The great slave-markets which we have all read so much about, where tender young girls are bought and sold as if they were cattle, no longer exist in British India, but the amount of traffic of the kind that is still carried on everywhere is incredible, although the fact is vigorously denied by both the buyer and the seller. In many cases these Nautchnees are not bought, but hired for a term of years, for money paid not to the girls themselves, but to parents or friends. In the course of time the parents die or move away, and the girl, after having given her best days to her employers, finds herself without money, friends, or social ties, and is glad enough to spend the remainder of her life in instructing the younger members of the establishment of which, with the fidelity so natural to Oriental women, she considers herself a member, and therefore bound for life to promote its interests.
After a few moments Sainah Bebee came in to greet the lady Kesinèh. She salââmed most deferentially to us, and took her place on the floor. She was a woman about fifty and a native of Afghanistan, tall and finely formed. She spoke of difficulty in procuring respectable young girls to fill the places of those who ran away, were sold to certain rich admirers for wives or concubines, or died. It would appear that the lowest, or Cusban, class was largely increasing, whereas that of the Nautchnees was fast diminishing. On my questioning the old lady about the average life of the Nautchnees, she could give me no clear estimate, but intimated very decidedly that they generally died young.
At my especial request we were shown into the exercising-room and almost over the entire establishment. There were over a hundred girls, of all ages, and all shades of complexion from dark-brown to a pale delicate olive, going through their exercises at the time. The hall was composed of bamboo trellis-work, and was light, spacious, and airy enough. From the roof hung all sorts of gymnastic apparatus, rude but curious—ropes to which the girls clung as they whirled round on tiptoe; wheels on which they were made to walk in order to learn a peculiar circular dance called "chakranee" (from "chak," a wheel); slipknots into which they fastened one arm or one leg, thus holding it motionless while they exercised the other; cups, revolving balls, which they sprang up to catch; and heaps of fragile cords, with which they spin round and round, and if any one of these snap under too great a pressure, they are punished, though never very severely.
Altogether, it was a strange sight. Most of the girls from ten to fourteen had nothing on but a short tight pair of drawers; the older ones had tight short-sleeved bodices in addition to the drawers; and those under ten were naked. They were all good-looking; a few here and there were beautiful. The delicate and refined outline of their features, the soft tint of their rich complexions, the dreamy expression of their large, dark, quiet eyes, added to great symmetry of form, made them strangely fascinating.
The teachers were all middle-aged women, some of whom looked prematurely old. The girls are taught to repeat poems and plays, but no books are used.
The dormitories in this establishment were bare rooms; the girls all slept on mats or cushions on the floor. Each had a lota, or drinking-cup, a little mirror, and a native box in which to keep her clothes. The more finished and accomplished Nautchnees had rooms to themselves. I went into one of these. It was matted, and was very simply furnished. A tier of boxes in which her jewels and robes were kept, a cot, a few brass lotas, fans, cojas, or water-holders, with some tiny looking-glasses ranged along the wall,—and this was all.
I inquired for the beautiful Nautchnee who had interested me. Her name was Khangee; she was a Soodahnee by birth. The Soodahs are a military race or tribe inhabiting parts of the province of Cutch; they find their chief wealth in the beauty of their daughters, and for one of the Soodahnees a rich Mohammedan will pay from a thousand to ten thousand rupees.[47] Rajahs, wealthy Mohammedan merchants, and proprietors of dancing-girls often despatch their emissaries to Cutch, Cabool, Cashmere, and Rajpootana in search of beautiful women. The fame of the Cashmerian and Soodah women has spread far and wide, and often some beautiful creature is picked up out of the hovels of Thur, Booly, or Cashmere and transplanted to the gorgeous pomp of a royal harem. The Rajpoots intermarry with the Soodah and Cashmerian women, and, being naturally a handsome race, they have preserved by this means that physical beauty of which they are so justly proud.
Very little was known of Khangee's history beyond the fact that she was a Soodahnee by birth. She was bought at an early age from her parents, who were poor and occupied a hovel in the village of Thur in Cutch, and sold to this establishment when in her seventh year, and was almost as ignorant of her parentage as a newly-born babe. At the time of our visit she had been hired with a party of Nautchnees to assist in the marriage-celebration which was to take place at the house of a rich Bunyâh, or Hindoo grain-merchant.
These Nautchnees often marry well, and become chaste wives and mothers of large families. The four requisites for a Nautchnee are bright eyes, fine teeth, long hair, and a perfect symmetry of form and feature. A small black mole between the eyebrows or on either cheek will enhance her value to an extraordinary degree.
The utter friendlessness, the quiet submission, expressed in the actions and faces of the young girls, and even of the little children, we had seen exercising and acquiring their different parts that morning, were very pathetic. There was none of the impetuosity of youth nor of the joyousness of childhood. It is a sad and dreary picture, these parentless children of the East living for some rich man's pleasure, and dying as they live, often unloved and uncared for by any relative or friend.