19. Festivals. The Muharram.
The principal festivals are the Muharram and the two Ids. The month of Muharram is the first of the year, and the first ten days, as already stated, are devoted to mourning for the death of Hussain and his family. This is observed indifferently by Sunnis and Shiahs in the Central Provinces, and the proceedings with the Sunnis at any rate have now rather the character of a festival than a time of sorrow. Models of the tomb of Hussain, called tāzia, are made of bamboo and pasteboard and decorated with tinsel. Wealthy Shiahs have expensive models, richly decorated, which are permanently kept in a chamber of the house called the Imāmbāra or Imām’s place, but this is scarcely ever done in the Central Provinces. As a rule the tāzias are taken in procession and deposited in a river on the last and great day of the Muharram. Women who have made vows for the recovery of their children from an illness dress them in green and send them to beg; and men and boys of the lower classes have themselves painted as tigers and go about mimicking a tiger for what they can get from the spectators. It seems likely that the representations of tigers may be in memory of the lion which is said to have kept watch over the body of Hussain after he had been buried. In Persia a man disguised as a tiger appears on the tomb of Hussain in the drama of his murder at Karbala, which is enacted at the Muharram. In Hindu mythology the lion and tiger appear to be interchangeable. During the tragedy at Karbala, Kāsim, a young nephew of Hussain, was married to his little daughter Sakīnah, Kāsim being very shortly afterwards killed. It is supposed that the cast shoe of Kāsim’s horse was brought to India, and at the Muharram models of horse-shoes are made and carried fixed on poles. Men who feel so impelled and think that they will be possessed by the spirit of Kāsim make these horse-shoes and carry them, and frequently they believe themselves to be possessed by the spirit, exhibiting the usual symptoms of a kind of frenzy, and women apply to them for children or for having evil spirits cast out.[23]