Ganges offers spiritual glimpse of India

VARANASI, India (AP) - Pottery shards displayed at the local university

museum are proof the Ganges has been drawing men and women to

its banks at Varanasi for at least 3,000 years.

Today, they come to offer prayers and take holy dips at a site considered one

of India's most sacred. They come to cremate their loved ones at the ghats,

literally "steps" leading to the waters.

They come for mundane rituals as well: An early morning will find Varanasi's

citizens brushing their teeth, scrubbing their clothes or shampooing their hair

as they wade in the Ganges.

And they come from far afield - pilgrims, of a sort, from France, Japan, Britain,

the United States and elsewhere travel here to glimpse spirituality at the place

where Hindus believe they can wash away their sins. It's almost possible to

imagine that the patter of tour guides is another form of prayer, and the flash of

cameras against a gray dawn sky an offering to the river.

Varanasi is easily accessible by air, with daily flights from New Delhi or

Bombay on state-run Indian Airlines or the private carriers Jet or Sahara.

Beware: Flight schedules can be disrupted by fog during the high season of

November to February, when the worst of the heat is past.

A wide variety of accommodations is available, from tiny guest houses on the

banks of the Ganges to five-star hotels in the Cantonment Area, a slightly

quieter and less-crowded neighborhood in the northern part of the city.

Varanasi, on the western banks of the Ganges in north-central India, is

sometimes called by the old form of its name, Benares, or by a host of praise

names such as Kashi - "the luminous."

In its centuries-old temples, the swirl of color and sound and smell seem

testament to the Hindu belief that everything the world offers can be found in

Varanasi. Blood-red vermilion paste is smeared as an offering on

elephant-headed idols, brass bells are rung to catch the attention of the gods,

incense sticks are lit to release cloyingly sweet smoke.

Hindu scripture described Varanasi as so excellent a place, all the gods made

it their home. Chief among the gods of Varanasi is Shiva, lord of both

destruction and creation, and chief among the city's many temples is

Vishvanatha, where Shiva is manifest in a black stone column altar known as

a "linga."

Friendly merchants with shops across the narrow alley from Vishvanatha allow

non-Hindus, who cannot enter the temple complex, to climb to a second-floor

balcony to view Vishvanatha's gold-plated dome.

Some visitors study the region's religious music or philosophy under one of

the gurus whose advertising flyers plaster the city's old quarter. For others, it's

enough to watch life on the banks as they float down the Ganges on rented

boats.

Viewed from the tour boats that ply the river, religion is a calm, abiding

undercurrent in the life of Varanasi. A glimpse at religion as a divisive force in

modern India can be found just a few steps inland, where a 17th-century

mosque stands on what was once the site of a Hindu temple.

The mosque's age-old reputation as a flash point for Hindu-Muslim violence is

evident in the chain link fence and armed soldiers that surround it. In 1992,

Hindu militants razed a mosque in Ayodhya, 200 kilometers (124 miles) north

of Varanasi and declared the Varanasi mosque would be next. The Ayodhya

attack sparked Hindu-Muslim rioting across India that killed more than 2,000

people.

Muslim emperors razed scores of Hindu temples in Varanasi when they ruled

northern India from the 13th century to the arrival of the British in the 1700s.

But Hinduism endured and even flourished.

Hinduism is also at the roots of another religion that spread around the world

from very near Varanasi. The Hindu-born prince who became Buddha - "the

enlightened one" - preached his first sermon at Sarnath, just northeast of

Varanasi, 600 years before the birth of Christ.

For 50 rupees ($1.19) - it may take some haggling - tourists can ride one of

the ubiquitous three-wheeled taxis known as auto-rickshaws from Varanasi to

Sarnath. Buddhist pilgrims from Japan, Thailand, Tibet and elsewhere come

by the busload to light incense at a towering stupa at the site of Buddha's

"sermon in the deer park."

The Bharat Kala Bhavan museum at Benares Hindu University houses graceful

sandstone sculptures, paintings and photos that record all of Varanasi's

spiritual threads - Muslim, Buddhist, Christian and, especially, Hindu. The

scraps of pottery in its glass cases hark back to the earliest days, when

religion only vaguely resembled what it is today.