[153] The Muhammadans reckon their day from sunset.

[154] By sitting and drinking with the young merchant, when he ought to wait on his guests, and attend to their entertainment.

[155] A figurative and highly poetic expression as old as Homer.  In this instance it is said to signify that the sun had been two gharis above the horizon.

[156] Literally, “a friendship of two days,” where the number two is employed indefinitely to denote “few.”

[157] The month of Ramazan consisting of thirty days, is the Lent of the Muhammadans.  During tgat whole period, a good Musalman or “true believer,” is not allowed either to eat, or drink, or smoke from sunrise to sunset.  This naturally explains the anxiety they must feel for the arrival of evening; more especially in high latitudes, should the Ramazan happen in the middle of summer.  As a mere religions observance this same fast, enjoined by Muhammad, is the most absurd, the most demoralizing, and the most hurtful to health that ever was invented by priestcraft.  The people are forced to starve themselves during the whole day, and consequently they overeat themselves during the whole night, when they ought to be asleep in their beds, as nature intended.  Hence they fall by thousands an easy prey to cholera, as happened in Turkey a few years ago.  The fast of Lent among tho followers of the Pope of Rome is, though in a less degree, liable to the same censure.  Why, instead of these unwholesome observances, do not the priests, whether of Mecca or of Rome, preach unto the people temperance and regularity of living?  Ah, I forgot, the priests both of Mecca and of Rome can always grant dispensations and indulgences to such good people as can adduce weighty reasons to that effect.

[158] As frogs live in wet, they are not supposed to be extremely subject to catch cold; the simile is introduced to ridicule the extravagant idea of a merchant’s son presuming to be in love with a princess.  The simile is a proverb.

[159] Washermen in India, in general, wash their linen at the ghats, and their dogs of course wander thither from home after them, and back again.  This is one of their proverbs, and answers to ours of “Kicked from piller to post.”

[160] The Khutba is a brief oration delivered after divine service every Friday (the Musalman Sabbath,) in which the officiating priest blesses Muhammad, his successors, and the reigning sovereign.

[161] A kind of sedan chair, or palki.

[162] The Khabar-dars are a species of spies stationed in various parts of oriental kingdoms in order to forward intelligence to head quarters.

[163] A mode of humble address, when the inferior presumes to state something contrary to what the superior maintains or desires; and as human life in India was, in olden times, not only precarious, but considered as insignificant, the oriental slave acts prudently by begging his life before he presumes to be candid.