amasha_ as it
never was the fortune of the _sahib_ to witness before.

_Tamasha_ is one of those Indian words, like _bundobust_, for which
there is no equivalent in the English language, and which are at once so
comprehensive and so expressive that, when once the use of them has been
acquired, they become indispensable, so that they have gained a
permanent place in the Anglo-Indian's vocabulary. It is not slang, but a
good word of ancient origin. Hobson-Jobson quotes a curious Latin writer
on the Empire of the Grand Mogul, who uses it with a definition
appended, "ut spectet Thamasham, id est pugnas elephantorum, leonum,
buffalorum et aliarura ferarum." "Show" comes nearest it in English, but
falls far short of it.

The _tamasha_ which the snake-charmer promises the _sahib_ will include
serpent dances, a fight between a cobra and a mungoose, the inevitable
mango tree, and other tricks of juggling. But to a stranger the
snake-charmer himself is a better _tamasha_ than anything he can show.
He is indeed a most extraordinary animal. His hair and beard are long
and unkempt, his general aspect wild, his clothing a mixture of savagery
and the wreckage of civilisation. He wears a turban, of course, and
generally a large one; but it is put on without art, just wound about
his head anyhow, and hanging lopsidedly over one ear. It and the loose
cloth wrapped about the middle of him are as dirty as may be and truly
Oriental, though erratic. But, besides these, he wears a jacket of
coloured calico, or any other material, with one button fastened,
probably on the wrong buttonhole, and under this, if the weather is
cold, he may have a shirt seemingly obtained from some Indian
representative of Moses & Co.

On his shoulder he carries a long bamboo, from the ends of which hang
villainously shabby baskets, some flat and round, occupied by snakes,
others large and oblong, filled with apparatus of jugglery. The members
of his family, down to an unclothed, precocious imp of ten, accompany
him, carrying similar baskets, or capacious wallets, or long,
cylindrical drums, on which they play with their fingers. The dramatic
effect of the whole is enhanced when one of them allows a huge python, a
snake of the _Boa constrictor_ tribe, which kills its prey by crushing
it, to wind its hideous, speckled coils round his body.

What the snake-charmer is by race or origin ethnologists may determine
when they have done with the gipsy. He is not a Hind