er and gold tissue, in which the princes
and grandees of India array themselves on state occasions. I believe
this business has fallen off, as with the incoming of European influence
the love of barbaric pearl and gold has declined, if not among the
rajahs of the land, among a class beneath them, who formerly thought
they could not retain their rank in society if they did not appear on
special occasions in gorgeous robes.

While in population and commerce there are cities in India which surpass
Benares, in Hindu estimation it stands above them all in religious
pre-eminence. Perhaps at the present time more eyes are turned
reverently towards it than to any city on the face of the earth.

[Illustration: A JEWELLER AT WORK.]

I must attempt a brief sketch of the history of Benares. We are sure it
was not among the first cities erected by the Aryans after leaving their
home in Central Asia and crossing the Indus. They first took possession
of the land in the far north-west of the great country they had entered,
and gradually made their way to the south and east. Wonderfully acute
and painstaking though the Pundit mind be, it has so dwelt in the
regions of speculation and imagination that it has paid no attention to
historical research. Its laborious productions have left us ignorant of
recent times, and we need not therefore wonder that, except by
incidental allusions, it throws no light on the early settlements of the
Aryans in India. We know that they brought with them a considerable
measure of civilization, and soon erected cities. Indraprastha, built
near the site of the present city of Delhi, and Hastinapore, some thirty
miles from it, figure largely in the Mahabharut, the giant Hindu epic.
Kunauj, lying east and south of Delhi, became some time afterwards the
capital of a widely extended empire, which lasted, with vicissitudes,
down to Muhammadan times. Benares is seen in the dim light of antiquity
as a favourite abode of Brahmans, and as sacred on that account, but it
does not appear that it ever was the seat of extended rule. For many a
day it was subject to Kunauj, and it afterwards came under the sway of
the Muhammadans, to whom it was subject for six hundred years.

[Sidenote: BUDDHISM.]

A clear proof of the influential position of Benares centuries before
the Christian era, is furnished by the fact that Gautama, the founder of
Buddhism, deemed it well to commence his public ministry there in the
sixth cent