A MOHAMMEDAN FESTIVAL

Otago Witness, Issue 2921, 9 March 1910, Page 37

A MOHAMMEDAN FESTIVAL

A GRAPHIC WORD-PICTURE. A citizen of Dunodin has received from his son in Poona the following description of the Mohammedan festival, Mahurram, which he witnessed in January last: — "It was Friday afternoon that I came down here. Saturday was a holiday, on account of Mahurram, the great Mohammedan festival. There are about 16,000 Mohammedans in Poona altogether, only abo.it one-tenth of the population,' but the Hindus all go to see it, and many of the performers are hired low-caste Hindus. It is held a month later each year, and so it occasionally comes on the same day as the big Hindu festivals; then there are usually riots, and anxious times for the police. Last week there were crowds of extra police about; the local ones working almost night and day, the English ones also taking a hand in the city, and a company of the Lincolns assisting. All were fully armed with rifle and bayonet. The festival lasts a week, but the climax is on Saturday. The whole time there are little side-shows in the streets, groups of men performing little plays representative of something—no one seems-to know what.

" The festival is to commemorate the death of Hussein, who was grandson, or nephew, or something of the Prophet, and I gather that he was either killed by a tiger, or killed it, as the plays usually have a tiger as a chief actor, and I noticed some plaster images of Hussein on horseback being attacked by a tiger. But no one seems to know exactly what's what; even Mr R cannot enlighten me. -' I qj'clad through the . city during the

' week to see what was going on. Everjj i here and there was a ' tabut,' standing ug I a large shaJ between two buildings, an ! awning spread over the street, festooned! I with lamps and lanterns, and on a raisedl I platform a group of men with tom-toms j and flutes, making a constant din. The plays are of various sorts, but usually two : inen, clad in loin cloths and painted brilI liantly like tigers, attack each other with ! great fury; there is another form >n which i two gaudily-dressed men with flags on long I poles dance about; another bears a pole : with ostrich feathers, and two others lash i each other and go through various antics. 'On Friday night D —- R , and I tooW I Mrs R down to see the procession ini Main street. We went about midnight, when it begins,, and remained an houig before leaving; it was very interesting, but personally I was rather relieved to get out! of it on account of the memsahib; anfl trouble would have been very awkward with her there. We passed down deserted) streets flooded with the brilliant light of a full moon vertically overhead, and the» came suddenly into the jostling crowds. " Muffled white figures jostled and dodged and pushed in all directions, and it was hard to keep together. Occasionally we cast up en the broad steps of some shop and overlooked the crowd, and were directed by some acquaintance of Mr E, -'s where to see the best of it. Then we launched out again towards a blaze of lanterns, where a great glittering temple shone with gold and scarlet. ' Above, upo» a balcony,'- as Shakespeare says, were a group of musicians, playing a high minor chant upon a form of trumpet, accompanied 1 by the steady drum of three tom-toms, and the occasional doubla boom of a large drum. As the ' tabut' approached a louder trumpet joined, and the key suddenly rose to a deafening and excited clash of minor music, strange to I']uropea.n ears, but exactly! fitted in some subtle way to the surrounding sights and the spirit of the scene. The ' tabuts ' are the great gaudy temples o£ red and gold and blue tissue-paper, on a framework of light bamboo, which are carried about the streets on ox-carts all Fri- ! day night, and meet their end on the river-. | on Saturday. "As we reached the first big 'tabut,' with its shaking minaret and figure of the ' mounted Hussein, the crowd and noise were j both overwhelming. Catching a glimpse across the broad side chi-nnels, the space of avenue beyond was a packed mass of silent white -figures sitting "cross-legged on the ground, but the centre of the road was in. continued movement. Rubbing past the patient oxen, we found a little play going jon beyond the ' tabut.' Beyond that again a venerable crossdegged figure on the (front of a smaller 'tabut' was piping : querulously on a kind of native bagpipe. j Beyond, in a long perspective, were other j 'tabuts' towering 20ft above the crowd, and glittering in all their tinsel splendour. I crowd passing us was more interesting j even than the festival—broad, venerable Parsees; with shiny headgear, chattering women, with bangles clinking and jewelled ' nose-rings shaking; tall figures in white, j murlied to the dark, furtive eyes; grave j old Brahmins and laughing coolies; strange I glimpses of faces full of concentrated vice i or cunning, seen for an instant face to \ face and swallowed up in the crowd; swag- ! goring billmen, with carefully curled hair ! hanging to the neck, and broad, baggy trousers; smooth, bare-headed Bengalis, and , stooping wizened beggars. Above all, the I Spirit of the East. I have never felt it so powerfully as this week; the countless mass of humanity, so endlessly varied, so silent j and unknown in appearance among all the din of tom-toms, blare of trumpets, and blaze of gold and scarlet; the silent movement of bare feet, the strangeness of a. foreign tongue, and the strong consciousness of vague possibilities, which might raise the whole mysterious mass into insane riot by one word or act. Against this the authority of the massed bodies of armed police, and occasionally the charger of a mounted native officer pushing the crowd to right and left to make way for a group of bareheaded young officers, seeing the sights after mess, in the scarlet evening-dress jackets. ..The whole flooded in brilliant moonlight which, when you turned aside to quiet streets, seemed to swallow «ip all sounj lut the drum of some distant tom-tom, and the tense, highpitched sound which fills an Indian night, and vhieh is felt rather than heard. It" brought back Kipling's lines:— ' For whose will, from Pride released, Contemning neither man nor beast, May hear the Soul of all the East About him at Kamahura.

'On Saturday I rowed up the river to the Lungum, about 5 o'clock. Long before reaching it the curious rushing sound of thousand;'of voices, calling, shouting, talking, arguing, with all the volubility of the East, came floatinsr down the.water. The—river was crowded with the gay fleet of English rowing boats and canoes, all ouiJ to see the sights. On one bank a garden 1 narty gave a touch of English gaiety, quite like that on England's own Thames, on the other a temple and its steps were crowded! with a swavfng mass of natives. Above, upon the Wellesley bridge, the long procession of ' tabuts' drew up, headed by aj. police officer faultlessly uniformed, and on. the finest of chargers. The ' tabuts' wer« released from their lorries and thrown over into the water, falling lightly, like great balloons of paper, and sinking gradually [ into tawdry wreckage. Each was.followed bv a dole of incense and shouts from nany throats, and so ended quietly the great Mahurram festival—quietly, that is, froroi the police point of view, and a vast relief it must have been to them to see i*;. finished "