tamasha

Borrowed from Marathi तमाशा (tamāśā).

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. (colonial India, derogatory) Any traditional indigenous public ceremony.
   • 2014, James Lambert, “A Much Tortured Expression: A New Look At `Hobson-Jobson'”, in International Journal of Lexicography, volume 27, number 1, page 60:

     This superficial description is all the information the text has on the subject of the Muharram, and it is clear that to the author such activity was to be regarded as a tamasha, an outlandish ceremony of value to the foreign visitor only as a spectacle.

• Samatha, shamata

tamasha (n class, plural tamasha)

1. festival (celebration)