Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 32

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
xxv]
and Christianity became more and more an object
contempt and aversion in proportion as European manners
quarters,
of
became better known
It
is
to the Hindus.'
necessary to remark that the Abbe's Letters were
vehemently
by
answered
Hough and Townley
Protestant
the
missionaries,
but we need not enter into the
details of the controversy.
In another place the Abbe
remarked
Should the intercourse between individuals of
both nations, by becoming more intimate and more friendly,
produce a change in the religion and usages of the country,
it will not be to turn Christians that they will forsake their
;
'
:
own
religion,
but rather (what in
my
opinion
is
a thousand
times worse than idolatry) to become mere atheists, and
they renounce their present customs it will not be to
embrace those of Europeans, but rather to become what
if
are
now
called Pariahs.'
In a word, the Abbe completely despaired of the higher
castes ever becoming Christians, though he was ready to
acknowledge that there was a harvest-field among the
low castes and outcastes. Of his own attempts to convert
the Hindus he remarks
For my part I cannot boast of
'
:
my
successes in this sacred career during the period that
have laboured to promote the interests of the Christian
The restraints and privations under which I have
lived, by conforming myself to the usages of the country
I
religion.
;
embracing, in
many
respects, the prejudices of the natives
;
but a Hindu myself in
short, by being made all things to all men, that I might by
all means save some
all these have proved of no avail to
me to make proselytes. During the long period I have lived
in India in the capacity of a missionary, I have made, with
the assistance of a native missionary, in all between two
and three hundred converts of both sexes. Of this number
two-thirds were Pariahs or beggars
and the rest were
living like them,
and becoming
all
;
—
;