Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 222

REPUGNANCE TO LEATHER ARTICLES
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plants.
For this reason the ancient Brahmin
hermits always wore clothes made of either one or the other
material.
Brahmins at the present day, too, prefer to
wear silk, particularly at meals. When a Brahmin doctor
wishes to feel the pulse of a sick Sudra, he first wraps up
the patient's wrist in a small piece of silk so that he may
not be defiled by touching the man's skin l
The cotton
certain
.
clothes which are worn
susceptible of defilement.
by most natives are
It
is
peculiarly
quite sufficient to render
them unclean
if a person of an inferior caste, or, above all,
European or a Pariah, touch them. In the eyes of a
Hindu, a Pariah and a European are on the same level.
a
It
is
impossible to help laughing at the ridiculous care
and perpetual pains which an orthodox Brahmin will take
to preserve his person and his clothes from contact with
But, whatever they may do, it is
impossible for them to escape contamination in a popu-
lous town.
Hence the more scrupulous are obliged to
quit the towns and take up their abode in the villages.
Others, however, from motives of self-interest, compound
with their conscience, and disregard the rules. Exposed
as they must be to continual contact with people of all
sorts, in the busy haunts where their business takes them,
they content themselves with changing their garments on
their return home.
These are immediately dipped into
water, and the uncleanness is removed.
Leather and skins of all kinds, except those of the tiger
and the antelope, are considered particularly unclean. Caste
Hindus must never touch with their hands the slippers or
sandals that are worn on the feet. A person riding must
always carefully cover with cloth any part of the harness
or saddlery that is made of leather.
So it is that caste
Hindus do not understand how any one can possibly wear
anything made, as they say, of the remains of dead animals,
such as boots, gloves, or leather breeches, without a feeling
of horror and repugnance.
The ordinary costume of a
European greatly contributes to increase the low opinion
that Hindus have formed of the delicacy of our tastes.
A scrupulous Brahmin must look very carefully where he
anything unclean.
1
And
patient.
so,
too,
Ed.
when
a Sudra doctor feels the pulse of a
Brahmin