OF HINDOUSTAN                         341

exalted opinion they have long entertained of their
wisdom. I should find it difficult to persuade myself
that such was the fact, did I not consider that the religion
of the Indians has existed from time immemorial; that it
is written in Sanscrit, as are likewise all their scientific
books; that the Sanscrit has long become a dead
language, understood only by the learned; and that its
origin is unknown : all which proves a very great antiquity.
I will now say a word or two on the worship of idols.

When going down the river Ganges, I passed through
Benares, and called upon the chief of the Pendets, who
resides in that celebrated seat of learning. He is a
Fakire or Devotee so eminent for knowledge that Chah-
Jehan, partly for that consideration, and partly to gratify
the Rajas, granted him a pension of two thousand roupies,
which is about one thousand crowns. He is a stout,
well-made man, and his dress consists of a white silk
scarf, tied about the waist, and hanging half way down
the leg, and of another tolerably large scarf of red
silk, which he wears as a cloak on his shoulders. I
had often seen him in this scanty dress at Dehli, in the
assembly of the Omrahs and before the King, and met
him in the streets either on foot or in a paleky. During
one year he was in the constant habit of visiting my Agah,
to whom he paid his court in the hope that he would
exercise his influence to obtain the pension of which
Aureng-Zebe, anxious to appear a true Musulman, deprived
him on coming to the throne. I formed consequently a
close intimacy with this distinguished personage, with
whom I had long and frequent conversations; and when
I visited him at Benares he was most kind and attentive,
giving me a collation in the university library,! ^-^ -yjihid^

^ Tavernier, when travelling from Agra to Bengal in 1665, on which
journey he was accompanied by Bernier, was at Benares on the nth,
I2th, and r3th December of that year. He tells us {Travels, vol. ii.
pp. 234, 235) that adjoining a great temple, 'on the side which faces
the setting sun at midsummer,  there is a house which serves as a