owner is pleased to give them some fruit or sweetmeats. Over-feeding has made them unwieldy and little prone to mischief." Pilgrims abound in the streets, also beggars and pickpockets. Now and then a marriage procession comes along, with camels and musicians, sweeping everything before it. Then, with shouts of "God is Truth!" a few relatives of the deceased hurry past with a corpse to the burning ghát. The crowds flocking to the temples and sacred wells, or passing in and out of the suffocating little shops, mingle with the camels and elephants and bulls in the streets, and produce a coup-d'œil that only Benares can show. Hideous-looking devotees, male and female, with foul tangled hair and twisted limbs, whine for alms. But their days are numbered; young India is getting disgusted with these exhibitions, and secretly longs for the police to interfere. From their balconies, especially towards evening, the well-to-do inhabitants, arrayed in spangled robes, look down upon the motley scene. On the roofs of many of the tall houses are pleasant retreats where, amidst plants and flowers, the rich spend many hours of the day, and sleep at night in small wooden chambers open to the breeze.

Benares, as the Holy City, has every nook and corner associated with some unseen power. It swarms with shrines and temples. They were again and again levelled by the Muslim invader, but have again and again risen; and the city now contains 1,454 temples, besides innumerable shrines and sacred wells. The idols, which abound in private houses as well as in the sacred edifices, are said to outnumber the inhabitants three or four times over. Brahminism in the course of ages has had many developments. The supreme deity, Brahma, became by personification of the principles of creation, preservation, and destruction, the triad Brahma, Vishnu, and Síva. The elements and planets were worshipped, and departed heroes and saints, and tutelary gods were imagined for every natural phenomenon and every phase of life, until the Hindu pantheon has been calculated to contain no less than 330 millions of divinities. Síva is the god paramount of Benares, but there are swarms of others. A pilgrim, on arrival, is expected to ring the sacred bell at the shrine of Binayaki, whose duty it is to record pilgrimages. Tarakeswar is the cheerer of the dying; Alprmteswar is the averter of death; Annupurna is the provider of food; Bhaironáth is the divine watchman and magistrate, appointed by Síva to keep guard over everything in Benares. He has a famous temple near the public garden, and in a separate shrine close by is his stone club, four feet in length.

But the Bisheswar, or Golden Temple, dedicated to Síva, is the holiest of the holy places in Benares. It contains a Lingam of uncarved stone, the venerated symbol of the god. The temple is neither great nor grand, but the central spire and domes are covered with gold-leaf, the gift of Runjeet Singh. Crowds of devotees perpetually bring offerings to this shrine; more than 100,000 have attended on the day of an eclipse. To adore this object once in a lifetime is considered sufficient to insure an entry into Paradise. Beside the building is a columned shrine covering a narrow well full of greenish foetid water. This well is the Gayan Bowree, the Source of Wisdom. A Brahmin draws the filthy liquid, and dispenses it to the worshippers. The well is said to have been formed by the drops that fell to earth when Síva too hastily quaffed the immense bowl of amrîta over which the gods were disputing. There are numerous holy wells in Benares, amongst them the Kalkup, or Well of Fate, which gives knowledge of the future; the Munikurnika, or

Sweat of Vishnu, a stagnant pool fed with the washings of idols in neighbouring temples. Thousands go down the stone steps to wash away their sins in the dirty waters.

The temple of Dourga Khound, in the south of the city, usually called by Europeans the " Monkey Temple," is curiously interesting. This beautiful temple stands beside a broad bank surrounded by stairs. It is built of stone, and coloured a blood-red tint from base to summit. Columns,

walls, and spires are all elaborately carved. Though dedicated to Dourga or Satis, the wife of Síva, it is practically consecrated to the monkey god, Hamman. A wonderful collection of monkeys is maintained here; the animals, of all ages, cluster about the walls and spires, or roam the court-yards, chattering and grimacing. The payment of a rupee to the Brahmin for biscuits results in a headlong rush into the temple of hundreds of monkeys: "mères de famille, with young ones clinging to them-small monkeys, large monkeys, and every kind of green-grey abomination, all scrambling, kicking, and screaming."

The Munikurnika Ghât, on the river-side, is the burning-place in which, above all others, an orthodox Hindu would like his body to be consumed. Rich people hasten to Benares as death approaches, that by being burnt at this spot they may attain attain eternal felicity, and hither corpses are brought for hundreds of miles by pious relatives.

A dense, horrible smoke hangs over the place, beneath which the attendants stir up the funeral piles with long iron rods, or expedite the burning by pouring oil on the flames. Around are numerous upright slabs in honour of widows who have performed Sáti.

The story of the rite of Suttee is one of the many sad stories of superstition in India. Before its abolition the rite had the prestige of twenty centuries of observance. As regards the word Suttee it is merely the ordinary way of spelling Sáti, "a good wife," from the root Sát. To say that a person became a Suttee, or performed the rite of Suttee, is equivalent to saying that she became a model partner.

In 1805, Lord Wellesley, who had passed a law forbidding mothers to throw their

children into the Ganges at Sangor Island, was the first to take active official steps for the abolition of the horrible rite of Suttee; but when the reply to his appeal came, he had left the country. For many years after that nothing was done except to report and report, and obtain fresh information and report again. Returns were made of the number of widows burnt, with particulars of caste, occupation, number of children, whether the sacrifice was voluntary, whether relations had come forward to support the orphans, and so forth.

Then for years the question was discussed how the rite could be suppressed, and the pledges given by successive statesmen sustained, that there should be no interference with religion; and it was generally considered that no active steps could be taken without provoking disaffection and mutiny.

In course of time, one and another was bold enough to give a righteous judgment upon the controversy. One of the judges of the Old Supreme Court of Calcutta boldly said that he would treat Suttee as murder. The Friend of India persistently called upon the rulers of the country to do their duty. At last came the hour and the man. "Lord William Bentinck had not been eighteen months in the country when he put an end to Suttee by an Act made up of a dignified preamble and a few short sections. As those who really understood the natives had predicted, there was neither riot nor disaffection. No Sepoy shot his colonel, nowhere were magistrates or missionaries mobbed, treasuries plundered, or bungalows fired. The good example set long ago has been followed by the tributary princes of India, moved by the influence of Residents and agents, and Suttee is now rarely heard of in any part of the great peninsula."*

The Mussulmans possess 272 mosques in Benares, of which the principal is the splendid mosque of Aurungzebe, the most noticeable edifice in the river view of the city. (See Vol. I., p. 17.) It stands on the bank of a steep cliff, with strong breast works of masonry extending far down the bank. Its minarets rise to an altitude of 225 feet above the river-bed. The view from this height is very fine. Benares lies outspread like a carpet below, and in the far distance on a clear morning are seen the mighty Himalayas. The mosque stands where stood the famous temple marking the spot where Vishnu himself appeared to man, and is approached from the river by a flight of a hundred ancient steps, up which pious Hindus were wont to ascend on their knees to Vishnu's shrine.

Benares has colleges, missions, institutes, and so forth, and does a considerable trade, though its wealth is mainly derived from the pilgrims. The English town is at Secrole, where the bungalows, in their pleasant gardens, are arranged in fine avenues. Here there are several Christian churches, also a large printing establishment, and a well-attended university. The population of Benares in 1872 was 175,188, comprising 133,549 Hindus, 41,374 Mohammedans, and about 265 Christians and others.

ALLAHABAD.

Allahabad (since 1862 the capital of the North-western Provinces) stands where the Ganges and the Jumna mingle their sacred waters. Here the Aryan colonists built their city of Prayaga, to which in after-ages Akbar and his host gave the name Allahabad

From an admirable article on Suttee in the Saturday Review, November, 1877.

(City of God). With the downfall of the Mogul Empire, evil days came on this great city. Mahrattas and Pathans and others pillaged it, till in 1801 it was ceded to the English. During the Mutiny of 1857 it was the scene of a serious outbreak. On June 6th the native infantry revolted, burnt and plundered the station, and massacred the Europeans. On the 11th General Neill arrived with reinforcements; shot and shell from the fort showered on the streets and bazaars, involving friends and foes in a common ruin. The city was much damaged, and during the reign of martial law terrible vengeance was taken. Six thousand human beings, supposed to be more or less guilty, were hanged on trees and sign-posts. But that day of terror has passed, and Allahabad bids fair to far outshine its ancient splendour; ruins are being cleared away, and handsome buildings are rising; by a magnificent bridge across the Jumna, the East Indian Railway enters the city from the east; two bridges of boats cross the Ganges; broad, handsome roads, planted on each side with trees, mark the English quarter, and several main roads cross the network of narrow streets forming the native town. "This city," says Rousselet, "is destined to become in a very short space of time much larger than it is now. No other city, indeed, could be so wonderfully adapted for a capital. Situated at the point of junction of the Ganges and Jumna, it commands the great fluvial highways; and being at an almost equal distance from Bombay, Calcutta, Lahore, and Madras, it is the centre at which all the railways of the great Indian continent meet; and finally, its healthy though warm climate, and its soil, adapted for superior cultivation, give it such advantages over the present metropolis that it is difficult to understand why the English still persist in ascribing this position to Calcutta."

The chief lion of Allahabad is its famous fort, 2,500 yards in circumference, the Ehrenbreitstein of India. From earliest ages a stronghold stood here, long before Akbar built the picturesque castle which has been modified into the present citadel by cutting down the high towers, topping the stone ramparts with turfed parapets, and fronting them with a sloping glacis. Across the two rivers it frowns defiance to every foe. Well might Sir Henry Lawrence, in the days when trouble was coming, telegraph to keep Allahabad safe." When burning cantonments, murdered garrisons, opened gaols, and plundered treasuries seemed to presage the collapse of the English power in Upper India, a handful of men heroically stood their ground here till detachment after detachment arrived and the turning-point was reached.

The imperial hall of Akbar, 172 feet long, forms the splendid arsenal of the fort. Just within the fortress gateway stands the celebrated column of the Buddhist Emperor Asoka, dating from 240 B.C. Close by is an underground temple said to contain an undying banyan-tree, which has, however, been leafless for more than a century.

There are two or three mosques, serails, and mausoleums of minor importance in Allahabad, and numerous good modern buildings-viz., the Government offices and courts, barracks, Roman Catholic Cathedral, Central College, and Town Hall. The town has no particular trade or manufacture of its own, but enormous quantities of goods pass through it, and it is becoming a great exchange mart for the North-western Provinces.

At the full moon in January takes place the great Magh Mela, when innumerable pilgrims come to bathe at the confluence of the rivers-a spot looked upon as specially