A tray filled with pawns, prepared with the usual ingredients, as lime, cuttie[16] (a bitter gum), betel-nut, tobacco, spices, &c.; these pawns are tied up in packets of a triangular form and covered with enamelled foil of many bright colours.  Several trays of ripe fruits of the season, viz., kurbootahs[17] (shaddock), kabooza[18] (melons), ununas[19] (pine apple), guavers,[20] sherreefha[21] (custard-apple), kummeruck,[22] jarmun[23] (purple olives), orme[24] (mango), falsah,[25] kirhnee,[26] baer,[27] leechie,[28] ormpeach,[29] carounder,[30] and many other kinds of less repute.

Confectionery and sweetmeats, on trays, in all the varieties of Indian invention; a full-dress suit for the young lady; and on a silver tray the youth’s nuzza of five gold mohurs, and twenty-one rupees.

The Eade offering of Meer Mahumud was escorted by servants, soldiers, and a band of music; and the young lady returned a present to the bridegroom elect of thirty-five goats and sheep, and a variety of undress skull-caps, supposed to be her own work, in spangles and embroidery.  I may state here, that the Natives of India never go bare-headed in the house.  The turban is always worn in company, whatever may be the inconvenience from heat; and in private life, a small skull-cap, often of plain white muslin, just covers the head.  It is considered disgraceful in men to expose the head bare; removing the turban from the head of an individual would be deemed as insulting as pulling a nose in Europe.

Whatever Eade or festival may occur between the Mugganee and the final celebration of nuptials, presents are always interchanged by the young bride and bridegroom; and with all such observances there is one prevailing custom, which is, that though there should be nothing at hand but part of their own gifts, the trays are not allowed to go back without some trifling things to keep the custom in full force.

[1] The Koran (iv. 3) allows Musalmans to marry ’by twos, or
    threes, or fours’; but the passage has been interpreted in various
    ways.

[2] Barat.

[3] Duli, ’the Anglo-Indian ‘dhooly’.  Such wives are so called
    because they are brought to the houses of their husbands in an
    informal way, without a regular marriage procession.

[4] The King of Vijayanagar had twelve thousand wives:  four thousand
    followed him on foot and served in the kitchen; the same number
    marched with him on horseback; the remainder in litters, and two or
    three thousand of them were bound to burn themselves with his corpse
    (Nicolo Conti, India in the Fifteenth Century, part iii, p. 6).  In
    Orissa a palm-leaf record states that one monarch died prematurely
    just as he had married his sixty-thousandth wife, and a European
    traveller speaks of a later prince who had four thousand ladies (Sir
    W. Hunter, Orissa.