Every bend of the Ganges is sacred, and each place where a stream joins it, is yet more holy. Pilgrims go from its mouth to its source and back again. If they walk, they take six months to the pilgrimage, but if they wish to win more merit, they lay themselves down on the ground and cover miles of the bank with their bodies instead of with their feet, and that takes far longer. There is a great gorge where the Ganges flows out on to the open plain. Near it stands the town of Hardwar, and on the Hindu New Year’s day dense crowds of pilgrims gather there in honour of the birthday of the river. They bring the ashes of the dead whom they have loved with them, and as they throw them on the flowing water they feel that they have done for their friends the very greatest thing they could do. Then at a certain moment each pilgrim struggles to be first to bathe in the river. The most sacred city is Benares, and all the year long its streets and temples and river banks are thronged with pilgrims. They bathe, and throw sandal-wood, sweets and flowers into the river. Some of them wear garlands, and, as they bathe, the garlands rise from their breasts on the water, and float down the current. Then the pilgrims go round the sacred city, a walk of ten miles, and afterwards they offer flowers and gifts in as many temples as possible. After all is done, they turn homewards across the plain, unless they are so old or so ill that they may hope to die soon. If they are, they stay on in the strange city in poverty and pain, for to die in Benares is a better thing to them than to be amongst friends or in the home of their childhood. But flowers and ashes are not the only gifts that have been offered to the Princess Ganga. Once little living babies were thrown to her waters, and old men and women have been left to her mercy by those who were too heartless or too poor to feed them. These terrible offerings are not seen now, for the British Government has forbidden anyone to throw any living person into the river. CHAPTER III THE STORY OF LIFE AND DEATH Long long ago, the unknown spirit began to play a game of life and death, and he is still playing it. That is what a Hindu child is taught, so life is not a real thing to him, but is only make-believe. Yet the rules of this game are so hard and fast that none of the puppets can escape from them. The Hindu story of life and death all circles round one rule of the game. That rule is that everything anyone does and everything anyone says must be punished or rewarded in another life, so that a little Indian child believes that he has been alive on earth hundreds of times before, and that everything that happens to him in this life happens because of something he has said or done in a life that is gone by, and which he forgets.