3-48 
AMERICAN AG-RICULTURIST. 
[SEPTE3TBER, 
A VIEW I 
Ton may see at almost any hour of the day, thousands 
of men, "women, and children bathing in the Ganges. 
They do not go in to have a good swim, to jump heels 
overhead, turn summersaults, and have a frolic, but to 
wash away their sins. Ton see old men scouring out 
their mouths "with mud; they have told lies, perhaps, or 
spoken profane words, and they think that by giving 
their mouths a thorough scrubbing, they can make them- 
selves pure. The women wash themselves and their 
babies. The little ones kick and squirm and scream, but 
in they go for all that, and get a good scouring. People 
come from all parts of Tudia to bathe in the Ganges at 
Benares, because the city and the river are both holy in 
their estimation. They make long pilgrimages — some 
of them traveling hundreds of miles, hoping to wash 
away their sins in the flowing stream. 
Festivals are held on the banks of the river, and at such 
times the people by the hundred thousand come to bathe. 
The Hindoos and the Chinese are the two oldest na- 
tions on the earth. It is supposed that the Hindoos en- 
tered India from Central Asia, about the time that Abra- 
ham entered the land of Canaan. There is reason to be- 
lieve that they were a strong nation at the time the chil- 
dren of Israel fled from Egypt. Before that the valley of 
the Ganges was thickly peopled by another race. Ben- 
ares was one of the ancient cities. The Hindoo religion 
was more vigorous twenty-five hundred years ago than it 
is to-day ; and if we had been in Benares a hundred years 
before Solomon built the temple in Jerusalem, we should 
have seen Hindoos by the thousand bathing in the river. 
The temples are not large, but they are very gorgeous 
and dazzle us with their brightness when the sun reflects 
its rays from the golden roofs into our faces. There are 
many temples— some of them small and mean, and not 
worth our no^.ce, but others where we may sit by the 
hour and wonder at what is going on. 
The Hindoos gj-e idolafors and have a great many gods 
—Inrfra, is the jt~-1 of the air; Agni. of fire; Vishnu, of 
Jtght; Sh?rr>, of cyllj Kn-^nu js a Jolly fellow— the 
rCOPTBIGHT SECTJEED.] 
K BEKARES . — Drazcnand Engraved for the 
god of love, and the Hindoo girls and women think a 
great deal of him. Perhaps some of the young folks 
would like to know if he resembles Cnpid— that plnmp- 
faced little fellow with wings like a bntterfly, and a 
bow and arrow flying about as if he was going to kill 
cock robin I Krishna does not resemble Cnpid. He is 
a nice young man who sits_ in a shady grove and plays 
a flute which all the Hindoo girls love to hear. 
Another god is named Hnnnooman, or the monkey 
god. A great many years ago — so runs the story, a chief 
with an army invaded Ceylon, and conquered it. The 
inhabitants were so small that the chief Hnnnooman said 
that they were not larger than monkeys, hut having con- 
quered them he was called the king of the monkeys- 
Being a king, after death, the people worshipped him in 
the form of a monkey with a long tail, a sword in one 
hand, a sceptre in the other, a jeweled crown on his head, 
a gold necklace and other ornaments on his neck. All 
monkeys are well treated on his account, and so the 
monkeys of Benares have a nice time of it. Thousands 
are hopping and skipping over the roofs of the houses, 
or chasing one another from tree to tree, or else are on the 
lookout to steal something from the shops or from the 
baskets of the hucksters, who ?o through the streets sell- 
ing frait or vegetables. A Hindoo never would kill a 
monkey, for if he did the god Hnnnooman would n't like 
it. and would take revenge by killing the Hindoo or hy 
doing something to make his lot in life very bitter. 
Eat hulls make themselves at home in the streets. 
They are sacred animals, for the people believe that a 
hull was a father of some of the gods. They thrust their 
noses into the baskets and boxes of the market men. and 
help themselves to rice, beans, or anything they like. 
No true Hindoo would think of killing or hurting them 
for fear of offending the gods. I think that they wonld 
not have such easy times as they now have, living on the 
best in the market without paying for it, if the lads of 
America who now handle the whip and goad could 
only get at them for & little while, And they are getting 
American Agriculturist. 
at them. The days of the saerea hulls are numbered. 
They cannot stand common schools, nor Sunday schools ; 
Bibles, steam engines, nor telegraphs. The more the 
world has of these the fewer sacred bulls there will 
he. The locomotive in India is crowding bulls and the 
Brahmins who believe in them, from the track, and is 
bringing in a new civilization and preparing the way for 
the introduction of Christianity. 
The people of India have some very strange notions 
about the world. But a small proportion of the 1SO.000.000 
people of that country know anything about geography. 
They will tell you soberly that the sun is SOO.000 miles 
from the earth ; the moon 600,000 ; that the earth rests on 
the hack of a tortoise, and that far away in the north is a 
mountain 600,000 miles high ; that the shores of that moun- 
tain-land are washed on one side by an ocean of melted 
butter, on another by a sea of sugar-cane juice, on anoth- 
er by a hay of buttermilk, and on the other there is an 
ocean of delicious wine ! 
I do not wonder that you laugh at such nonsense ; 
those Hindoos who have been to school do not believe it 
now, and are astonished that they ever accepted such 
foolishness. Becanse they have believed such staff we 
are not to set them down as natural born fools ; on the 
contrary, they are very bright, and their intellects are as 
keen as ours. They are tawny-hued, hnt are able to 
master a problem in arithmetic or get over a hard lesson, 
in grammar, as well as the boys and girls of America. 
Thousands of them are attending school, and studying 
not only their own language but English as well. Some 
of the Hindoo gentlemen will speak not only their own 
tongne, but English, French, German. Italian, Latin and 
Greek. There are not many Americans that can talk 
fluently in all these. It is quite natural for us to think 
that those who ore darker skinned than ourselves are 
below ns in intellect ; but there are a gTeat many boys 
and girls, and men and women also, in the United States 
who wonld find the Hindoos ahead of tbem in some of 
the branches usually taught in the common schools. 
