84rS 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[September, 
f COPYRIGHT SECURED,] 
A VIEW IN BENARES .—Drawn and Engraved for the American Agriculturist. 
You 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. You 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 India 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 arc 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 gorrremnaii 
and dazzle us with their brightness when tlie suhjjreflppA 
its rays from the golden roofs into our faeajl Tlje?e*i|re 
many temples — some of them,small (pid. lffdan. and trot 
worth our notice, but otJmri..wboFe \vc toityjsit. jiy Me 
hour and wonder at what is going on. S' ;: " v 
The Hindoos age idolaters,and have a great many gods 
— Indra, is I lie :£t' 1 of the- air: Agni, -of fire-; Vishnu, of 
light; Shiva, of evil. Krishnu is a jolly fellow—the 
god of love, and the nindoo girls and women think a 
great deal of him. Perhaps some of the young folks 
would like to know if he resembles Cupid—that plump¬ 
faced little fellow with wings like a butterfly, and a 
bow and arrow flying about as if he was going to kill 
cock robin 1 Krishnu does not resemble Cupid. He is 
a nice young man who sits in a shady grove and plays 
a flute which all the nindoo girls love to hear. 
Another god is named 1lunnooman, 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, but 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.front the., 
baskets of the hucksters, who gS througli tliq-str-eois jSej.^^ 
ing fruit or vegetables. A Hindoo ne.ycr. would ]i|ll, xi . 
monkey, for if lie did the god Hnnnooman would nlf l.il^o 
it, and would take revengp by killing the Ilinciqo or. by 
doing something to make, his lot, indifo very bitter. 
Fat bulls make- themselves at homo in the. streets. 
Tlioyiare-sacred animals, for the .'people Relieve that, a 
bull'Was ft-fath<‘r'Of.some of the gods. They thrust,their 
noses into the baskets and. boxes of the market, jncii, 
jhelp themselves to ripe, beans, or anything they like. 
|Np true Hindoo would think of killing or hurting. tjiem , 
for fear of offending the gods. I think that they would 
liot 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 a little while. And they are getting 
at them. The days of the sacrea bulls 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 
be. 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 ISO,000,000 
people of that country know anything about geography. 
They will toll yon soberly that the sun is 800.000 miles 
from the earth; the moon 000,000; that the earth rests on 
the back of a tortoise, and that far away in the north is a 
mountain 000,000 miles high ; that the shores of that; mOini- 
tain-land are washed on one side by an ocean of..mooted 
butter, on another by a sea of sugar-cane juicgji^ipph- 
er by a bay of buttermillc^m tpp > .tho oth|St|j®4s an 
ocean of deliciops yinc,! ; , 
I do that you ltin'gh at such nonsense; 
now, and are Astonished that they ever norephd.mrcli 
foolishness. Because they have believed such Muff we 
! are not to set them -down: ns nat-nral'-boim fools; on the 
contrary, tjicy arc very bright, and their intellects are as 
keen as ours. They are lAWny-hucd, but, are able to' 
master a problem in arithmetic or got over a hard lesson 
‘in grammar, ns well'As tile boys and,girls of America. 
Thousands of them are attending school, and studying 
not only their own language but. English as well. Some 
loir the Hindoo gentlemen will speak not only their own 
toii"ue, : but ‘Eiigfiiii,' ’Friinicii,' Gorman, Italian, Fatih and • 
! (jithek. There arc not 'many Americans, that can talfc'’ 
; fluently in all those. It is quit.c natural for us to think' 
that those who are dariccr skinned .than ourselv'ds are 
below us in intellect; but there are a great many boys 
and girls,'^rid.men nft’d women also, in the Knifed Slates’ 
who would find' the Hindoos .ahead (if them in pome of 
the branches usually taught in the common 1 schools. 
