The Ganges is equally sacred to the Buddhist, and Benares is associated more closely with the career of Buddha than any other city.  Twenty-five hundred years ago Buddha preached his first sermon there, and for ten centuries or more it was the headquarters of Buddhism.  Buddha selected it as the center of his missionary work.  He secured the support of its scholars, teachers and philosophers, and from there sent forth missionaries to China, Japan, Burmah, Ceylon, the Malay Peninsula, Siam, Thibet, and other countries until half the human race accepted him as divine, his teachings as the law of God, and Benares as the fountain of that faith.  It is a tradition that one of the wise men who followed the Star of Bethlehem to the Child that was cradled in a manger was a learned pundit from Benares, and it is certainly true that the doctors of theology who have lived and taught in the temples and monasteries there have exercised a greater influence upon a larger number of men than those of any other city that ever existed.  But in these modern days Benares is wholly given over to ignorance, superstition, vice, filth and idolatry.  The pure and lofty doctrines of Buddha are no longer taught.  The “Well of Knowledge” is a filthy, putrid hole filled with slime and rotting vegetation.  Buddhism has been swept out of India altogether, and Brahminism is taught and practiced there in its most repulsive and depraved forms.

[Illustration:  A Hindu ascetic—­Benares]

Occasionally some reformer appears who endeavors to rebuke the depravity and appeals to the thinking members of the Brahmin sect to restore the ancient philosophy and morality of their fathers.  I saw such an one at Benares.  He lives in a bare and comfortless temple surrounded by a garden; is entirely dependent upon charity; every mouthful of food that he eats is brought to him by his disciples.  He spends his entire time, day and night, in contemplation; he sleeps when he is exhausted; he eats when food is handed him, and if he is neglected he starves until some thoughtful person brings him a bowl of rice or curry.  He wears nothing but a single shirt of cotton; he owns nothing in all the world except a brass bowl, which is used for both food and drink, and a few relics of his predecessor and teacher whom he lived with and served and whose mantle fell upon him.  To those who come to his temple with serious minds and anxious to know the truth, he talks freely, and his pride is gratified by having his visitors inscribe their names in a large book which is kept for that purpose.  And contributions of money are very acceptable because they enable his disciples to circulate his thoughts and discourses in printed form.  I noticed that most of the names in the visitors’ book were those of Americans, and it occurred to me that his contemplations must be seriously disturbed by having so many of them intrude upon him.  But he assured me that he was delighted to see every stranger who called; that it gratified him to be able to explain to American travelers the true principles of Brahminism and the correct doctrines of that sect.  This was the more important, he said, because nearly every foreigner formed his impressions of Brahminism by what he saw and heard among the pilgrims about the temples.