have often been asked to engage nautch parties, but they are a tiresome people to manage. My entertainments too are of a strictly moral character; and, except an occasional pas seul by two or three of the bazugar women after tumbling feats, I do not encourage dancing.
I have no "agent in advance," and my experience is that in this country such a person is not necessary. We find our visitors are the best agents, and they work a kind of underground post that carries news of such a tamasha as mine faster and farther than any newspapers or letters. And as for bills and posters, we distribute thousands of these small picture slips lithographed, as you see, on thin paper. Some are taviz or jantars, arrangements of figures in squares, you know; others are marked with elephants, interlaced fishes, peacocks, geese, tigers and other auspicious creatures, and others have the Swastika or Gunesh sign, while others have figures of Krishna and popular divinities, but all enjoin on the reader that his first duty is to go and see "The Mirror of Two Worlds." And they accept the invitation in thousands, people of all sorts and conditions; and what is strangest of all, large numbers of Mussulmans as well as Hindus. The fact is, Sir, among the lower orders they are rather more mixed in the matter of their religious notions, and more practically tolerant than you would suspect, from what you hear and read.
In the afternoons we have dress parades, when the whole staff turns out in such a wild and striking variety of costume as is seldom seen. Ram Narrayen, the old bazugar and his daughter sometimes do a little sort of play interspersed with a few nautch steps; but the burden of all the parade talk briefly is: "Step inside!"
As to admittance, Sir, we charge a sort of graduated scale. To big people we send regular muraslas—invitations in gilt letters on Kashmir paper,—and they pay according to their honour and position. This is an aristocratic country; and it will be many a day before you will get the people to take kindly to your uniform scale railway-ticket-sort-of-arrangements. And many of 'em not only pay at the door, but they leave offerings of flowers, rice, pice, cowries and the like inside. My staff seem to think more of these oddments, which are their perquisite, than of their regular wages.
