Meer Hassan Ali, B.: Observations on the Mussulmauns of India: descriptive of their manners, customs, habits, and religious opinions ; made during a twelve years residence in their immediate Society (Band 1) (London, 1832)

ACTS OF CHARITY. 95

Returned to their home, the rich men are
occupied in dispensing benefits among the poor.
Food, money, and clothes, are distributed in
nearly as great proportions as when they have
to mourn over a recent separation by death from
a beloved relative. The clothes worn during
Mahurrum are never retained for the next
occasion, but always distributed amongst the
poor, who derive so many advantages from the
annual commemoration of Mahurrum, that the
philanthropic heart will rather be pleased than
vexed at the zeal which produces such a harvest
of benefits to the necessitous.

The riches of a native city may be calculated
by the immense sums expended at Mahurrum
every year; and if no greater advantage be de-
rived from the gorgeous display of the wealthy,
than the stimulus to honest industry amongst
the several trades, whose labour is brought
into use on these occasions, there is enough
in the result to excuse the expenditure of sur-
plus cash in apparent trifles. This, however,
is strictly the result, not the design, of those
expensive displayers at Mahurrum, who are