tomasha

Noun

tamasha (countable and uncountable, plural tamashas)

1. A visual art form from Maharashtra, India, involving singing and dancing.
   • c.1885, A.L.O.E. The Wondrous Sickle
     We had fine clothes, and feasting, and drum-beating, and fireworks let off in our village. It was a grand tamasha!
2. (historical, colonial India) Any traditional indigenous public ceremony.
   • I went to a Tamasha, as the Indian troops call these affairs, one fine Sunday afternoon in May. A broad plateau in the middle of the fields had been selected for the sports, and when I arrived an enormous crowd, as picturesque as any I have ever seen, was thronging round the ropes.1915, Valentine Williams, With Our Army in Flanders, page 287