Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 243

A FALSE ACCUSATION
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that I would not defile the house by spitting in it. I did
my best to calm his fears, assuring him that he had no
reason to fear my transgressing any of the strict rules of
Hindu custom. Despite my assurances, however, I noticed
that he charged one of his sons to keep watch over me.
Another spy was charged with observing the conduct of
my servants. At sundown one of these latter left the
Hardly had he returned
village to answer a call of nature.
when the person watching my servants, having seen him
in the distance, ran to tell his master that his house had
been polluted, that he had admitted into it people of low
habits, for had he not seen with his own eyes one of my
servants return from answering a call of nature without
having washed himself and enter the house in this horrible
On this my host rose in great wrath,
state of defilement 1
and with gestures and looks of anger repeated to me what
Is any sin equal
he had been told, ending by exclaiming
to this
Behold the kind of gratitude which I ought to
have foreseen in offering you hospitality. I had a pre-
sentiment that my good- nature would bring me trouble.
What
To do such a thing without washing afterwards
What
What an infamy
a crime
What a scandal
You must punish severely the
shame for my house
low person who has so horribly defiled my house. You
And depart,
shall pay me all the cost of purification
quit my house at once
I let him vent his choler without interrupting him, and
when he had ceased I answered him calmly that, if his
complaints were well founded, reparation should be made
him. But first of all he must prove that the offence had
My servant denied it strenuously,
really been committed.
and indignantly demanded on his own part that his accuser
should be punished. He had, he asserted, simply stooped
down to answer a call of nature different from that alleged.
His accuser nevertheless stuck to his assertion with horrible
oaths.
The Brahmin, believing him rather than my ser-
vant, insisted on my leaving the house. Thereupon, in
a firm tone, I declared that I would neither punish my
servant nor pay compensation for an injury which had not
been proved. As to the order which he had given that
I should leave his house, it was, I told him, an unreason-
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