops up on a board there is behind for the purpose, and hangs on as we jolt away to the Golden Pagoda.

The first thing we see when we arrive at it are two enormous monsters, not like any animal in existence, made of white plaster with glaring red eyes. They have dragons' heads and tigers' bodies and are most terribly ferocious. These guard the entrance to the pagoda and are called leogryphs. Between them there is a long ascent rising to the pagoda platform. The place is like a bazaar with people in their gay clothes coming and going, and the sun glinting through between the pillars at the open spaces. It is difficult to tell the difference between men and women, for all alike wear skirts and jackets, and you never see a man with a beard, hardly ever with a moustache. But the true distinction is that the men have a gay handkerchief called a goungbaung wound round their heads, and the women wear no head covering, and, as you have seen, they never think of veiling their faces, like the Mohammedan women. The men's head-gear is very different from that we saw in India; it is not a huge and heavy erection, but just a silk or cotton scarf twisted up and tucked in, and very often there is a "bird's nest" of dark hair sticking out in the middle of it, for the men's hair is long as well as the women's, but they roll it up so that it is not seen.

Everyone is very bright and friendly, and the girls who are selling all sorts of little tawdry things on the stalls by the stairs call out to us persuasively to buy from them. On the whole the place is clean, and there is no bazaar smell, only a certain sharp wood-smoke flavour and the scent of many flowers. But at the foot of every white column are horrible deep-red stains that look as if some little animal had been slaughtered there. It is not so bad as that. You remember we saw a man whose mouth was stained red with chewing betel-nut, which he did in the same way that some of the roughest men in England chew tobacco? These are the stains of that betel-nut, for nearly everyone here has the nasty habit.

Up the steps we pass, higher and higher, and come out on to a great platform which looks like a street, for it is lined with buildings on all four sides and in the middle too; but rising above those in the middle is the great pagoda, the Shwe Dagon, —shwe means golden, – and this is the most wonderful thing in Burma.

It is so wide at the base that it takes quite a long time to walk round it, and then it goes up in a bell-like curve, tapering to a steeple little less than the height of St. Paul's Cathedral. At the very top of all, so high that we can only see it by cricking our necks, is an iron cage called a htee, meaning "umbrella," decorated with swinging bells. Listen for a moment and perhaps you can hear them as the wind sways them about. No, the air is too still to-day. Deep in the innermost chamber of the pagoda are no less than eight hairs of Buddha, besides other relics of other Buddhas who lived before the last.

The marvel of it is that this great monument is pure gold from top to bottom. Much of it is covered with thin plates of real gold, and the rest, yards and yards of it, is plastered with gold-leaf.

Did you see that red glint from the top as the sun caught the htee at an angle? That was probably a real ruby, for it flashed out like a sword blade. There are many real stones set up there, and the htee alone cost £50,000!

Coming back to earth, look at the glitter on all these shrines that line the platform on both sides. Though it looks like a street it isn't really, for there are no houses, only shrines and temples. That one close to us is dazzling to look at. No, those blue and red flashes are not from real jewels; examine them and see. The shrine is encased with little pieces of looking-glass, some red and some blue and some plain, all fitted in together like mosaic.

The next is made of the wonderful carved woodwork the Burmans do so well, and it is gilded all over; for my own part I prefer the dark teak ungilded, but still this looks very handsome among the rest. That tall post like a flagstaff, with streamers flying from it, is a praying-post; can you make out the figure like a weather-cock at the top? It is a goose instead of a cock, and doesn't tell the direction of the wind. It is the sacred goose. The brilliance of all this detail takes one's breath away. On every side we see the people worshipping, and yet it is not a festival day, for then we should hardly be able to move for the crowds on the platform – where there are tens now there would then be thousands. The worshippers drop down quite simply on the pavement before a favourite shrine and hold up their hands toward it, sometimes with an offering of flowers in them, or even a big taper. There is a woman passing smoking a monstrous "green" cigar. It is a huge thick roll of light-coloured stuff like shavings, about as long as your arm from elbow to wrist, and as thick as a man's finger. She has to open her little round mouth wide to get the end in. It is not filled with pure tobacco, but a chopped mixture of all sorts; even you could smoke it without any harm. Why yes, women smoke here almost all day, and children too. They do say the mothers give the babies-in-arms a whiff, but I haven't seen that myself!