Following the Equator, Part 6 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 112 pages of information about Following the Equator, Part 6.

Following the Equator, Part 6 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 112 pages of information about Following the Equator, Part 6.

6.  The Well of Fate.  For certain reasons you will next go and do homage at this well.  You will find it in the Dandpan Temple, in the city.  The sunlight falls into it from a square hole in the masonry above.  You will approach it with awe, for your life is now at stake.  You will bend over and look.  If the fates are propitious, you will see your face pictured in the water far down in the well.  If matters have been otherwise ordered, a sudden cloud will mask the sun and you will see nothing.  This means that you have not six months to live.  If you are already at the point of death, your circumstances are now serious.  There is no time to lose.  Let this world go, arrange for the next one.  Handily situated, at your very elbow, is opportunity for this.  You turn and worship the image of Maha Kal, the Great Fate, and happiness in the life to come is secured.  If there is breath in your body yet, you should now make an effort to get a further lease of the present life.  You have a chance.  There is a chance for everything in this admirably stocked and wonderfully systemized Spiritual and Temporal Army and Navy Store.  You must get yourself carried to the

7.  Well of Long Life.  This is within the precincts of the mouldering and venerable Briddhkal Temple, which is one of the oldest in Benares.  You pass in by a stone image of the monkey god, Hanuman, and there, among the ruined courtyards, you will find a shallow pool of stagnant sewage.  It smells like the best limburger cheese, and is filthy with the washings of rotting lepers, but that is nothing, bathe in it; bathe in it gratefully and worshipfully, for this is the Fountain of Youth; these are the Waters of Long Life.  Your gray hairs will disappear, and with them your wrinkles and your rheumatism, the burdens of care and the weariness of age, and you will come out young, fresh, elastic, and full of eagerness for the new race of life.  Now will come flooding upon you the manifold desires that haunt the dear dreams of the morning of life.  You will go whither you will find

8.  Fulfillment of Desire.  To wit, to the Kameshwar Temple, sacred to Shiva as the Lord of Desires.  Arrange for yours there.  And if you like to look at idols among the pack and jam of temples, there you will find enough to stock a museum.  You will begin to commit sins now with a fresh, new vivacity; therefore, it will be well to go frequently to a place where you can get

9.  Temporary Cleansing from Sin.  To wit, to the Well of the Earring.  You must approach this with the profoundest reverence, for it is unutterably sacred.  It is, indeed, the most sacred place in Benares, the very Holy of Holies, in the estimation of the people.  It is a railed tank, with stone stairways leading down to the water.  The water is not clean.  Of course it could not be, for people are always bathing in it.  As long as you choose to stand and look, you will see the files of

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Following the Equator, Part 6 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.