The gentlemen in the bungalow now get word that the evening’s festivities are about to commence.  Lighting our cigars, we sally out to the shamiana which has been erected on the ridge, surrounding the deep tank which supplies the factory during the manufacturing season with water.  The shamiana is a large canopy or wall-less tent.  It is festooned with flowers and green plantain trees, and evergreens have been planted all round it.  Flaring flambeaux, torches, Chinese lanterns, and oil lamps flicker and glare, and make the interior almost as bright as day.  When we arrive we find our chairs drawn up in state, one raised seat in the centre being the place of honour, and reserved for the manager of the factory.

When we are seated, the malee or gardener advances with a wooden tray filled with sand, in which are stuck heads of all the finest flowers the garden can afford, placed in the most symmetrical patterns, and really a pretty tasteful piece of workmanship.  Two or three old Brahmins, principal among whom is ‘Hureehar Jha,’ a wicked old scoundrel, now advance, bearing gay garlands of flowers, muttering a strange gibberish in Sanskrit, supposed to be a blessing, but which might be a curse for all we understood of it, and decking our wrists and necks with these strings of flowers.  For this service they get a small gratuity.  The factory omlah headed by the dignified, portly gornasta or confidential adviser, dressed in snowy turbans and spotless white, now come forward.  A large brass tray stands on the table in front of you.  They each present a salamee or nuzzur, that is, a tribute or present, which you touch, and it is then deposited with a rattling jingle on the brass plate.  The head men of villages, putwarries, and wealthy tenants, give two, three, and sometimes even four rupees.  Every tenant of respectability thinks it incumbent on him to give something.  Every man as he comes up makes a low salaam, deposits his salamee, his name is written down, and he retires.  The putwarries present two rupees each, shouting out their names, and the names of their villages.  Afterwards a small assessment is levied on the villagers, of a ‘pice’ or two ‘pice’ each, about a halfpenny of our money, and which recoups the putwarree for his outlay.

This has nothing to do with the legitimate revenue of the factory.  It never appears in the books.  It is quite a voluntary offering, and I have never seen it in any other district.  In the meantime the Raj-bhats, a wandering class of hereditary minstrels or bards, are singing your praises and those of your ancestors in ear-splitting strains.  Some of them have really good voices, all possess the gift of improvisation, and are quick to seize on the salient points of the scene before them, and weave them into their song, sometimes in a very ingenious and humorous manner.  They are often employed by rich natives, to while away a long night with one of their, treasured rhythmical tales or songs.  One or two are kept in the retinue of every Rajah or noble, and they possess a mine of legendary information, which would be invaluable to the collector of folk-lore and antiquarian literature.