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156 other of the pantheon; they produced boxes of ashes of sacred cow-dung and painted their foreheads and smeared their arms and breasts for the day. Others, standing in the stream, drew in deep breaths, closed first one nostril, then the other, and then held both nostrils with the fingers for uncounted seconds. "They hold the nose so. It is a prayer. It is a ceremony," said Chaturgam Lal, beaming with proud omniscience. "Sometimes they pray with the right nose, sometimes with the left nose."

There were some serious and thorough ablutions going on also, vigorous scrubbings and tubbings that were good imitations of the Anglo-Indian form of godliness. Men waded out to their shoulders, removed their garments, and washed them in the holy water, assuming dry garments as they dropped the wet ones at the steps. Others energetically shampooed their heads with river mud, for soap is impure to their notion. Women came down to the river's edge, scoured their brass jars, rinsed, filled them, and walked away in never-ending processions upon the broad steps. Even babus in gold spectacles and worsted comforters carried off jars of water to pour over some chosen image. The high-caste women had bathed and gone before sunrise, the wives of rajas and potentates rowed off in curtained boats to bathe and pray far from the common horde. The women specially congregate at one ghat, barely uncovering their faces to the rising sun, and gracefully and ingeniously draping the fresh sari over the wet one as they reach the steps again. "These are nearly all widows," said our