ting here except the king and his children. This
gate is called _Akbar drowage_; close within which many hundred dancing
girls and singers attend day and night, to be ever ready when the king
or any of his women please to send for them, to sing and dance in the
moholls, all of them having stipends from the king according to their
respective unworthy worth.

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. _Chockees_ in the text, probably
means turns of duty on guard.--E.]

Being entered, you approach the king's _durbar_, or royal seat, before
which is a small court inclosed with rails, and covered over head with
rich _semianes_, or awnings, to keep away the sun. Here aloft in a
gallery sits the king in his chair of state, accompanied by his sons and
chief vizier, who go up by a short ladder from the court, none other
being allowed to go up unless called, except two _punkaws_ to fan him,