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Learned dissertations are read by the disputants in defence of their peculiar doctrines, and the debates are held in public. This year the Hardwar gathering was exceptionally numerous. The Sannyasis the mendicant monks of India alone numbered 35,000 and the cholera, foreseen by the Swami, actually broke out.
Amar entered the conversation at this point to disclaim any intention of returning to Hardwar with me. He was enjoying the familial warmth. But I knew I would never abandon the quest for my guru. Our party entrained for Benares. There I had a singular and instant response to my prayers. A clever scheme had been prearranged by Ananta.
"A few days before my guru relinquished his body," Keshabananda told me, "he materialized himself before me as I sat in my hermitage at Hardwar. "'Come at once to Benares. With these words Lahiri Mahasaya vanished. "I entrained immediately for Benares. At my guru's home I found many disciples assembled. "'I am going home. "Sobs of anguish broke out like an irresistible torrent.
At the time of which I speak we were friends and allies of the Swami, and we learned with deep interest that the Hardwar "mela," which he was to visit, takes place every twelve years, and is a kind of religious fair, which attracts representatives from all the numerous sects of India.
There are at present three gurukuls in the Punjab, but the most important one, with over 250 students, is at Kangri, in the United Provinces, five miles from the sacred city of Hardwar, where the Ganges flows out of a gorge into the great plain.
In reply, he said that he was obliged to go immediately to Hardwar, where hundreds of thousands of pilgrims were expected to assemble, but he insisted on our remaining behind, since cholera was certain to break out among the devotees. He appointed a certain spot, at the foot of the Himalayas, in the jab, where we were to meet in a month's time. Alas! all this was written some time ago.
The day before we had received a letter from Swami Dayanand, carried to us by a traveling Sannyasi. Dayanand informed us that the cholera was increasing every day in Hardwar, and that we must postpone making his acquaintance personally till the end of May, either in Dehra-Dun, at the foot of Himalaya, or in Saharanpur, which attracts every tourist by its charming situation.
The natives always say Ganga, and consider this river to belong strictly to the feminine sex. That is why she is worshiped, and why the city of Hardwar, built at her very source, is so sacred.
Morbid sort of fancy I call it, but I've got to do what the Memsahib tells me. Would you believe that the man she hired it from tells me that all four of the men, they were brothers, died of cholera, on the way to Hardwár, poor devils; and the 'rickshaw has been broken up by the man himself. Told me he never used a dead Memsahib's 'rickshaw. Spoilt his luck. Queer notion, wasn't it?
Washing in the sacred rivers, particularly the Ganges, and especially at Allahabad, Benares, Hardwar and other exceptionally holy spots, is of efficacy in preserving caste and cleansing the soul of impurities. "The traveler should remember," says the guide book, "that all who are not Hindus are outcasts, contact with whom may cause the loss of caste to a Hindu.
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