When a Bhattia’s affairs become hopelessly involved he generally ‘levants’: sometimes, however, he will go through the Diwali or bankruptcy, a far more troublesome process than the ‘Gazette.’ The unfortunate places in his store-front a lighted lamp, whence the name of the ceremony, and with head enveloped in a sheet, he silently occupies the furthest corner. Presently a crowd of jeering Moslems collects to see the furious creditors ranting, scolding, and beating the bankrupt, who weeps, wails, calls upon his god, and swears to be good for all future time. These degrading scenes, however, are now becoming rare. They remind us of the Tuscans and the Boeotians of old, ‘who brought their bankrupts into the market-place in a bier, with an empty purse carried before them, all the boys following, where they sat all day, circumstante plebe, to be infamous and ridiculous.’
All Hindus are careful when returning home from foreign travel to purge away its pollution by performing a Tirth or Yatra to some holy spring, and by large payments to Brahmans. Moslems declare that when the death-rattle is heard, one of those present ‘eases off’ the moribund by squeezing his throat. Banyan corpses are burnt at a place about two miles behind the town, and the procession is accompanied by a guard to keep off naughty boys. When a Bhattia dies without relatives on the Island, a committee of his fellow caste-men meets by the order of H. B. Majesty’s Consul; takes cognizance of his capital, active and passive; and, after settling his liabilities, remits by bill the surplus to his relatives in India.
The following is a list of the other Hindu castes to be found at Zanzibar:—
Brahman, of whom there are now six individuals, two Gujrati, and four Rajgarh, both sub-castes of the Sársat. One of them, Pradhán Joshí, is a Shastri—learned in the Veda.
Khattri, four in number: of these one is a trader, and the rest are carpenters capable of doing a very little very rough work.
Wáni (pure Banyan) one. There are also three or four of the Lohana sub-caste from Sind and Cutch.
Lohár, or blacksmith: of this Shudra sub-caste there are five; one acts Sutár (carpenter), and a second is a Sonár, or goldsmith—in Cutch the occupations are not separated by ‘Dharma.’
A few Parsees from Bombay visited Zanzibar; two were carpenters, and the third was a watchmaker, dishonest as his craft usually is. To the general consternation of Europeans, two Parsee agents lately landed on the Island, sent by some Bombay house whose name they concealed. These will probably be followed by others, and if that most energetic of commercial races once makes good a footing at Zanzibar, it will presently change the condition of trade. They are viewed without prejudice by the Arabs and the Wasawahili. The late Sayyid was so anxious to attract Parsees, who might free him from the arrogance and the annoyance of ‘white merchants,’ that he would willingly have allowed them to build a ‘Tower of Silence,’ and to perform, uninterrupted, all the rites of their religion.
The Indian Moslems on the Island and the Coast were numbered in 1844 at 600 to 700. Besides a few Borahs and Mehmans, Zanzibar contains about 100 Khojahs, who are held to be a ‘generation of vipers, even of Satan’s own brood.’ Here, as in Bombay, they are called Ismailiyyahs, heterodox Shiahs, who take a name from their seventh Imam Ismail, son of Ja’afar el Sádik, while orthodox Shiahs believe the seventh revealed Imam to have been Musa el Kazim, another son of Ja’afar el Sádik; and the founder of the Sophy (Safawi) dynasty, in the tenth century of the Hijrah (A.D. 1501). They have derived from the Batinis and Karmatis certain mystic and subversive tenets; and they are connected in history with Hasan Sabah (or Sayyáh, the travelling Darwaysh), our Vetulus de montanis, or Old Man (Shaykh, i.e. chief) of the Mountains, and with modern Freemasonry, which begins to appear when the Crusaders had settled in that home of heresies, Syria and Palestine. Hence the tradition that the First Grand Lodge was transferred to Lake Tiberias, after the destruction of Jerusalem. They practise the usual profound Takiyyah (concealment of tenets), call themselves Sunnis, or Shiahs, as the case may require, and assume Hindu as well as Moslem names. The Imam to whom they now pay annual tribute is one Agha Khan Mahallati, a Persian rebel, formerly Governor of Kirmán, and afterwards notorious upon the Bombay turf. This incarnation of the Deity is not intrusted with any of the secrets of his sect. The Khojahs have at Matrah, near Maskat, an enclosed house, which the Arabs call Bayt el Lúti. They declare that both sexes meet in it, and that when on a certain occasion it was broken open, a large calf of gilt silver was found to be the object of worship. Other incredible tales are also told about the sect: they remind us of the legends of the Libanus, which make the Druzes, apparently another offshoot of the Batini, worship El Ijl (the calf) when the figure is placed in their Khilwahs, or lodges, in memory of the detested Nishtakin Darazi, and in contra-distinction to El Akl, Hamzeh, their greater ‘prophet.’[[91]] No Agapomenical establishments exist at Zanzibar: the chief of the heretic sect is one Haymah, who has, however, but little authority, and who commands even less respect. The Khojahs at times repair to a tumbledown mosque on the sea-shore south of the city, in the quarter called Mnazi Moyya.
By no means deficient in intelligence, though unscrupulous and one-idea’d in pursuit of gain, the Khojahs are the principal shop-keepers in Zanzibar. They are popularly accused of using false weights and measures; they opposed the introduction of a metallic currency, and they have ever advocated, with the Prince, a return to the bad old state of barbarism. Many have applied themselves to slave-dealing, and lately one was deported for selling poison to negroes; they are receivers of stolen goods, and by the readiness with which they buy whatever is brought for sale, they encourage the pilfering propensities of the slaves. They travel far and wide; several of them have visited the Lake Regions, and we afterwards met, at Kazeh of Unyanyembe,[[92]] one of their best men, Musa Mzuri. At Zanzibar all not in trade are rude artisans, who can patch a lantern and tin a pot; one of them, who had learned to mend a watch, repaired the broken wheel of my pocket pedometer.