Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 315

HINDUS AND EUROPEAN USAGES
275
Our Western religion, education, and manners are bo
diametrically opposed at all points to the religious and
civil usages of the Hindus that they are naturally looked
upon with a most unfavourable eye by the latter. In
their opinion Europeans may almost be placed below the
level of beasts, and even the more sensible among them
cannot understand how people, possessed in other ways of
so many superior qualities, can conform in their everyday
life to manners and customs which differ so radically from
their own, and which, as a natural consequence, they con-
sider most coarse and degraded.
The Brahmin rule of life is in appearance intolerably
severe, but it has become for them a mere matter of habit
encouraged by vanity and self-interest. Their punctilious-
ness in the fulfilment of their religious duties day by day,
their self-denials and their fasts, form part of the business of
their lives and are looked upon in the light of pastimes.
They know, too, full well, that the eyes of the multitude
are always on them, and the smallest relaxation of their
discipline or the least negligence in any particular would
put an end to the almost boundless veneration and respect
not one that I know of has been written by a Brahmin.
All
the works of this kind that I have seen have emanated from authors
who were not of this caste. Tiruvalluvar was a Pariah, Pattanattu-
pillai and Agastya were both of the Vellala caste, and their poems are
written in Tamil Sarovignaimurti was a Lingayat, and his works are
in Canarese.
One of the most famous is Vemana, whose poems, origin-
ally written in Telugu, have since been translated into several other
languages.
We are told that this philosopher, who was of the Reddy
caste, and was born in the district of Cuddapah, died towards the end
of the seventeenth century.
His writings, from which I have seen
several extracts, appear to me to be most interesting, and are distinguished
by much discernment and independence. It is to be noticed that the
authors of all these satirical and revolutionary works belong to recent
times.
If in earlier days any enlightened writers published similar
works, the Brahmins have taken care that not a trace of them shall
remain. Nowadays they rage against the authors we have mentioned,
and speak of their works with contempt. They cannot, of course,
succeed in destroying them, but they do everything in their power to
prevent the reading of them. Dubois.
The last sentences of the Abbe's note are misleading, for these authors
are held in great respect, and are much read by educated Brahmins.
These latter must be distinguished from the purely priestly class of
Brahmins, whose interest it may be to dissuade people from studying
these works.
Ed.
criticized,
;