The next morning I was out, just at dawn, stepping across the bodies of sleeping servants along my veranda. I had heard of a curious custom of the Shia sect of Mohammedans and was anxious to see it carried out. Whereas the Sunnis and indeed nearly all the Mohammedans of Agra, would march in a second procession to the Kerbela beyond the city and there bury in the ground the twin biers from within the "Tasias," the Shias would go down to the Jumna banks and bury theirs by the river.
Close to the pontoon bridge I found the Shias very seriously and reverently carrying out their ceremony. They appeared to take the whole matter gravely. Their "Tasias" were not large or very showy, but the burying was conducted like a solemn ritual. At this time of year the river was of course low, and the Shia gentlemen had dug a long trench close to the edge of the water. Out of each "Tasia" the two little biers garlanded with marigolds were lifted carefully under a white covering cloth, laid in the water at the bottom of the trench, and covered in with earth. Then the "Tasia" itself was broken up, the pieces thrown in and covered with more earth as the trench was refilled.
THE MOHARAM FESTIVAL AT AGRA.
The procession of the previous day had simply been a great march round in order that all "Tasias" might be paraded through all streets of the town. Upon this day, the conclusion of the festival, they were to go to the Kerbela for the biers to be buried there. "Hai Hassan ham na huai!" "Oh Hassan!" I heard cried out, "I am very sorry I could not help you at the time of battle."
It was a wild fantastic scene that I beheld when finally after a good deal of persistence I reached the little mosque in the Kerbela, from which some dozen feet above the ground level I was privileged to watch. The whole air was filled with the deafening noise of a thousand drums. Slowly the vast series of "Tasias" advanced into the enclosure, moving them to right or left to carry out the burying where their owners chose or had some right of ground. And there were two among them, taller even than any I had seen on the previous day—so lofty that it was a wonder they could be carried at all without toppling over—bowing and bending now to one side, now to another and then quivering erect for a moment while at the top of one, a peacock turned round and round and round, and at the top of the other a wheel kept revolving. How the children shouted! Many of the grown people were like children those days and shouted too, and the whole air was colour and dust and noise.
Thus ended for that year one of the greatest religious festivals still observed in the British Empire, a festival which I was privileged to see celebrated with all its ancient pomp and circumstance.