Tanjore spreads itself over a large area of open spaces, interspersed with trees, gardens, and tanks. The water is abundant, and washing operations frequent. There is no coherent plan about the town, the streets wandering about into open space, and leaving off in a casual sort of way. There was a considerable market going on in provisions, and there was a silk-weaving quarter where may be seen the native weavers stretching long threads of silk on bamboo frames the whole length of the street, and winding it off on to wheels—our carriage nearly collided with one in a narrow street. The raw silk is often wound round short staves.
We visited a weaver’s shop, and were shown some hand-woven silk saris, brocaded with silver thread, the silver being turned into gold by some colouring process. A dress of ten yards can be bought of this beautiful material for 24 rupees. Red and purple are the principal colours, and these, with the gold thread woven in border designs of elephants, horses and peacocks, have a very gorgeous effect.
European influence seems to have declined in Tanjore, although there are numerous Christian missions about. What strikes the unprejudiced spectator is the extreme unsuitability of any modern western type of Protestant Christianity, with all that it involves to the native mind, to say nothing of climate and habit.
Western influence, it is true, asserts itself to the eye, at least, in the form of an ugly clock tower, and we passed “The Tanjore Union Club,” where we saw native gentlemen in their cool, white, loose clothing playing lawn tennis in a well laid-out court. But the life of the mass of the people goes on unchanged as it has done for ages.
In driving through the town we saw many little white-washed temples among the native houses, their richly carved pagodas rising above the low brown tiled roofs. At the doors are quaint paintings of elephants or tigers, and the white walls of the shops and dwellings are frequently ornamented in the same way with curious figures, among which occurs not unfrequently the English soldier with a dragoon’s helmet and jack-boots. Outside a liquor shop I saw, painted rather boldly in red outline, a European lady and gentleman refreshing themselves with wine-glasses in their hands. The lady’s costume reproduced the rather fussy fashion of twenty-five or thirty years ago, the frills and furbelows quite carefully worked out with the Indian love of detail, but somehow the general effect was rather Elizabethan than Victorian.
In passing along one of the streets we heard a sound of tom-toms, and presently saw approaching on a zebu cart a large theatrical poster painted on the outer sides of two large boards leaning together, tent-wise, on the cart. These bore announcements in Hindustani and Arabic, with pictures of exciting scenes—Rajahs flourishing scimitars over people, and so forth. Natives walked alongside the cart distributing pink bills of the performances printed in Arabic, while the tom-toms attracted attention to the forthcoming show.
In the evening we drove to the theatre, accompanied by our bearer. We reached an open ground outside the town; it was rather dark, but we saw a row of lights in front of us, and heard the sound of tom-toms. The old horse jibbed and would not go further, so we left the carriage, and Moonsawmy conducted us to some temporary structures of matting and bamboo, where tickets were sold. One rupee secured a chair in the front row. The theatre was a large, tent-like structure, with plastered piers supporting a roof of matting. The floor was of earth, the common ground, in fact, upon which the back rows squatted. The stage was also of earth, raised about three or four feet, the front being painted in broad red and white vertical stripes. The footlights were ordinary oil lamps, clustered in groups. The audience was entirely native (besides ourselves, who were the only Europeans present). Some sat close up alongside the stage on raised steps of earth. Dark draperies hung at the sides of the proscenium, and there was a coarsely-painted drop scene, of the kind familiar in third-rate provincial theatres and music-halls at home.
TANJORE—NATIVE THEATRE—HOUSE FULL. PERFORMANCE FROM 9 P.M. TILL 2 A.M.—BUT WE DIDN’T STOP TO SEE IT THROUGH
The first scene apparently represented a suburban street in the European quarter of an Indian town; at least there was a square towered church in it, ugly enough, although some high-pitched gables rather suggested suburban England. A road in very acute perspective ran through the centre of the scene, which might, after all, have been bought from some European travelling theatre.