VI CALCUTTA, DARJEELING, AND BENARES

Calcutta is the largest city of India. It numbers more than a million inhabitants, of whom 600,000 are Hindus, 300,000 are Mohammedans, and less than 100,000 are Christians. The name of the city is derived from Kali, the goddess-wife of Siva, the Destroyer; and her temple is one of the most filthy and disgusting in all India. In this temple I saw one of its many priestesses cutting into bits the flesh and entrails of a goat, which had been offered in sacrifice, in order that the poorest worshiper might have for his farthing something bloody to present at the altar. It was the altar of a fierce, cruel, and lustful goddess, whose black and ugly image could be dimly seen within the shrine. A stalwart priest followed me with hand outstretched for a contribution. It was a novel sensation to hear him utter, in excellent English and with seeming reverence, the words, "the great goddess Kali," as if no one could doubt her power. It reminded me of "the great goddess Diana," whom all Asia and the whole world once worshiped, but whose temple is now an indistinguishable heap of ruins. The worship of a goddess so vengeful and sensual as Kali throughout India, a worship both of lust and of fear, shows how ineradicable is the religious instinct, but how perverted it may become when existing apart from divine revelation.

There is another temple in Calcutta of a somewhat better sort. I refer to the temple of the Jains, that mongrel sect which is partly a reformed Hinduism, and partly a worship of Buddha. Its temple is a model of cleanliness and of Oriental art. Its decoration consists largely of inlaid glass of all the colors of the rainbow. Walls, ceilings, and columns are fairly ablaze with tinted arabesques that reflect every ray of the sun. Fountains and lawns and statues mingle their attractions. The effect is one of splendor and beauty. Jainism is conservative Hinduism, recurring to the ancestral worship of the Vedas, exaggerating its doctrine of the sanctity of animal life, repudiating its later licentious developments, and taking in Buddha, not as the supreme and sole teacher of religion, but as only one of its great saints and heroes.

The real glory of Calcutta is its relation to modern missions. Here is the chapel in which William Carey preached, and in which Adoniram Judson was baptized. Its spacious construction evinces the faith and hope of its founders. But it is in Serampore, which, though fourteen miles away, is almost a suburb of Calcutta, that Carey's work was done. How wonderful that work was! "A consecrated cobbler," he mastered the languages of the Orient, and gave the Bible to India in several of its tongues. He received from the British Government large compensation for his services as interpreter and translator, but he gave back all the money he received, in order to support schools and missions. The noble college at Serampore, with its hundreds of students, is his best memorial. His tomb in the cemetery witnesses to his humility of spirit. It stands at one corner of a triangle, with the tombs of Marshman and of Ward at the two remaining corners, but the only inscription he permitted to be engraved upon it is the two lines of the hymn,

So he left his testimony to the need, and the power, of Him who will ultimately demolish Hindu temples and enthrone Christ in India.

From Calcutta we traveled about three hundred and seventy miles northward to Darjeeling. We wished to see the Himalayas. A most tortuous narrow-gage railway lifted us gradually to a height of seven thousand feet. And there we had the unusual privilege of seeing the sunrise tipping with rosy light the snowy peak of Kinchinjinga, twenty-eight thousand feet high and forty-six miles away. Mt. Everest, a hundred miles distant, is twenty-nine thousand feet high, but from Darjeeling is invisible. Kinchinjinga is nearly twice as high as Mont Blanc, and its glittering mass is a spectacle never to be forgotten. Curiously enough, upon the summit of Observatory Hill, from which we gained our view, the immigrant Tibetans had erected their shrine, and long, inscribed paper and muslin streamers, enclosing a large quadrangle, gave to the winds their prayers. No idol was to be seen. The worship seems to be far more spiritual than that of the Hindus. Nature seems to have taught that secluded race of Tibetans a more primitive religion than modern Hinduism. It is a religion mixed with Buddhism, but preserving the earlier view of a divinity in natural objects, which Hinduism has almost wholly outgrown.

Our next point of investigation was Benares, "the holy city," the Mecca and Jerusalem of the Hindus. It is a hotbed of heathen enthusiasm and of blinded devotion. The sacred river Ganges flows by, with tier upon tier of temples rising from its steep banks—such a congestion of religious edifices that one might almost doubt whether they had left room for any but priests to live. Every day, hundreds of pilgrims troop through its streets and throng these temples, presenting their flowers and their offerings, making their sacrifices, and listening submissively to the instructions and threatenings of the priests. Every temple has its sacred animals, to be sacrificed or worshiped. The "Golden Temple," so-named, is covered with gold-leaf from its spire to its base. The noisy crowd in its corridors, the noisome odors of its sanctuaries, the adjurations of its priests and their evident aim to turn religion into financial gain, disgust the Christian traveler, while they show him how deeply rooted in the human heart is this towering system of idolatry and superstition.

But only the water-view of Benares presents Hinduism in its most characteristic aspect. It is the sacred river that makes sacred the town. This river is regarded as itself divine, for it had its source in the mouth of Brahma. Hence it is endowed with life-giving and purifying powers. It is bordered for a full mile by a grand succession of palaces and temples, of bathing ghats and of burning ghats. Here the Hindu, often after long pilgrimage, washes away his defilement and prepares himself to die. When death actually comes, his relatives wash his body in the holy stream. But the bathing ghat only makes ready for the burning ghat. These burning ghats are castle-like edifices, from which the smoke of burning flesh ascends continually. Cremation, with the Hindu, takes the place of burial. The ashes are collected and are preserved in a tomb. To die in Benares, and to have a temple for a tomb, is the surest passport to happiness in a future state, since the transmigration of souls into higher or lower forms is an essential doctrine of modern Hinduism.

A wealthy resident of Benares courteously offered us the use of his observation-boat to view the scene upon the river in the early morning. This river-craft was a double-decker, propelled by oars from the lower deck. From the upper platform, one could overlook the ceremonial washings of hundreds of pilgrims. Stalwart men plunged themselves three times into the stream, looked toward the sun, joined their hands, spoke a prayer, rinsed their sacred cord, cleansed their raiment, and then, reclad, went to the priest on his platform, to be smeared with ashes on the forehead and marked with a little colored dot, as a certificate that they had correctly performed their vow. Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, had each his worshipers and his priests, to give the appropriate mark. The "holy man" was there, either upon his bed of spikes or in an attitude which suggested torture, and ready to receive the homage, and the money as well, of his benighted admirers. Mothers were present, immersing not only themselves but also their children. All the bathers must drink of the muddy and fetid water, for purification internal is as needful as purification external. And so, hundreds of worshipers every day, and on special feast-days thousands, drink this water of the "sacred Ganges," foul with the stains of disease and reeking with the sweat of the dead. It is no wonder that the burning ghats have no lack of business, and no wonder that medical experts have traced epidemics of cholera, smallpox, and plague, in Western lands, to this city of Benares, where "Satan's seat is." The throne of the great adversary, however, seems to be built on very insufficient foundations, for not a few of the temples which line the steep banks of the river have toppled over, or have sunk into the yielding sand. Their massive fragments, at the base of long stairways of stone, show how hideous is the ruin of any system of religion which is not founded upon Christ, the Rock.