“Every country hath its own fashions[108].” The Hindoo women, in the most curious manner, propitiate the goddess who brings all this illness into the bazār: they go out in the evening about 7 P.M., sometimes two or three hundred at a time, carrying each a lota, or brass vessel, filled with sugar, water, cloves, &c. In the first place they make pooja; then, stripping off their chādars, and binding their sole petticoat around their waists, as high above the knee as it can be pulled up, they perform a most frantic sort of dance, forming themselves into a circle, whilst in the centre of the circle about five or six women dance entirely naked, beating their hands together over their heads, and then applying them behind with a great smack, that keeps time with the music, and with the song they scream out all the time, accompanied by native instruments, played by men who stand at a distance; to the sound of which these women dance and sing, looking like frantic creatures. Last night, returning from a drive, passing the Fort, I saw five or six women dancing and whipping themselves after this fashion; fortunately, my companion did not comprehend what they were about. The Hindoo women alone practise this curious method of driving away diseases from the bazār; the Musulmānes never. The men avoid the spot where the ceremony takes place; but here and there, one or two men may be seen looking on, whose presence does not appear to molest the nut-brown dancers in the least; they shriek and sing and smack and scream most marvellously.
The moonshee tells me the panic amongst the natives is so great, that they talk of deserting Allahabad until the cholera has passed away.
My darzee (tailor), a fine healthy young Musulmān, went home at 5 P.M., apparently quite well; he died of cholera at 3 P.M., the next day; he had every care and attention. This evening the under-gardener has been seized; I sent him medicine; he returned it, saying, “I am a Baghut (a Hindoo who neither eats meat nor drinks wine), I cannot take your medicine; it were better that I should die.” The cholera came across the Jumna to the city, thence it took its course up one side of the road to the Circuit Bungalow, is now in cantonments, and will, I trust, pass on to Papamhow, cross the Ganges, and Allahabad will once more be a healthy place.
“Magic is truth, but the magician is an infidel[109].” My ayha said, “You have told us several times that rain will fall, and your words have been true; perhaps you can tell us when the cholera will quit the city?” I told her, “Rain will fall, in all probability, next Thursday (new moon); and if there be plenty of it, the cholera may quit the city.” She is off to the bazār with the joyful tidings.
The Muhammadans believe the prayers of those who consult magicians are not accepted, and that rain is given by the favour of God, not by the influence of the moon. Muhammad forbade consulting fortune-tellers, and gave a curious reason why they sometimes hit on the truth. “Aa’yeshah said, ‘People asked the Prophet about fortune-tellers, whether they spoke true or not?’ He said, ‘You must not believe any thing they say.’ The people said, ‘O messenger of God! wherefore do you say so? because they sometimes tell true.’ Then his Highness said, ‘Yes; it may be true sometimes, because one of the genii steals away the truth, and carries it to the magician’s ear; and magicians mix a hundred lies with one truth.’ Aa’yeshah said, ‘I heard his Majesty say, ‘The angels come down to the region next the world, and mention the works that have been pre-ordained in Heaven; and the devils, who descend to the lowest region, listen to what the angels say, and hear the orders pre-destined in Heaven, and carry them to fortune-tellers; therefore they tell a hundred lies with it from themselves.’ ‘Whoever goes to a magician, and asks him any thing about the hidden, his prayers will not be approved of for forty nights and days.’ Zaid-Vin-Rhálid said, ‘His Highness officiated as Imām to us in Hudaibiah, after a fall of rain in the night; and when he had finished prayers, he turned himself to the congregation, and said, ‘Do ye know what your Cherisher said?’ They said, ‘God and his messenger know best.’ His Highness said, ‘God said, Two descriptions of my servants rose this morning, one of them believers in me, the other infidels; wherefore, those who have said they have been given rain by the favour of God, are believers in me, and deniers of stars; and those who have said, we have been given rain from the influence of the moon, are infidels, and believers in stars.’” “An astrologer is as a magician, and a magician is a necromancer, and a necromancer is an infidel[110].”
Aug. 17th.—The new moon has appeared, but Prāg is unblessed with rain; if it would but fall! Every night the Hindoos pooja their gods; the Musulmāns weary Heaven with prayers, at the Jamma Musjid (great mosque) on the river-side, near our house;—all to no effect. The clouds hang dark and heavily; the thunder rolls at times; you think, “Now the rain must come,” but it clears off with scarcely a sprinkling. Amongst the Europeans there is much illness, but no cholera.
22nd.—These natives are curious people; they have twice sent the cholera over the river, to get rid of it at Allahabad. They proceed after this fashion: they take a bull, and after having repeated divers prayers and ceremonies, they drive him across the Ganges into Oude, laden, as they believe, with the cholera. This year this ceremony has been twice performed. When the people drive the bull into the river, he swims across, and lands or attempts to land on the Lucnow side; the Oude people drive the poor beast back again, when he is generally carried down by the current and drowned, as they will not allow him to land on either side.
During the night, my ayha came to me three times for cholera mixture; happily the rain was falling, and I thought it would do much more good than all the medicine; of course I gave her the latter.
Out of sixty deaths there will be forty Hindoos to twenty Musulmāns; more men are carried off than women, eight men to two women; the Musulmāns eat more nourishing food than the Hindoos, and the women are less exposed to the sun than the men.