Varanasi: City of Lights

Last updated on: October 10, 2010 at 6:13 am by Justin Whitaker

Varanasi: City of Lights 2010-10-10T06:13:00-06:00 Justin Whitaker

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In describing Varanasi, I don’t think I could do any better than the Harvard scholar Diana Eck, author of Banaras. I skimmed the pages of her book in preparation for my own journey there and found a few passages well worth sharing. As she writes, “To linger in Banāres is to linger in another era, an era which one cannot quite date by century.” And, “Banāres is a magnificent city, rising from the western bank of the River Ganges. where the river takes a broad crescent sweep toward the north. There is little in the world to compare with the splendor of Banāres. seen from the river at dawn. The rays of the early-morning sun spread across the river and strike the high-banked face of this city, which Hindus call Kāshi—the Luminous, the City of Light.”

Are there not many holy places on this earth?

Yet which of them would equal in the balance on speck of Kāshī’s dust?

Are there not many rivers running to the sea?

Yet which of them is the River of Heaven in Kāshī?

Are there not many fields of liberation on earth?

Yet not one equals the smallest part of the city never foresaken by Shiva.

The Ganges, Shiva, and Kāshī: where this Trinity is watchful, no wonder there is found the grace that leads one to perfect bliss.

(Kāshī Khanda 35. 7-10 – from the Skanda Purana, a Hindu Holy book)

Sunrise over the Ganges.

In discussing past visitors to the city, Eck ponders:

How are we to understand this place, these religious acts, these people? Since most of these early visitors, Arnold being an exception, knew little of Hinduism but what presented itself to the eye, they were unable to broach these questions. Banāras was somehow too much for the mind to comprehend, and their writings are replete with expressions of speechless amazement. They had few interpretive resources with which to make sense of what they saw.

Some tried to understand Banāras by comparison with something cornparable in the West. François Bernier called it the “.‘the Athens of India,” and Edwin Arnold called it “the Oxford and Canterbury of India in one.”

And in the journal of Count Herman Keyserling, Eck recounts:

Benares is holy. Europe, grown superficial, hardly understands such truths anymore…. I feel nearer here than I have ever done to the heart of the world; here I feel every day as if soon, perhaps even to-day, I would receive the grace of supreme revelation. . . The atmosphere of devotion which hangs above the river is improbable in its strength: stronger than in any church that I have ever visited. Every would-be Christian priest would do well to sacrifice a year of his theological studies in order to spend this time on the Ganges: here he would discover what piety means.

A young Brahmin priest performs Adhi Puja at the Ganges.

One employee of the London Missionary Society, James Kennedy, presents a wholly different picture:

“Everything you see here is wild, grotesque, unnatural, forbidding, utterly wanting in verisimilitude and refinement, with nothing to purify and raise the people, with everything fitted to pervert their taste and lower their character.”

A Sadhu bathes in the Ganga.

As for me, and for most visitors according to Eck, there was a mix of awe and less positive feelings. It is indeed a city of enormous beauty and religious devotion. But it is built on the back of enormous poverty. Yet the religiosity, for now, seems to be winning out. People, even the poorest who lined many streets with hands outstretched, seem content, or at least accepting of their lot in life. Many simply chatted as we walked by, laughing and smiling through broken and missing teeth. In Hindu belief, a death in Varanasi guarantees liberation, and the river and land (not to mention Shiva) are said to guarantee at least basic food for all who reside here.

So perhaps the worry of the hustle and bustle of life we so take for granted in the West is simply absent. And with that, perhaps such states that we find unacceptable become perfectly fine.

I hope to come back in January, when the water is lower and one can walk the full three miles of Ghats along the river between the Varana and Asi rivers which enter into the Ganges. Two or three days simply isn’t enough to get a real sense of the city, perhaps two or three years wouldn’t be either. But I’m sure a bit more time in the City of Lights will be well worth the journey.

Yours truly at Asi Ghat with Ganges behind me.

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