Next to washing in the sacred stream during life, the Hindoo’s ambition is to yield up the ghost on its bank, and then to be burned on the Burning Ghaut and have his ashes cast adrift on the waters.  On the Manikarnika ghaut the Hindoos burn their dead.  To the unbelieving Ferenghi tourist there seems to be a “nigger in the fence” about all these heathen ceremonies, and in the burning of the dead the wily priesthood has managed to obtain a valuable monopoly on firewood, by which they have accumulated immense wealth.  No Hindoo, no matter how pious he has been through life, how many offerings he has made to the gods, or how thoroughly he has scoured his yellow hide in the Ganges, can ever hope to reach Baikunt (heaven) unless the wood employed at his funeral pyre come from a domra.  Domras are the lowest and most despised caste in India, a caste which no Hindoo would, under any consideration, allow himself to touch during life, or administer food to him even if starving to death; but after his holier brethren have yielded up the ghost, then the despised domra has his innings.  Then it is that the relatives of the deceased have to humble themselves before the domra to obtain firing to burn the body.  Realizing that they now have the pull, the wily domras sometimes bleed their mournful patrons unmercifully.  As many as a thousand rupees have been paid for a fire by wealthy rajahs.  The domra who holds the monopoly at the Manikarnika ghaut is one of the richest men in Benares.

Two or three bodies swathed in white are observed waiting their turn to be burned, others are already burning, and in another spot is the corpse of some wealthier person wrapped in silver tinsel.  Not the least interesting of the sights is that of men and boys here and there engaged in dipping up mud from the bottom and washing it in pans similar to the gold-pans of placer-miners; they make their livelihood by finding occasional coins and ornaments, accidentally lost by bathers.  A very unique and beautifully carved edifice is the Nepaulese temple; but the carvings are unfit for popular inspection.

The whole river-front above the ghauts is occupied by temples and the palaces of rajahs, who spend a portion of their time here preparing themselves for happiness hereafter, by drinking Ganges water and propitiating the gods.  On festival occasions, and particularly during an eclipse, as many as one hundred thousand people bathe in the Ganges at once; formerly many were drowned in the great crush to obtain the peculiar blessings of bathing during an eclipse, but now a large force of police is employed to regulate the movements of the people on such occasions.  Formerly, also, fights were very frequent between the Mohammedans and Hindoos, owing to the clashing of their religious beliefs, but under the tolerant and conciliatory system of the British Government they now get along very well together.