e thirty temples of a morning.

You watch the people as they bathe. It is evident they are not engaged
in mere ablution, so important for health and comfort in that hot
climate. They are engaged in worship. You see them taking up the water
of the Ganges in the palm of their hands, and offering it up to the sun
as they mutter certain prescribed words. You observe them making a
circular motion, and if sufficiently near you see them breathing
heavily, which you are told is their way of driving away demons, who
even in that sacred spot are said to haunt them. There is no united
worship: each worshipper apart performs his and her devotion. There is
incessant movement among the crowd. As the words of worship--I might
rather say the spells--they have been instructed to use are not
whispered but uttered, and by many with a loud voice, a stream of sound
falls on the ear. If, at some spot where bathers are not inconvenienced,
the boat be moored, and the visitor ascends the steps, he may find on
certain days, in two or three places, pundits reading and explaining the
Ramayan, or the Mahabharut, the great Hindu Epic Poems, to a crowd of
people, mainly composed of women. Sentence by sentence is read from
poetical translations made long ago, which require to be re-translated
into the ordinary language of the people to be generally intelligible.
We have occasionally stopped to hear these pundits, and, judging by what
we heard, we concluded they satisfied themselves with a loose paraphrase
of what they were reading. These men are rewarded with a respectful and
attentive hearing, and with something more substantial when the work is
over.

If the visitor is bent on obtaining a full impression of the work
continually carried on in Benares, he will make his way into the city
from one of the principal bathing-places. He will speedily find himself
in long narrow streets, with lofty stone houses on either side. The
buildings are of hewn stone, and of the most substantial description.
They have for the most part a narrow doorway, opening into a quadrangle,
around which are the apartments of the inmates. The streets are so
narrow that through some of them a vehicle cannot be taken, and in
others conveyances pass each other with difficulty. There are parts of
the narrower streets and lanes on which the sun never shines. In the few
cases where houses on both sides of the street opposite each other
belong to one proprietor, there is at the top a