Outline of the topography and statistics of the southern districts of Oud'h, and of the cantonment of Sultanpur-Oud'h / by Donald Butter.
- Butter, Donald, active 1820-1873.
- Date:
- 1839
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Outline of the topography and statistics of the southern districts of Oud'h, and of the cantonment of Sultanpur-Oud'h / by Donald Butter. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
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![these pandits one or two are to be found in every village. It is part of the pandit’s duty to accompany the barat or marriage procession. This consists of the bridegroom’s friends and a set of dancing women, and, on the third day of the ceremony, accompanies the bridegroom to the bride’s house, where the party remains three days. The bridegroom is carried in a pa Ik], made and sold for five or seven rupees, at every place, where there is a good carpenter, but which is by the poorer classes generally borrowed for the occa- sion from some brahman or ch’hatri. The whole cere- mony, or rather rejoicing, (shad!) occupies seven or eight days, and the expense is equally divided between the fathers of the bride and bridegroom. The poorest zamlndar spends not less than a hundred rupees on such an occasion, and the wealthier classes sometimes as much as twenty thousand rupees. The ceremony is performed when the parties chiefly concerned are about thirteen years of age, sometimes later, and never until they are past the age of nine. Cohabitation commences at fourteen, and there is then a repetition of the same merry-making, but at half the expense. As all the relatives of the families attend on both occasions, the concourse of people frequently attracts a number of petty traffickers, who form a sort of mela. SECTION 3.—AMUSEMENTS. In the western and less misgoverned districts of Oud’h, every night in Phagun (February—March), the holy month of the hindus, is occupied by a continued series of naches, (dances), performed in every town and village by four or five kasbis, (prostitutes), to whom u](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28037637_0167.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
