Kings and Nuwaubs keep the festival in due form, seated on the throne or musnud, to receive the congratulations and nuzzas of courtiers and dependants, and presenting khillauts to ministers, officers of state, and favourites.  The gentlemen manage to pass the day in receiving and paying visits, all in their several grades having some inferiors to honour them in the presentation of offerings, and on whom they can confer favours and benefits; feasting, music, and dancing-women, filling up the measure of their enjoyments without even thinking of wine, or any substitute stronger than such pure liquids as graced the feasts of the first inhabitants of the world.

The Nautchwomen in the apartments of the gentlemen, and the Domenie[15] in the zeenahnahs are in great request on this day of festivity, in every house where the pleasures and the follies of this world are not banished by hearts devoted solely to the service of God.  ‘The Nautch’ has been, so often described that it would here be superfluous to add to the description, feeling as I do an utter dislike both to the amusement and the performers.  The nautchunies are entirely excluded from the female apartments of the better sort of people; no respectable Mussulmaun would allow these impudent women to perform before their wives and daughters.

But I must speak of the Domenie, who are the singers and dancers admitted within the pale of zeenahnah life; these, on the contrary, are women of good character, and their songs are of the most chaste description, chiefly in the Hindoostaunie tongue.  They are instructed in Native music and play on the instruments in common use with some taste,—­as the saattarah[16] (guitar), with three wire strings; the surringhee[17] (rude-shaped violin); the dhome or dholle[18] (drum), in many varieties, beaten with the fingers, never with sticks.  The harmony produced is melancholy and not unpleasing, but at best all who form the several classes of professors in Native societies are indifferent musicians.

Amateur performers are very rare amongst the Mussulmauns; indeed, it is considered indecorous in either sex to practise music, singing, or dancing; and such is the prejudice on their minds against this happy resource amongst genteel people of other climates, that they never can reconcile themselves to the propriety of ’The Sahib Logue’,—­a term in general use for the English people visiting India,—­figuring away in a quadrille or country dance.  The nobles and gentlemen are frequently invited to witness a ‘station-ball’; they look with surprise at the dancers, and I have often been asked why I did not persuade my countrywomen that they were doing wrong.  ’Why do the people fatigue themselves, who can so well afford to hire dancers for their amusement?’ Such is the difference between people of opposite views in their modes of pleasing themselves:  a Native gentleman would consider himself disgraced or insulted by the simple inquiry, ‘Can you dance, sing, or play?’