Benares and the British
From 1775 onwards, writes Mildred Archer, a succession of British officials delighted in the centre of Hindu religion and learning upon the banks of the Ganges.
The holy city of Benares, which stands on the River Ganges, is one of the seven sacred cities of the Hindus and is the great centre in northern India for the worship of the god Shiva. Every year a million pilgrims visit it and bathe in the sacred river from the stone steps that line the bank. They worship in the temples that raise their pinnacles among the trees.
They circumambulate the city, a ritual journey that takes six days. It is believed that whoever dies at Benares will be transported straight to Heaven, and Hindus on the point of death are often brought by devoted relatives to die in its sacred precincts. More than thirty thousand Brahmins minister to pilgrims and the streets are thronged with ascetics who live on the charity of the visitors.
This city, the Rome of Hindu India, has always exerted a powerful attraction for the British in India. In the days before the building of the railways, the River Ganges was the main thoroughfare of northern India and British officers sailed up and down it to their various postings. Benares was perhaps the most fascinating town that lay on this route, and every traveller waited for it with excited anticipation.
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