2-982-625 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Hindoo Festival, Cashmere, [India] - from a photograph by W. J. Carpenter, Jun., 1858. 'During the summer months in this delightful country the Hindoo population are constantly making pilgrimages to different shrines, where they perform their devotions, which consist principally in sitting up all night, with lamps lit, singing on the borders of a bank, and making offerings to the Brahmins, who, in return, mark their foreheads with yellow paint. They bivouac in the open air, and the rich crimson dresses and white veils of the women make it a gay and animated scene'. From "Illustrated London News", 1858.