Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 26

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
xx
valuable.
me when
This was tho thought which presented
itself to
almost accidentally, while looking
I discovered,
through the French MS. in the Madras Government's
records, that the good Abbe had never had justice done to
him. Accordingly, with the permission and with the aid
Madras Government, I have made a verbatim trans-
work in its complete form which I here present
to the public, together with such notes and observations as
seem necessary to put the text into line with later develop-
ments and research.
As to the intrinsic value of the Abbe's work, I have no
of the
lation of the
hesitation in saying that
it is
as valuable to-day as ever
it
was, even more valuable in some respects. It is true that
a mass of learned literature on the religious and civil life of
the Hindus has accumulated since the Abbe's days, and it
and the impression may be felt in
is still accumulating
;
many minds
that a book written so long ago can be of little
but the fact is that the Abbe's
practical use at present
work, composed as it was in the midst of the people them-
;
selves, is of a unique character, for it combines, as no other
work on the Hindus combines, a recital of the broad facts
of Hindu religion and Hindu sociology with many masterly
descriptions, at once comprehensive and minute, of the vie
intime of the people
among whom he lived for so many years.
With any other people than the Hindus such a work would
but with them the same ancestral
soon grow out of date
traditions and customs are followed nowadays that were
followed hundreds of years ago, at least by the vast majority
I do not deny that some of the Abbe's
of the population.
;
statements require to be modified in the light of changes
that have taken place amongst the educated classes since
the introduction of Western learning, but such necessary
modifications, which, as remarked above, I have introduced
in the
form of notes, are surprisingly few.
Enumerated