[7] People who receive or imagine insults or
injuries commonly postpone their revenge till these religious
festivals come round, when they hope to be able to settle their
accounts with impunity among the excited crowd. The mournful
procession of the Muharram, when the Muhammadans are inflamed to
madness by the recollection of the really affecting incidents of the
massacre of the grandchildren of their prophet, and by the images of
their tombs, and their sombre music,[8] crosses that of the Holi[9]
(in which the Hindoos are excited to tumultuous and licentious joy by
their bacchanalian songs and dances) every thirty-six years; and they
reign together for some four or five days, during which the scene in
every large town is really terrific. The processions are liable to
meet in the street, and the lees of the wine of the Hindoos, or the
red powder which is substituted for them, is liable to fall upon the
tombs of the others. Hindoos pass on, forgetting in their saturnalian
joy all distinctions of age, sex, or religion, their clothes and
persons besmeared with the red powder, which is moistened and thrown
from all kinds of machines over friend and foe; while meeting these
come the Muhammadans, clothed in their green mourning, with gloomy
downcast looks, beating their breasts, ready to kill themselves, and
too anxious for an excuse to kill anybody else.
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