186 ANOINTING THE BODY
their minute observance of religious customs must bathe three times a day.
It is a common practice amongst natives to anoint themselves occasionally from head to foot with either oil of sesamum or sometimes castor oil. They remove the dirt which results from it by rubbing it off with certain herbs.
They then have hot water poured over their bodies, and finally bathe in cold water. At their grand ceremonials
Brahmins are in the habit of offering some such oily mixture to all their guests, who rub themselves over from head to foot with it, and then plunge into a bath. Dead bodies are similarly anointed before being conveyed to the funeral pile or burying ground; and this office is always performed by the nearest relatives.
CHAPTER IV
Internal Defilements.— Abstinence from all Intoxieating Licmors, and from everything that has had Life.— Particular Horror of the
Brahmins for the Flesh of the Cow.— Their abhorrence of Europeans who eat it as Food.
Besides those external defilements which only affect the outer skin, there are others which Brahmins and other
Hindus say insinuate themselves into the body, and which can only be got rid of by proper methods ordained by rule and custom. There is no doubt that it was for the sake of health and cleanliness, in the first instance, that Hindu lawgivers inculcated these principles of defilement and purification. The heat of the Indian climate, the profuse perspiration which is the natural result, and the diseases which are endemic in consequence of it, all help to impoverish the blood of the inhabitants; and from these causes doubtless originated those obligatory precautions which have since been strengthened by custom and superstition, and which are considered to be best calculated to counteract these deadly influences. If the salutary rules at first prescribed have in the course of ages become perverted into the present childish and puerile ceremonial, which common sense rejects, the fault must be attributed
partly to popular superstition which exaggerates and distorts everything, partly to popular ignorance, and partly