Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 230

ABSTENTION FROM ANIMAL FOOD
190
tions
upon themselves. Only Sudras of the very lowest
meat openly and many of these do not venture
class eat
to cook
;
own houses, but
To ask a Hindu
a secluded corner of
he eats meat, even
when it is a well-known fact that he does so, is to insult
him deeply while to offer meat at a meal to a guest with
whom one is not intimate, would be the height of rudeness.
Hindus who eat meat do so only in the privacy of their
own families or in company with near relatives or intimate
Even the common Sudras do not offer meat at
friends.
their festive gatherings such as wedding feasts.
Were they
to do so their guests would consider themselves insulted,
and would leave immediately.
The Lingayats, or votaries of Siva, are strict abstainers
from anything that has possessed the principle of life.
But the careful manner in which they thereby try to main-
tain perfect internal purity does not profit them much,
as they are credited at the same time with neglecting some
of the precautions necessary to preserve their external
They are blamed, for instance, for allowing their
purity.
women to come and go about the house during the time of
their periodical uncleanness, and for not insisting on purify-
the same also during and after
ing ablutions afterwards
confinements. In fact, they neglect a great many cleanly
customs which, putting superstition aside, are most bene-
ficial to health in hot climates.
People who abstain entirely from animal food acquire
such an acute sense of smell that they can perceive in
a moment from a person's breath, or from the exudation
of the skin, whether that person has eaten meat or not
and that even after a lapse of twenty-four hours.
In some parts there is a peculiar custom which allows
men to eat meat, but strictly forbids it to women.
To eat the flesh of the cow is an ineffaceable defilement.
The bare idea of tasting it would be abhorrent to any
devout Hindu. This invincible repugnance, based as it is
now solely on the superstition which places the cow among
it
in their
their cowsheds.
in
if
;
;
;
the principal Hindu deities, had most probably at first
a much more sensible but not less forcible motive, namely
self-interest.
The Hindu lawgivers recognized, of course,
that these animals, so useful to man in all places and under