s as old as Egypt. It is one of the oldest cities in
existence. It was already famous when Rome was founded; even
when Joshua and his trumpeters were surrounding the walls of
Jericho. It is the hope of every believer in Brahminism to visit
Benares and wash away his sins in the water of the sacred Ganges;
the greatest blessing he can enjoy is to die there; hence, the
palaces, temples, and lodging-houses which line the river banks
are filled with the aged relatives and friends of their owners
and with pilgrims who have come from all parts of India to wait
with ecstatic patience the summons of the angel of death in order
to go straight to heaven.

Nothing in all their religion is so dear to devout Hindus as the
Ganges. The mysterious cavern in the Himalayas which is supposed
to be the source of the river is the most sacred place on earth.
It is the fifth head of Siva, and for 1,600 miles to its delta
every inch of the banks is haunted with gods and demons, and has
been the scene of events bearing upon the faith of two-thirds
of the people of India. The most pious act, and one that counts
more than any other to the credit of a human soul on the great
books above, is to make a pilgrimage from the source to the mouth
of the Ganges. If you have read Kipling's story of "Kim," you will
remember the anxiety of the old lama to find this holy stream, and
to follow its banks. Pilgrims to Benares and other cities upon
the Ganges secure bottles of the precious water for themselves
and send them to friends and kindred in foreign lands. No river
in all the world is so worshiped, and to die upon its sacred
banks and to have one's body burned and his ashes borne away
into oblivion upon its tawny current is the highest aspiration
of hundreds of millions of people.

The Ganges is equally sacred to the Buddhist, and Benares is
associated more closely with the career of Buddha than any other
city. Twenty-five hundred years ago Buddha preached his first
sermon there, and for ten centuries or more it was the headquarters
of Buddhism. Buddha selected it as the center of his missionary
work. He secured the support of its scholars, teachers and
philosophers, and from there sent forth missionaries to China,
Japan, Burmah, Ceylon, the Malay Peninsula, Siam, Thibet, and
other countries until half the human race accepted him as divine,
his teachings as the law of God, and Benares as the fountain
of that faith. It is a tradition that one of the wis