Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/875

Rh HIMALAYA 835 Relation 3f Him- ilaya to Hindu aytlio- ogy: nythical loly ivers ind )laces : he Ganges. Badari- i&th and iedar- lath. Buddhist ind Jreek emahis 11 western noiin- of Manasirowar, as the centre of the world, around which its visionary kingdoms are spread out. The sanctity of the Himalaya, in Hindu mythology, is known to all, and thousands of pilgrims from all parts of India still continue to seek salvation in the holy waters of the Ganges, and at its sacred sources in the snowy Himalaya, &quot; He who thinks on HimAchal,&quot; says the Manas-khanda, one of the Puranas or holy books of the Hindus, &quot;though he should not behold him, is greater than he who performs all worship at KAshi (Benares). In a hundred ages of the gods I could not tell of the glories of Himachal. As the dew is dried up by the morning sun, so are the sins of mankind by the sight of Himachal.&quot; And to those who have performed such a pilgrimage the wondrous snow-clad peaks of the Himalaya, though seen through the atmosphere of the 19th century, seem still to bs surrounded with the same halo of glory as of old. The Ganges, which issues from the mountains at Hardwar, is fed by tvo principal tributaries which unite about 40 miles higher up, the Alaknanda, far the larger, and the Bhaghirati, the more sacred. The source of the last-named river is in the glacier above the temple at Gangotri, which lies to the north of a great cluster of snowy peaks, on the south of which is found the temple of Kedarnath, and on the east that of Badarinath. Large glaciers exist near both of these temples, that near Kedarnath feeding the Mandakni, and that near Badarinath feeding the Yishnuganga, which river gives the main supply of water to the Alaknanda. Both the valley above Gangotri and that above Badarinath lead to Tibet, passing through a region of snowy peaks of first-class magnitude. To the west of Gangotri and the Bhaghirati lies the hardly less sacred source of the Jumna and the temples of Jamnotri. The temple at Badarinath, on the Yishnuganga, as the latter name suggests, is dedicated to Vishnu, and is served by priests of the Vaishnava sect, presided over by a &quot;Ilawal&quot; or abbot, who is invariably a Brahman from South India. The temple at Keiarnath is dedicated to Shiva, symbolized by the Lingam, and is more especially venerated by the Saiva sect ; and the chief priest here, too, is a Brahman from Malabar in the same part of India. The origin of this connexion of the holy places in the Himalaya with southern India is very obscure ; possibly, however, it dates back to the 8th or 9th century, to the time of Sankara Acharaya, a native of Malabar, the chief expositor of the Saiva doctrines, who is said to have died at Kedarnath. That the Himalaya and the sources of the Ganges, how ever, were regarded as holy, and had become places of pilgrimage for Hindus long before this event, or before the development of the two sects that have been here specially named, there can be no reasonable doubt ; but how or when the Aryan races of India first developed for them selves a system of mythology so intimately bound up with these mountains must ever remain a subject of mere speculation. Remains of Buddhist monasteries and temples on a great scale, the majority of which are believed from inscriptions found on them to date back to about the commencement of the Christian era, are met with along the foot of the western end of the Himalaya, in the Yusafzai country bordering on the Indus, and similar ruins are seen as far west as Jellalabad in Afghanistan. Some of the buildings are doubtless of much greater age, and may go back to the earliest days of Buddhism, about six centuries before our era ; and the discovery in this locality of what is probably a contemporaneous copy of Asoka s well-known inscription, cut into the face of a great rock, testifies to the develop ment of a great centre of Buddhism in his days, that is, about 250 B.C. Among these ruins are found fragments of sculpture bearing the impress of the Greek art introduced by the successors of Alexander; and other relics of the Greco-Scythic kings, in the form of numerous coins, have been obtained from the same quarter. The exact point at which Alexander entered India is still a subject of discussion among antiquaries, but it probably was on the line following the skirt of the north-west Himalaya along which the road now runs, and which is known to have been the chief line of traffic for centuries. How the influence of Greek archi tecture was carried forward both in time and place is illustrated by the curious temple of the sun, or &quot;Marttand,&quot; in the valley of Kashmir, the date of which is about 400 A.D. It would be a task, certainly fruitless, and probably impossible, to endeavour to estimate aright the con flicting claims to admiration of the scenery of the Himalaya and other great mountain ranges. If some elements of the picturesque be better found elsewhere, and if the softer features of hill, valley, and lake be absent, yet nowhere can the Himalaya be surpassed in the mag nificence and variety of its forests, or in the wealth and beauty of its alpine flora, which offer to the traveller ever-changing and ever-renewed pictures, combining the charm of former memories with fresh conceptions of the wonderful never-failing profusion of nature; and to the student of natural phenomena of every description surely no grander field will ever be open than that presented by these mountains. In many circumstances mere magnitude may not be effectual in adding to the apparent grandeur or sublimity of mountain scenery, for everywhere the features nearest to the eye, though absolutely smaller, may cut off from view those of far greater importance which are further removed. And this is often conspicuously true in the valleys of the Himalaya. But the extraordinary scale on which every part of the mountains is developed, the actual vast dimensions of the main features, the apparently endless succession of range after range, of ascent and descent, of valley and mountain top, of river, torrent, and brook, of precipitous rock and grassy -slope, of forest and cultivated land, cannot fail to produce impressions of wonder, which are not likely to be equalled and certainly will not be exceeded on any other chain. Upon these mountains alone, of all on the earth, can the traveller, as he climbs their slopes, obtain at a glance a range of vision extending 5 miles in vertical height, from 2000 or 3000 feet to 29,000 feet above the sea, and see spread out before him a compendium of the entire vegetation of the globe from the tropics to the poles. Here may the eye as it sweeps along the horizon embrace a line of snow- clad mountains, such as exist in no other part of the world, stretching over one-third of the entire circle, at a distancs of 40 or 50 miles, their peaks towering over a sea of intervening ranges piled one behind another, whose extent on either hand is lost in the remote distance, and of which the nearest rises from a gulf far down beneath the spectator s feet, where may be seen the silver line that marks a river s course, or crimson fields of amaranth and the dwellings of man. Sole represen tative of animal life, some great eagle floats high overhead in the pure dark-blue sky, or, unused to man, fearlessly sweeps down within a few yards to gaze at the stranger who intrudes among these solitudes of nature. As the sun sinks the cold grey shadow of the summit where we stand is thrown forward, slowly stealing over the distant hills, and, veiling their glowing purples as it goes, carries the night up to the feet of the great snowy peaks, which still rise radiant in rosy light above the now darkening world. From east to west in succession the splendour fades away from one point after another, and the vast shadow of the Corn parif ot H alay; with otlie mou tain seen oftl affoi
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