Thirty-five goats and sheep of the finest breed procurable, which I succeeded in having sent in their natural dress, instead of being adorned with gold-cloth and painted horns: it was, however, with some persuasion the folly of this general practice was omitted in this instance.
The guinah or garland, of flowers on a tray covered with brocade. The guinah are sweet-scented flowers without stalks, threaded into garlands in many pretty ways, with great taste and ingenuity, intermixed with silver ribands; they are formed into bracelets, necklaces, armlets, chaplets for the head, and bangles for the legs. There are people in Lucknow who make the preparing of guinahs a profitable business, as the population is so extensive as to render these flower-ornaments articles of great request.
A tray filled with pawns, prepared with the usual ingredients, as lime, cuttie[16] (a bitter gum), betel-nut, tobacco, spices, &c.; these pawns are tied up in packets of a triangular form and covered with enamelled foil of many bright colours. Several trays of ripe fruits of the season, viz., kurbootahs[17] (shaddock), kabooza[18] (melons), ununas[19] (pine apple), guavers,[20] sherreefha[21] (custard-apple), kummeruck,[22] jarmun[23] (purple olives), orme[24] (mango), falsah,[25] kirhnee,[26] baer,[27] leechie,[28] ormpeach,[29] carounder,[30] and many other kinds of less repute.
Confectionery and sweetmeats, on trays, in all the varieties of Indian invention; a full-dress suit for the young lady; and on a silver tray the youth's nuzza of five gold mohurs, and twenty-one rupees.
The Eade offering of Meer Mahumud was escorted by servants, soldiers, and a band of music; and the young lady returned a present to the bridegroom elect of thirty-five goats and sheep, and a variety of undress skull-caps, supposed to be her own work, in spangles and embroidery. I may state here, that the Natives of India never go bare-headed in the house. The turban is always worn in company, whatever may be the inconvenience from heat; and in private life, a small skull-cap, often of plain white muslin, just covers the head. It is considered disgraceful in men to expose the head bare; removing the turban from the head of an individual would be deemed as insulting as pulling a nose in Europe.
Whatever Eade or festival may occur between the Mugganee and the final celebration of nuptials, presents are always interchanged by the young bride and bridegroom; and with all such observances there is one prevailing custom, which is, that though there should be nothing at hand but part of their own gifts, the trays are not allowed to go back without some trifling things to keep the custom in full force.
[1] The Koran (iv. 3) allows Musalmans to marry 'by twos, or threes, or fours'; but the passage has been interpreted in various ways.
[2] Barat.
[3] Duli, 'the Anglo-Indian 'dhooly'. Such wives are so called because they are brought to the houses of their husbands in an informal way, without a regular marriage procession.
[4] The King of Vijayanagar had twelve thousand wives: four thousand followed him on foot and served in the kitchen; the same number marched with him on horseback; the remainder in litters, and two or three thousand of them were bound to burn themselves with his corpse (Nicolo Conti, India in the Fifteenth Century, part iii, p. 6). In Orissa a palm-leaf record states that one monarch died prematurely just as he had married his sixty-thousandth wife, and a European traveller speaks of a later prince who had four thousand ladies (Sir W. Hunter, Orissa. ii, 132 f.). Manucci states that there were more than thirty thousand women in the palace of Shah Jahan at Dheli, and that he usually had two thousand women of different races in his zenana (Storia de Major, i. 195, ii. 330). Tippoo Sultan of Mysore married nine hundred women (Jaffur Shurreef, Qanoon-e-Islam, 93).