mourning act as a lode-stone to the unhoused and naked spirits who are ever
wandering through the silent spaces of the East. Some of these spirits we
can appease or coax into becoming guardian-angels by housing them in
handsome cenotaphs; others we can lodge in the horse-shoe or in that great
spirit-house, the tiger, letting them sport for a day or two in the bodies
of our men and youths, who are adorned with yellow stripes symbolical of
their rôle; while other more malevolent spirits can only be driven away by
shouting, buffeting and drumming, such as characterize the Mohurrum season
in Bombay. The Indian element of nervous excitement might in course of ages
have been sobered by the puritanism of Islam but for the presence of the
African, who unites with a firm belief in spirits a phenomenal desire for
noise and brawling; and it is the union of this jovial African element with
the sentimentality of Persia and the spirit-worship of pure Hinduism which
renders the Bombay Mohurrum more lively and more varied than any Mahomedan
celebration in Cairo, Damascus or Constantinople.

Although the regular Mohurrum ceremonies do not commence until the fifth
day of the Mohurrum moon, the Mahomedan quarters of the city are astir on
the first of the month. From morn till eve the streets are filled with
bands of boys, and sometimes girls, blowing raucous blasts on hollow
bamboos, which are adorned with a tin 'panja,' the sacred open hand
emblematical of the Prophet, his daughter Fatima, her husband Ali and their
two martyred sons. The sacred five, in the form of the outstretched hand,
adorn nearly all Mohurrum symbols, from the toy trumpet and the top of the
banner-pole to the horseshoe rod of the devotee and the 'tazia' or domed
bier. Youths, preceded by drummers and clarionet-players, wander through
the streets laying all the shop-keepers under contribution for
subscriptions; the well-to-do householder sets to building a 'sabil' or
charity-fountain in one corner of his verandah or on a site somewhat
removed from the fairway of traffic; while a continuous stream of people