“I was admitted, as a great favour, to see a custom, peculiar, I believe, to the Timūrians, and which perhaps no European ever saw before. Immediately after the marriage ceremony the bridegroom has the bride taken to his home; but before she quitted her palanquin, which was set down close to it, she thrust her bared foot—a very pretty one, and dyed with henna at the extremities—through the sliding doors, and the bridegroom touched her great toe with the blood of a goat, which I saw him kill with his own hands, whilst yet in his bridal dress and turban, by then and there cutting its throat. When this was done, the bride withdrew her foot, and I made my bow, and the bride and bridegroom retired to their inner apartments.”
By the time the procession had quitted the gates of the zenāna, I was very glad to return to my own rooms to bathe preparatory to breakfast. I had eaten nothing during the night but cardamums and prepared betel-nut: had smoked a little of Colonel Gardner’s hooqŭ, and had drank nothing but tea. Mr. Gardner prepared some pān for me in a particular fashion: I ate it, and found it very refreshing. Pān, so universally eaten in India, is made of the leaf of the piper betel, a species of pepper plant, called pān supéarie and betel-nut; but this betel-nut is not the nut of the piper betel, but of the areca catechu, a palm fifty feet in height. The betel-nut is cut up in small bits and wrapped up in the pān-leaf with lime cuttie, which is a bitter gum resin, an astringent vegetable extract, the produce of a species of mimosa (chadira) catechu Japonica; called kuth by the natives, and some slaked lime, or chunā. Pān at marriage feasts is tied up in packets of a triangular shape, and covered with gold and silver leaf and enamelled foil of bright colours: the lime cuttie dyes the gums and tongue a deep red.
I was quite fresh and free from headache: had I sat up all night in England, where we eat supper, it would have made me ill. Colonel Gardner came in to breakfast, and kissing me on the forehead, said, “Mera betī (my child), you are less fatigued than any one.” The Prince lived with his bride at the tents for three days, after which they returned to Colonel Gardner’s to perform the final ceremony of playing the chāotree.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE CHĀOTREE.
“ONE SNAKE HAS BIT THEM ALL[150].”
“THE PRINCESS HAS GROWN FOOLISH, SHE PELTS HER OWN RELATIONS WITH SWEETMEATS, OTHERS WITH STONES[151].”
“THEY HAVE SCATTERED DATŪRA (thorn apple) IN THE AIR[152].”
i.e. the people are all gone mad.