The most comprehensive of Hindu holidays, so to speak, is the—
Shráwan Más.
In this holy Shráwan Más Hindus of all castes, and of all parts of the country, keep their high carnival. The whole month is a prolonged holiday, with the four Mondays as special red-letter days. To the stranger the Shráwan festival is the most innocent and least grotesque of the numerous so-called national festivals. It resembles the Christmas more than any other Hindu holiday. Members of a family that may have left the family-hearth on various purposes, meet again; old quarrels are made up, the sacred thread is changed, the new dress is put on (in too many cases the only new dress of the year!), the flower and fruit offerings are placed before the gods. Taking your morning constitutional by the Queen's Road (Bombay) you are sure to encounter, during these days, bevies of Hindu maids and matrons, tripping by, singing softly to themselves, and discussing the kindness of their respective husbands and mothers-in-law. For, be it remembered, that in this holy season the heart even of the mother-in-law is too joyous to seek quarrels. Here you see a group of fair Márathins, with lissome figures, passing demurely by, with downcast eyes and a gentle cautious tread. She is very lightly, but still always becomingly dressed, this fair daughter of Maháráshtra. Her national sári and choli sit æsthetically on her graceful person—grace beyond the reach of art. Her raven-black hair is gathered up into a knot (chignon) at the back of the head, which knot is adorned by a pretty little gold ornament, or a prettier flower of the season.
A few paces behind her is the robustious Márwáran, shuffling past in her cumbrous ugly petticoat. She is a big strapping body, and the tread of her bejewelled foot is extremely assertive. She, or perhaps her lord, has peculiar notions of personal adornment. She throws her sári around, or, rather, shrouds herself in her sári, till every vestige of her face is invisible. She wears ivory bangles or rings on her arms—both arms are literally covered by these ponderous articles. The palms of her hands, and the nails, the Márwáran dyes red, and the lips and teeth black! Her swathing petticoat she wears so far down as her ancle, and below she has ornaments, silver and brass, or both. The Márwáran is more parsimonious than her lord, and though she is constrained to take some cheap offering to the gods once or twice in the year, she does not scruple to bring part of it back, thus cheating deity itself! The Márwáran is a rare phenomenon in Native society. She is purchased by the husband at a fearful cost. The Márwári does not marry till late in life. He comes to Hindustan, or the Deccan, only with his dhoti[1] and his loti[2]. After ten years or so, he goes home to see his mother. As long as a relative is alive, the Márwári does not care for a wife. But when he has accumulated "a sum," and when he sees he is waxing old, he invests a good fat slice of his fortune in a wife. But she is a luxury in the buying only. As soon as that is over, the husband never repents him of the bargain. For, whatever mathematicians might think of it, it is a well-known fact that the Márwári and the Márwáran between them spend exactly a half of what the Máwári used to spend singly. This may be a lesson to Miss Susie Trots, the railway-guard's wife. The Márwáran is not visible to the vulgar gaze, except during the Holi holidays. She is then in her element. She squirts paint and water on the gallants that serenade her, and gives them back joke for joke with the keenest relish. But all this while her face is veiled. In fact, few young Márwárans are seen unveiled. And those who know are of opinion that it is a mercy the Márwáran does not show herself to the public in all the reality of her swarthy countenance.
But by no fair Hinduáni are the joys of the Shráwan Más drunk with such avidity as by your Vaishnava lasses—the Bháttia and Baniá females. To them it is a month of love and liberty. And, thanks to the pious Máhárájs, the month passes as swiftly as a dream. Wife, widow, and maiden, each has the jolliest time of it in Shráwan. There are the dances to be danced before the Máháráj, plays to be played, songs to be sung; his Holiness to be washed and dressed and fed. Oh, the joys of Shráwan!—to the Vaishnavas. The beauteous Shráwan Más, when "the days are devoted to singing, and when the fair Rádhá is flattered by a whirlwind of love. All fair sisters go to the Jamna for holy ablutions, their foreheads adorned by Kaisari,[3] and their graceful feet coloured. The fair ones worship Gowri with wreaths and flowers in one hand, in the other hand the box of Kunkun colour, and the name of Shri Gopál on their lips. Four pohoras[4] the lovely ones devote to singing songs, forsaking sleep; the night is short, and the sports are long. "Oh, I tremble lest the envious morn soon breaks in upon our joys!" So sings the fair Gujaratán.