NOTES ON TRAVEL 245 



Ramsays took their leave. There was a magnificent 

 supper arranged, but as ringers would take the place 

 of forks it was judged advisable to depart in good 

 time. 



The Ramsays were also guests at a Parsee wedding, 

 which was interesting though it lacked the brilliance 

 of colour of the Mohammedan. The ceremonial dress 

 of the male Parsees is white : a short kilt-like skirt 

 reaching to about the knee, and a black hat of a peculiar 

 shape, not unlike a highly polished horse's hoof. This 

 wedding was in the afternoon. A Parsee marriage 

 ought to take place, one half in the house of the bride 

 and the other in that of the bridegroom. As this is 

 often not convenient, a building, or rather a pair of 

 buildings, has been erected in Bombay with a court- 

 yard between them for use at these ceremonies. The 

 first part took place in the building that represented 

 the bride's home. The officiating priest sat at a small 

 table and the young couple sat facing him. On the table 

 was a large book, from which he read steadily in a tongue 

 which almost no one understood. Certainly the couple 

 did not, for they kept up a low-toned conversation 

 with each other all the time. The reader punctuated 

 his reading by flinging little handfuls of rice in their 

 faces, but without interrupting either reading or conver- 

 sation. After the reading was over, the whole com- 

 pany formed in procession and solemnly walked across 

 the courtyard to the strains of a military band which 

 played " the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo." 



