Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 308

ALLEGED ALLEGORICAL RITES
268
performances Brahmins assert that some, if not all, are
only allegories, of which the inner meaning is more rational.
This may very likely be true
but I am fully persuaded
that the tradition of this inner meaning has been lost.
There are beyond question very few Brahmins who would
be able to give even the most imperfect idea of what their
rites were originally intended to convey.
It is an un-
doubted fact that the greater number of them have nothing
;
in their
minds beyond the material and
literal fulfilment
of the ridiculous ceremonies which they are in the habit
of performing.
Take, for instance, their celebrated mys-
terious gayatri, of which each word, they aver, contains
—
a hidden meaning a meaning, however, which is inter-
preted in as many different ways as there are castes and
sects
l
.
The
first four sections of this chapter are taken from the
Nitya Karma, or Brahminical ritual. I was acquainted
with the second part of the sandhya when I first compiled
this work
I had read a full description of its details in
a little manuscript of M. Pons, formerly a Jesuit missionary
in the Carnatic, who died about eighty years ago.
He had
travelled all over Southern India, and was a good Sanskrit
But
scholar, having written a grammar of that language.
the particulars which this learned man gave appeared to
me so extraordinary and so incredible, that I doubted their
I after-
authenticity and did not venture to use them.
wards procured a book in Canara entitled Purohita-Asrama-
Karma, or The Religious Observances of a Brahmin
Purohita,' in which I found the same details in almost
exactly the same words. I consulted some Brahmins on
the subject, and they assured me that they were sub-
stantially correct, but that there were some mantrams and
ceremonies mentioned which were not in use in the Southern
Provinces, though they were used in the north. Indeed
I was assured the ceremonial and mantrams vary slightly
;
'
in different parts, according to the
those that follow them.
Veda and the
But, according to
my
sect of
informants,
A Hindu would contend that the fact of the hidden meaning of the
mantrants having been lost does not make the mantrams absurd, but only
those who perform the ceremonies without understanding their mean-
1
ing.— Ed.