are
celebrated with pomp and great expenditure. He is seated on an elephant
and his bride in a carriage, all who accompany them bearing torches in
their hands. He borrows, moreover, for this ceremony from the Governor
of the place and from other great nobles among his friends as many
elephants as he can, together with show horses, and they march about
thus for a part of the night with fireworks, which are exploded in the
streets and open spaces. But the chief outlay is on Ganges water,1
for those who are sometimes 300 or 400 leagues distant from the river
; as this water is considered sacred, and drunk from religious motives,
it has to be brought from a great distance by the Brahmans in earthen
vessels glazed inside, which the Grand Brahman of Jagannath has himself
filled with the cleanest water in the river,2 and has marked
with his own seal. This water is not given except at the end of the
repast, as I have said before ; for each of the guests three or four
cupfuls are poured out, and the more of it the bridegroom gives them to
drink the more generous and magnificent he is esteemed. As this water
comes from so far, and the Chief Brahman charges a tax on each pot,
which is round and holds about as much as one of our buckets, there is
sometimes 2,000 or 3,000 rupees worth of it consumed at a wedding.3
On the 8th of April, when I was in Bengal at a town called Malda,4
the idolaters made a great feast which is peculiar to the inhabitants
of that place. They all leave the town and attach hooks of iron to the
branches of trees, to which many of these poor people hook themselves,
some by the sides and others by the middle of the back. These hooks
enter their bodies, and they remain suspended, some for an hour and
others for two, till the weight of the body drags the flesh, when they
are compelled to retire.5 It is a surprising
1 See vol. ii. 180. 2 See vol. ii. 179.
8 Ganges water is used as a means of purification, more usually at funeral than at marriage_rites.
4
Malde in the original. See vol. i. 110. Malda is a well-known town at
the junction of the Kalindri and Mahanadi rivers in the district of the
same name in Bengal. Formerly it was a port and centre of
manufactures, but is not now important. (Imperial Gazetteer, xvii. 82.)
5 This is the so-called Charakh puja or swinging festival, now forbidden
