Note 70 — VIII.

So great was the mania for extravagant, ostentations show, that instances were not wanting in which a lakh of Rupees was freely spent on this grand occasion. The late Prankissen Holdar, of Chinsurah, in the neighbourhood of Calcutta, expended annually for three or four years the above sum in furnishing his house without stint of cost in truly oriental style, giving rich entertainments to Europeans and Natives, and distributing alms among the poor. There was no Railway then, and consequently the boat hire alone from Calcutta to Chinsurah for English and Native grandees might have cost four to five thousand Rupees. The very invitation cards written in golden letters with gold fringes cost eight to ten Rupees each. For the entertainment of his English friends he used to give ten thousand Rupees to Messrs. Gunter and Hooper, the then public Purveyors of Calcutta. First class wines and provisions were procured in abundance, and arranged in the corridor under European and Mahomedan stewards, while one hundred Brahmins were engaged in prayers, reciting Chundee and repeating the name of the god, Modosoodun, for the propitiation of the goddess and the interests of the family. It sometimes so happened that the clang of knives, forks and spoons was simultaneous with the sound of the holy bell and conch, the one neutralising what the other was supposed to produce in a religious point of view.