170 DR. HOOKER'S MISSION TO INDIA. 
of his phraseology and the clang of bells and din of voices at prayer, I 
gained little information. Some fine bells from Nepaul were evidently 
the wonder of the temple. I emerged, adorned with a huge chaplet 
of Champaca flowers, and my hands full of Calotropis and Nyctanthus 
blossoms, smelling very strong of a worshipper, and looking like a fool. 
It was a horrid place for noise, smell, and sights, — Devilis?, in every 
sense of the word. 
At this early hour, 6 A.M., the streets were crowded with worshippers 
going to the temples. 
From hence I went to the Gyam Bafe Musjud, a holy well, rendered 
the more sacred because Siva, when stepping from the Himalaya to Cey- 
E" accidentally let fall a medicine-chest into it. Natives frequent 
with little basins or baskets of rice, sugar, &e. dropping a little 
in a each as they mutter their prayers,—offerings which tend to 
increase the medicinal effect of the waters, which resides in their 
atrocious stench and putridity. 
The Observatory of Benares, and those of Dehli, Matra on the 
Jumna, and Oujein, were built by Jey-sing,* Rajah of Jayanagar, up- 
wards of 200 years ago : his skill in mathematical science was so well 
known, that the Emperor Mahommed Shah employed him to reform the 
calendar. Mr. Hunter, in the Asiatic Researches, gives a translation of 
the lueubrations of this really enlightened man, as contained in the 
introduction to his own Almanac. It thus begins : 
“ Praise be to God, that the minutely discerning genius of the most 
profound geometer, when uttering the smallest particle of truth, may open 
the mouth in confession of inability ; and so worthy of adoration, that 
the study and accuracy of astronomers, who measure the heavens, on the 
first step towards expressing it, may acknowledge their astonishment 
and utter insufficiency. Let us devote ourselves at the altar of the King 
of kings—hallowed be His name !—in the book of the register of 
whose power the lofty orbs are only a few scattered leaves, and the 
stars, and that heavenly courser, the sun, but as a small piece of money 
in the treasury of the empire of the Most High. 
“ If He had not adorned the pages of the table of the climates of our 
earth with the lines of rivers, and the character of grasses and trees, 
no calculator could have constructed the almanac of the various seeds 
* Founder of Benares Observatory. 
