The Fourth Gate Is To The River, Called The Dersane, Leading To A Fair
Court Extending Along The River, Where The King Looks Out Every Morning
At Sun-Rising, Which He Salutes, And Then His Nobles Resort To Their
Tessilam.
Right under the place where he looks out, is a kind of
scaffold on which the nobles stand, but the addees and others wait in
the court below.
Here likewise the king comes every day at noon to see
the tamashan, or fighting with elephants, lions, and buffaloes, and
killing of deer by leopards. This is the custom every day of the week
except Sunday,[260] on which there is no fighting. Tuesdays are
peculiarly the days of blood both for fighting beasts and killing men;
as on that day the king sits in judgment, and sees it put in execution.
Within the third gate, formerly mentioned, you enter a spacious court,
with atescannas all arched round, like shops or open stalls, in which
the king's captains, according to their several degrees keep their
seventh day chockees.[261] A little farther on you enter through a
rail into an inner court, into which none are admitted except the king's
addees, and men of some quality, under pain of a hearty thwacking from
the porter's cudgels, which they lay on load without respect of persons.
[Footnote 260: Probably Friday is here meant, being the Sabbath of the
Mahometans. - E.]
[Footnote 261: Mr Finch perpetually forgets that his readers in England
were not acquainted with the language of India, and leaves these eastern
terms unexplained; in which he has been inconveniently copied by most
subsequent travellers in the East.
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