Page:Imperial India — An Artist's Journals.djvu/256

228 VIEW OF THE DALL LAKE, FROM THE NISHAT BAGH.

each other. Whilst at Sreenugger I have painted two or three nautch girls, and it was through them that I got to this wedding, as they were amongst the singers. Now these girls, like most nautch girls in India, were all Moslemehs, yet had they all the caste feeling of the Hindoo. Of moral sentiment they were entirely innocent, but they would never permit any one to drink out of their cup or smoke from their hookah, and they always went about with these two utensils, for smoke and tea are the two things necessary to a Kashmiree. So in this song a Kashmiree Moslem is made to say "beautiful as Krishna."

On the other hand, the Hindoos throughout India, and here especially, shut up their women, and never allow them to go out without the thickest veil; yet is the Zenana strictly Mohammedan. "Where females are honoured, there the deities are pleased; but when dishonoured, then all religious rites become useless;" "Strike not even with a blossom the wife guilty of a hundred faults," say Hindoo sages. Contrast this with the sentiments of Mohammed; yet Mohammed was a good husband to Cadija when young and poor.