In the footsteps of the Buddha

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I have now arrived in Varanasi (what used to be Benares), one of the holiest cities in India. Many people come here to die because it sems that Lord Shiva promised that anyone who dies here (within a certain radius) will go to heaven. The place is sacred to Shiva ( the destroyer / creator) of the Hindu trinity. In addition just outside the town is the place where the Buddha preached his first two sermons after having achieved enlightenment, so that place is sacred to the Buddhists (and aslo, coincidentally, to the Jains, because three of their 24 tirthankaras were born there).

I read an interesting thing with regard to Buddhism and Hinduism recently. One of my guidebooks says that Hindus did not originally worship idols (or use idols for worship) but only started to do so in imitation of the Buddhists who were venerating statues of the Buddha. Since the concensus is that no images of the Buddha were made unitl about 1000 CE, Hindu idols would postdate that. It seems unlikely to me, but on the other hand when I visited the National Museum in Delhi I don't remember seeing any Hindu images of an older date. On the other other hand, I have now visited the Archaeolgical Museum in Sardath and they purport to have a 6th century Buddha image on display. Chissa?

Anyway, I need to recap. I had hired a car and driver in Delhi to take me to Jaipur and Agra and then got train tickets for onward journeys from Agra to Varanasi and from Varanasi to Lucknow and from there back to Delhi.

Driving on open highways here is not too bad, though some of the roads are not well maintained. There are many stretches of toll roads where you have to pay and these bits are generally ok. At first I wondered why there were notices saying "Toll road ends" but then I realised that this was just a nicer way of saying "potholes begin".

My driver's name was Mr Rathi (pronounced Ratty as in The Wind in the Willows) and he was fairly good driver. His only fault, really, was that he really disliked the way most other Indians drove. So when he saw a motorcycle coming towards us on the wrong side of the road he would always aim straight at it and then swerve at the last moment so as just to brush past. I think he hoped that the drivers would learn the errors of their ways, but the task is Herculean.

His car was a white Ambassador. These cars are very popular in India and have a rather old fashioned look to me as they are basically the old Morris Oxford cars which went out of production in the 1950s.

He told me that he was a poor man and that he had to pay for the education of his children and that he wasn't paid much by the company that employed him and that he had to pay all the toll charges and his own accomdation costs out of his own pocket. I ended up giving him R5,500 for himself at the end of our trip.

On the first day we drove for about 5 hours to Jaipur, which is west of Delhi in Rajasthan. As soon as we crossed the state line I saw my first camel. There are many camels used for carrying heavy loads in Rajasthan and also a few in Uttar Pradesh, where I now am. They walk slowly along the roads with a supercilious air acting as though they are going just where they want to go and hadn't even noticed that they were pulling a cart. Mr Rathi told me that the camel drivers have a string attached to their camels' ears and pull this for use as a brake.

We stopped just outside Jaipur at the King's Treat for lunch. I had an Indian meal for lunch, I can't remember what, but I had Matka Kulfi for dessert which is a Rajasthani ice cream served in an earthenware pot.

Jaupur is known as the Pink City. Many Rajasthan cities are colour coded - Jodhpur is the Blue City, Jaisalmer is the Golden City, Bikaner is the Green City and so on. Jaipur has earned its name because most of the buildings in the centre of town have been painted pink. There is a dispute as to how far back this tradition goes, some saying it started in 1854 to welcome an important British visitor, whilst others say thatit goes back to the foundation of the city. I think that the first view is probably correct but in fact there's not as much difference between these points of view as you might suppose, because Jaipur is one of India's newest cities and was only founded in the early 18th century (1727).

At that time there was a kingdom nearby with the evocative name of Amber - anyone who has read Roger Zelazny's Nine Princes in Amber and its sequels must find that name evocative - with a mighty fort high atop a mountain (Amber is also known as Amer but I much prefer Amber and it fits in with the colur coding thing). That kingdom's ruler was Sawai Jai Singh and he decided to shift his capital from the moutaintops of Amber to a lowland location more suited for commerce and trade. So he did so and modestly named the city after him - Jaipur - though some say the name means City of Victory.

Jai Singh seems to have been a prudent and wise king. One who was so prepared for battle that relatively few battles came his way - and he won all that did. He was a great scholar too, reading the works of Ptolomy and Euclid as translated into Sanskrit. His passion was astrology and he constructed many "observatories" around India to try to track the courses of celestial bodies more accurately.

He also sent emmissaries to the great European scholars of the time such as Sir Isaac Newton, who died in the year when construction of the Jaipur observatory commenced, to make sure that he included the most up to date data.

When he was only young, about ten years old, and in the court of the Muslim Emperor Aurungzeb (a man noted for his severity especially in seeing Islam rigidly enforced and who had had his father - Shah Jehan, the chap who had the Taj Mahal built - imprisoned for the last years of his life for his non-Islamic ways), he proved his ready wit by an answer he gave to that Emperor. Aurungzeb was so impressed that he said that the ten year old was worth one and a quarter of all men at his court (not counting the emperor, of course). Since that time all Maharajahs of Jaipur have born the title Sawai which apparently means one and a quarter. I'm not sure which language it means it in. Many languages don't even have a word for one and a quarter. Presumably Aurangzeb would have spoken Arabic or Urdu. If it was Urdu the word might well be the same in Hindi. Anyway, another peculirity of this is that when the flag of Jaipur is flown, another flag, of one quarter the area, is flown above it. I took a picture of this but see no immediate possiblity of uploading any photos soon. It is hard enough to try to update this.

My hotel in Jaipur was Shahpura House. Apparently this was previously the residence of the Maharajah of Shahpur. Since Mrs Gandhi took away the privy purses of Rajahs and Maharajahs many have let out their palaces as hotels - the main example being the Lake Palace in Udaipur, where I am still due to go. At any rate it was an excellent hotel with a lovely open air swimming pool, quirkily furnished rooms and good food and good service.

Mr Rathi drove me about to the various sights. We first went back up to Amber (we had driven through it on our way down to Jaipur). At Amber I first looked around the Amber Palace, which was closed due to the death of a politician - though I still got the chance to look round some interesting temples) and then we went to the Jaigarh Fort which was fascinating. There's a very large cannon there called the Jaiwan or Jaiban. It's variously described as being the largest wheeled cannon in the world or as the largest cannon in Asia (it could well be both) and it's definitely a very large cannon. It had to be pulled into position by many bullocks and then its turret had to be swivelled round by elephants to aim it and angle it correctly. But once it was in position it could send a cannonball about 22 miles! However, thanks largely to Jai Singh's skill in diplomacy and friendship with the Moguls - and the fact that everyone knew he had a giant cannon and the ammunition and supplies to put it in use at any time - the cannon has never yet been fired in anger but only test fired - which is when they found a big hole 22 miles away from the fort.

Back in Jaipur itself we went to the City Palace, built by Jai Singh. There were many interesting exhibits here, including an iron ball for playing polo at night! As I understand the thing a candle or flame of some sort is pivoted within the ball (which is of interlaced pieces of metal so that the light may be seen) such that it is always upright. But I still don't understand why the light is not extinguished by the rush of air. There must be many other difficulties in playing polo by night - ok, you can see the ball, but you can't see the other horses or even the goals - if they have goals in polo. For some reason it reminded me of quiddith and, perhaps more logically, of Carroll's White Knight. This interesting object was invented by a nineteenth century Maharajah of Jaipur who wanted to play polo all day and night long.

The palace also houses two massive silver urns which, apparently, the Guiness Book of World Records confirms as being the largest solid silver objects in the world (they were made by melting down thousands of silver coins) and weight about 700 pounds each. They were used by Sawai Madho Singh when he had to visit England for a ceremony (probably the coronation of King Edward the Second in 1902, although my guidebook says it was Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. That seems improbable as, according to a notice in the palace, the urns weren't made until 1900.) Anyway Madho Singh was a very religious Hindu and also very superstitious. He wanted to ensure his ritual purity when he was away from India so he filled the giant urns with water from the Ganges, sufficient for his stay and the journey to and from Britain. That's the commonly accepted story told by guides at the palace and repeated in one of my books. It certainly seems more plausibel then something I read in another book, to the effect that he took the water with him because he distrusted the hygiene of English drinking water. But I'm not sure that the ritula purity story is true either. I have read in several places that one drop of Gangetic water is sufficient to purify a whole sea, so he's actually only need to take one small bottle of water with him and just put one drop of the water into his bath each night. If the story is true, I'm sure some people at the palace made a lot of money out of it.

That was enough for one day and I went back to the hotel for a swim. I was still feeling fine than and all the time until after supper.

Next morning I checked out of the hotel and we went to see the Hawa Mahal or Palace of the Winds. I was not too impressed with this, but took a few photos so you can judge for yourself. I was very impressed, though, despite my increasing feeling of unwellness, with the Jantar Mantar. This is next to the Royal Palace and is the observatory to which I previously referred.

It's an open piece of land and it is spotted with gigantic astronomical / astrolgical instruments all made out of concrete. Jai Singh believed that the instruments of his time gave incorrect reading because they were too small, so he made bigger ones. They still work and they're still accurate. And they have strange kind of beauty, they have been designed for use but in such a way that they look like works of art. It must have cost a fortune, everything had to be positioned with extreme accuracy. He didn't need a telescope, of course. because he wasn't concerned with what the planets looked like and he knew that there couldn't be any more planets. He just wanted to predict their exact positions and relationships to one another for astrological purposes. I'm not sure if building all these observatories - there are others in Delhi and Varanasi built by Jai Singh, only looking at cities that I've visited already - was a mere folly or an admirable activity.

After seeing the Jantar Mantar we went on to Agra. Amazingly, the traffic is even worse there than in Jaipur and the air pollution was a lot worse. The traffic problems are compounded by the presence of camels, even though there is no nearby desrt as there was in Rajasthan and the fact that the roads are largely unpaved and where they have been paved at some point in history, nothing has been done since, so there are many, many potholes.

On the way to Agra we stopped at Galta to see yet another temple overun by monkeys. There's a natural spring here and the water is collected in pools and tanks and the monkeys love splashing about in the pools, especially in hot weather.

Before arriving in Agra itself we also stopped outside Fatehpur Sikri, built to be the capital of the Mughal Empire by Akbar but then abandoined after a few years in favour of Agra (itself to be later replaced by Delhi). Mr Rathi is a good driver, but he is useless at giving directions. He had to park about 2km from the monuments (I think it's supposed to be a scheme to reduce pollution damage) and just gesture in a direction and said keep going for half an hour. Well, I did, and for rahter longer, but the only thing I saw was a really long market extending for well over a mile along the straight road, with no sign of the ruins. I wasn't displeased because I found it really interesting to see and hear the sights and sounds of the market. I was the only white face amidst a great throng of people.

There were many, many people at the market. For an abandoned city, Fatehpur Sikri does a lot of trade! Many women wore full veils over their faces and I was wondering if this was done as a counter to the heat (which touched 49 degrees that day) or to the pollution. But, in fact, most of the town's population are Muslim as they have been since the Mughal days. Pigs roamed the sides of the street here, along with the cows, snuffling in the rubbish. This doesn't seem to be a moslem thing, though, I saw the same thing in Agra.

I was not well at any time during my stay in Agra but went to see the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort. Confusingly, they call this fort the Red Fort too - like the one in Delhi built by Shah Jahan. The Red Fort in Agra, on the other hand, is the place where Shah Jahan died, imprisoned by his son, in sight of the beautiful memorial he had built for his wife Mumtaz.

The Taj Mahal is, indeed, a wonder to look at, even if you have bad diarhoea at the time. My guide told me that the four minarets at its corners were designed to lean slightly outwards, so that if anything ever went wrong and they fell down, they would not crash into the Taj Mahal itself. They might do some damage, though, to the mosque and guesthouse built alongside the Taj Mahal, but one can't have everything.

My impression on approaching the building was that there were mural pictures in the niches of the outside wall. This was not the case, it was a trick of the light caused by patterns in the stone. I was hoping for a feeling of great peace to come upon me as I stood beneath the great dome of the building, or at least for my stomach to stop hurting, but there was no effect. Shah Jahan is now buried next to Mumtaz on a slightly raised coffin - differences in birth must be observed, after all, even in death. I hadn't realised that Mumtaz was only 38 when she died and that she had already borne Shah Jahan thirteen children before dying in childbirth with the fourteenth. The mausoleum is at the end of a large garden (rather than being in its centre, which was more normal at the time) and is right up against the Yamuna River.

Agra Fort was not so interesting as the Jaigarh Fort or the other Red Fort in Delhi. For me the only real interest was thinking of poor Shah Jahan, imprisoned by his son, widowed by the loss of his beloved wife and able to see the beautiful tomb he had built for her and where he was also to rest every day from his prison. But apparently historians say that he died not of grief or sadness but of an overdose of opiates and aphrodisiacs.

I did no sight seeing after lunch that day. We went back to a hotel and I just rested for three hours, lying on a bed and occasionally using their facilities. Mr Rathi drove me to a station a few miles out of town where I was to catch a train to Mugal Serai ( a small station some way out of Benares). I think I'll call the town Benares. That's how it was known when I first read about the burning ghats and the pilgrims bathing in the Ganges in the old Arthur Mee Childrens Encyclopaedia. It seems now to be known principally as Varanasi and also as Benaras, though the spelling I'm using is encountered too. And, of course, the town is also called Kashi.

I had my ticket and sat down in the waiting room, taking off my backpack. There was an electronic noticeboard with the departure times of trains on it, but nearly everything was written in Hindi. However I could identify my train by its number and time of departure and listened to the annoncements, which alternated between Hindi and English. There were several power cuts while I waited, but essential things like the signals and the automated ticket machines weren't affected. The heatwave and the lateness of the monsoon has meant a surge in power use for air conditioning.

I went to the platform when my train was due to arrive but a helpful porter there told me that it had been delayed for half an hour and showed me where my coach would be - my ticket was for a specific reserved berth. Whilst I was waiting the power went off again a few times and it was interesting to see how all the birds started chirping and flying around when it restarted. I'm not sure if this was due just to the light or if it was because they'd been sitting on power lines and got a shock.

The train finally arrived and I found my place. I had a lower berth so I didn't need to clamber up. I stretched out on the seat and used the pillow provided and did get some sleep, though I had to go to the toilet a few times during the night. Fortunately, the train had both Indian and Western style toilets and the western one had enough paper for my needs.

I was woken up by a porter as the train neared Benares (although I had realised we were near to the destination and was only dozing). We arrived at 5 in the morning, but fortunately my hotel - the Ramada Plaza - was able to check me in straight away. One of the few things they got right during my stay, it really was a pretty bad hotel considering how much I was paying.

I dozed on my bed for a bit before going down and having breakfast. I took it quite easy whilst I was in Benares, not wanting to do too much when I wasn't feeling well. The monsoon started about lunchtime on my first day, a great relief to everyone. It only rained for about thirty minutes but the town's drains had not all been cleared and the streets stayed waterlogged until the next fall of rain increased the flooding.

It was thrilling to walk down the main ghat (ghats are the large stairways of stone steps leading down to the river) and see the great Ganges river flowing along placidly. It was well below its maximum height and there were relatively few bathers in the river. The river did seem to have an odd quality of solidity, but I am always very suggestible and the thought that I was looking at the ganges river would, in itself, make me imagine the scene was wondrous in some regard.

What certainly was wondrous were the scenes along the riverside when I took a boat trip along the ghats and saw the famous burning ghats wher many bodies were being cremated. Many people come to Benares to die, as I mention above. It really did look like a scene from a science fantasy novel.

I also saw a ceremony after coming back ashore, where Hindu priests prayed to the Ganges.

Just as interesting to me as Benares was Sarnath, which was only a short taxi ride away. The Buddha himself came there and preached his first sermon there (he did go to Benares, too, but apparently didn't choose to preach there). There's a massive stupa, the Dhamekh Stupa, on the site of where the sermon was given. Ashoka, the great Mauryan king, erected a column nearby after he became a Buddhist. The wheel from this is now India's national emblem. The archaelogical museum in Sarnath is very good (at at R2 for foreigners, amazingly cheap!) and they have what's left of the column there.

Buddhists from many other countries have set up wats in Sarnath because of its sanctity as the place of the first sermon. I went to the Chinese and Tibetan temples and there are also Thai and Japanese monasteries. A sign by the Tibetan temple urges people to support its fight against occupation by the Chinese.

I was unwell for all of my time in Benares and probably didn't enjoy it so much as I should. I left my hotel shortly before 8 this morning as my train was due to leave at 8.15. In fact it didn't leave until 10.30 and I got here to Lucknow at about 6. I'll leave things there for now.

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Photos

Electric cabling over street
There going to try to clear all of this up before teh Commonwealth Games

Harrupan Dancing Girl
National Museum

A big cannon
Biggest in Asia? Biggest in the world? Biggest cannon on wheels?