There are several extremely elegant customs connected with some of the
Indian Festivals, at which flowers are used in great profusion. The
surface of the "sacred river" is often thickly strewn with them. In Mrs.
Carshore's pleasing volume of _Songs of the East_[053] there is a long
poem (too long to quote entire) in which the _Beara Festival_ is
described. I must give the introductory passage.
"THE BEARA FESTIVAL.
"Upon the Ganges' overflowing banks,
Where palm trees lined the shore in graceful ranks,
I stood one night amidst a merry throng
Of British youths and maidens, to behold
A witching Indian scene of light and song,
Crowds of veiled native loveliness untold,
Each streaming path poured duskily along.
The air was filled with the sweet breath of flowers,
And music that awoke the silent hours,
It was the BEARA FESTIVAL and feast
When proud and lowly, loftiest and least,
Matron and Moslem maiden pay their vows,
With impetratory and votive gift,
And to the Moslem Jonas bent their brows.
_Each brought her floating lamp of flowers_, and swift
A thousand lights along the current drift,
Till the vast bosom of the swollen stream,
Glittering and gliding onward like a dream,
Seems a wide mirror of the starry sphere
Or more as if the stars had dropt from air,
And in an earthly heaven were shining here,
And far above were, but reflected there
Still group on group, advancing to the brink,
As group on group retired link by link;
For one pale lamp that floated out of view
Five brighter ones they quickly placed anew;
At length the slackening multitudes grew less,
And the lamps floated scattered and apart.
As stars grow few when morning's footsteps press
When a slight girl, shy as the timid halt,
Not far from where we stood, her offering brought.
Singing a low sweet strain, with lips untaught.
Her song proclaimed, that 'twas not many hours
Since she had left her childhood's innocent home;
And now with Beara lamp, and wreathed flowers,
To propitiate heaven, for wedded bliss had come"
To these lines Mrs. Carshore (who has been in this country, I believe,
from her birth, and who ought to know something of Indian customs)
appends the following notes.
"_It was the Beara festival_." Much has been said about the Beara or
floating lamp, but I have never yet seen a correct description. Moore
mentions that Lalla Rookh saw a solitary Hindoo girl bring her lamp to
the river. D.L.R. says the same, whereas the Beara festival is a Moslem
feast that takes place once a year in the monsoons, when thousands of
females offer their vows to the patron of rivers.
"_Moslem Jonas_" Khauj Khoddir is the Jonas of the Mussulman; he, like
the prophet of Nineveh, was for three days inside a fish, and for that
reason is called the patron of rivers."
I suppose Mrs. Carshore alludes, in the first of these notes, to the
following passage in the prose part of Lalla Rookh:--
"As they passed along a sequestered river after sunset, they saw a young
Hindoo girl upon the bank whose employment seemed to them so strange
that they stopped their palanquins to observe her. She had lighted a
small lamp, filled with oil of cocoa, and placing it in an earthern
dish, adorned with a wreath of flowers, had committed it with a
trembling hand to the stream: and was now anxiously watching its
progress down the current, heedless of the gay cavalcade which had drawn
up beside her. Lalla Rookh was all curiosity;--when one of her
attendants, who had lived upon the banks of the Ganges, (where this
ceremony is so frequent that often, in the dusk of evening, the river is
seen glittering all over with lights, like the Oton-Jala or Sea of
Stars,) informed the Princess that it was the usual way, in which the
friends of those who had gone on dangerous voyages offered up vows for
their safe return. If the lamp sunk immediately, the omen was
disastrous; but if it went shining down the stream, and continued to
burn till entirely out of sight, the return of the beloved object was
considered as certain.
Lalla Rookh, as they moved on, more than once looked back, to observe
how the young Hindoo's lamp proceeded: and while she saw with pleasure
that it was unextinguished, she could not help fearing that all the hopes
of this life were no better than that feeble light upon the river."
Moore prepared himself for the writing of Lalla Rookh by "long and
laborious reading." He himself narrates that Sir James Mackintosh was
asked by Colonel Wilks, the Historian of British India, whether it was
true that the poet had never been in the East. Sir James replied,
"_Never_." "Well, that shows me," said Colonel Wilks, "that reading over
D'Herbelot is as good as riding on the back of a camel." Sir John
Malcolm, Sir William Ouseley and other high authorities have testified
to the accuracy of Moore's descriptions of Eastern scenes and customs.
The following lines were composed on the banks of the Hooghly at
Cossipore, (many long years ago) just after beholding the river one
evening almost covered with floating lamps.[054]