BENARES. 
85 
deity. Now, when the j udgment takes place, the City 
of Kasi, with a circumference of seven kos (about ten 
miles) from its centre, will alone remain firm ; for it 
rests not upon the heads of Ananta, hut is fixed upon 
the three points of the trident of Siva or Mahadeo, to 
whose care it will he entrusted. All who now die 
within its walls are blessed, and those who are found 
within it on that eventful day shall be blessed a 
thousand-fold. Ages before the Mahommedan con- 
quest of this city by Sultan Mohammed, which 
happened in the eleventh century ; ages before it was 
made subservient to the Patans, which was a hundred 
centuries earlier ; ages before Kasi was the second 
capital of the Hindoo kingdom of Kanaoj, which was 
the case a hundred centuries before that ; ages before his- 
tory has any record, Siva built this wonderful city — -of 
the purest gold, and all its temples of precious stones ; 
but, alas ! the iniquity of man contaminates and de- 
stroys the beauty of every thing divine ; in consequence 
of the heinous sins of the people, the precious mate- 
rial of this sacred place was deteriorated, and eventually 
changed into stone, by permission of the founder Siva. 
No sooner had this been effected, than Viasa, that 
god-like sage, who with infinite wisdom compiled the 
sacred Vedas, having conceived a jealousy for the 
renown and splendour of Siva’s glorious city, encou_ 
raged by the fall of its magnificence, came hastily 
with his followers and a large company of workmen, 
and encamped upon the bank of the Ganges, imme- 
i 
