Footfalls of Indian history . day after day, in thisservice only, the giving of the flowers for the imageof the Lord ! Has there been no soul that, occupiedthus, has dreamed and dreamed itself into Muktiythrough the daily offering ? And so came to me the thought of the oldminsters of Europe, and of what it meant to livethus, like the swallows and the townsfolk and theflowers, ever in the shadow of a great that is what Benares is—a city built about thewalls of a cathedral. ( It is common to say of Benares that it is curi-ously modern, and there is on the fac^ of it acertain truth
Footfalls of Indian history . day after day, in thisservice only, the giving of the flowers for the imageof the Lord ! Has there been no soul that, occupiedthus, has dreamed and dreamed itself into Muktiythrough the daily offering ? And so came to me the thought of the oldminsters of Europe, and of what it meant to livethus, like the swallows and the townsfolk and theflowers, ever in the shadow of a great that is what Benares is—a city built about thewalls of a cathedral. ( It is common to say of Benares that it is curi-ously modern, and there is on the fac^ of it acertain truth in the statement. For the palacesand monasteries and temples that line the banksof the Ganges between the mouths of Barna andAsi have been built for the most part within thelast three hundred years. There is skill and tasteenough in India yet to rebuild them all again, ifthey fell to-morrow. Benares as she stands isin this,sense the work of the people asthey are to-day. But never did any city so sing the song of the. A STUDY OF BENARES , 259 past. One is always catching a hint of reminis-cence in the bazars, in the interior, and in thedomestic architecture. Here is the Jammu Chhattrafor instance, built in the Jaunpur Pathan style,common in Northern India from the twelfth tothe fourteenth centuries. Not far off again, wehave a glimpse of a roof-balustrade that retainsmany of the characteristics of an Asokan rail, soclearly is it a wooden fence rendered in stone. Ihave seen a pillared hall too, in a house looking outupon the Ganges, that might almost have known thetwo thousand years that its owners claimed for here in the bazar of Vishwanath we are tread-ing still, it may be, that very pathway through theforest that was followed by the Vedic forefathers,when first they saw the sun rise on the East of thegreat river, and offered the Hovi where the goldengrate of Vishweswar stands to-day, chanting theirrijks in celebration of worship.^ Nothing holds its place longe
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