India, upon the banks
of the Ganges, the most sacred river, more holy to more millions
of human souls than Mecca to the Moslem, Rome to the Catholic
or Jerusalem to the Jew. This marvelous city it so holy that
death upon its soil is equivalent to life eternal. It is the
gate to paradise, the abundant entrance to everlasting happiness,
and its blessings are comprehensive enough to include all races,
all religions and all castes. It is not necessary to be a Brahmin
or to worship Siva or Krishna or any other of the Hindu gods,
nor even to believe in them. Their grace is sufficient to carry
unbelievers to the Hindu heavens provided they die within the
area inclosed by a boulevard encircling this city.

There are in Benares 2,000 temples and innumerable shrines, 25,000
Brahmin priests, monks, fakirs and ascetics, and it is visited
annually by more than half a million pilgrims--a larger number than
may be counted at Mecca or Jerusalem, or at any other of the sacred
cities of the world. There are more than 500,000 idols established
in permanent places for worship in Benares, representing every
variety of god in the Hindu pantheon, so that all the pilgrims
who go there may find consolation and some object of worship.
There are twenty-eight sacred cows at the central temples, and
perhaps 500 more at other places of worship throughout the city;
the trees around the temple gardens swarm with sacred monkeys
and apes; there are twenty-two places where the dead are burned,
and the air of the city is always darkened during the daytime by
columns of smoke that rise from the funeral pyres. No other city,
not even London, has so many beggars, religious and otherwise;
nowhere can so many pitiful spectacles of deformity and distress be
seen; nowhere is such gross and repulsive obscenity and sensuality
practiced--and all in the name of religion; nowhere are such sordid
deceptions imposed upon superstitious believers, and nowhere
such gloomy, absurd and preposterous methods used for consoling
sinners and escaping the results of sin. Although Benares in
these respects is the most interesting city in India, and one of
the most interesting in the world, it is also the most filthy,
repulsive and forbidding. Few people care to remain there more
than a day or two, although to the ethnologist and other students,
to artists and people in search of the picturesque, it has more
to offer than can be found elsewhere in the Indian Empire.

Benares i