Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057345).pdf/403

 LUC 395 wealthy and voluptuous city; there are plenty of citizens who formerly daily witnessed such performances who have now abandoned them. One reason seems to be that these persons, like the petairac of early Greece, are supposed to be servants of the community or the State ; they attend at public festivals, civil and religious ; they receive a share of the national land; they are not so much attendants upon private wealth as attached to power and to official station; they regard themselves as belonging to the community and to its head, the ruler. Power is now in the hands of Englishmen who have little taste for these amusements; dance and song no longer form a part of State spectacles, of coronations, royal birthdays, and marriages; the profession has consequently lost much of the respect- ability and semi-official status which it had. Rich men in the privacy of their apartments with a few friends still enjoy the music; but the other accompaniments, regal state, troops, cannon, courtly ceremony, are absent, and the spectacle is spiritless. Patriotic songs and praises of the warrior or governor who patronizes performers were formerly a main element of the entertainment, and they were rewarded by princely largesses. A present of Rs. 2,000 to the leader of a small troop of dancers for an even- ing entertainment was quite common; such excitements are now absent. It would be too ludicrous to compare a Lucknow citizen to Alha or to Údal, to Rustam, or to Nausherwán. On the other hand, money is earned with greater difficulty now, and there is more certainty of keeping it. The bold trooper who plundered a province one day, and perhaps a year afterwards would be compelled to disgorge under torture, lightly parted with a portion in the meantime, Those who celebrated his achievements by their verses, and graced by their presence his investiture with titles and cordons, would be generously rewarded. National life, military achievement, the excitement of great gains and losses, the ceremonies of a court, and incessant creation of nobility in the province, were the causes which kept Lucknow in a condi- tion of feverish festivity during the Nawabi. There are symptoms that national music is reviving in another form, songs now heard are nearly all of domestic life, and descriptive of the feel- ings and events which take place in a family; the language is often Urdu.. Some of them have a very national tone, the nation which is adopted is. that of Hindustán as apart from the Punjab, Bengal, and England; the defeat of the English at Bhartpur is described in spirited verses which are very popular. The dancing girls are generally called paturias ; they are nearly all Muhammadans, although it is most probable that they were originally lowes caste Hindus. The men of the caste marry, and their wives are very sel- dom unchaste. The women generally form a temporary connexion called mutda, which has no religious or civil validity, with some person or they go through a ceremony called missi, or the first blackening of the teeth, with some one, either Hindu or Moslem. These engagements can be broken by either party at pleasure, but they serve the purpose of tempo-- rary unions. The kings and nobles of Oudh used to enter into literally thousands of the former engagements, the mutáa It merely meant fidelity