Page:Malabari, Behramji M. - Gujarat and the Gujaratis (1882).djvu/311

Rh dási, thanks to Huliká's precaution, to contradict the general belief. This is one version of Holi, given by the blind bard of Gujarát, but which I, for my part, cannot quite accept.

The Holi of the day is supposed to be the annual celebration of this suttee affair. It is a national holiday, and has a wonderful power for demoralisation over the infatuated Vaishnava, the sturdy Márátha (the lower order only, I believe), and the stingy Márwári. You can in Bombay see Holi in full swing in two places, the Máháráj's Mandir und the Márwári Bazar. In the former could be witnessed, for days together, a promiscuous assemblage of devoted worshippers, without distinction of age, sex, or social position, revelling in hideous orgies such as the Western imagination could hardly picture. Modest young women are submitted to showers of coloured water and clouds of red paint. They are handled to a degree of indecent familiarity incredible to the outside public. At one exhibition like this hundreds of young women are liable to go astray from the inborn modesty of their nature. It is a wonder how, with such social customs as these, the Vaishnavas lead such happy, contented, and respectable lives. But these malign associations