Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 323

COVERT VIOLATION OF CASTE
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He became the laughing-stock of the neighbourhood, and
felt the jeers and mockery of which he was the object so
keenly that he was obliged to leave the country and hide
One may well conjecture, without
his shame elsewhere.
doing them any injustice, that there are many other
Brahmins whose delinquencies have not been brought to
These lapses from strict
light by accidents of this kind.
adherence to the law are especially frequent in towns,
where illicit pleasures are easily obtainable. More than
once it has come to my knowledge that certain Brahmins
were in the habit of meeting in small numbers in the houses
of
Sudras in
whom
they thought they could place con-
fidence, there to partake in the strictest privacy of feasts
from which neither intoxicating liquors nor meat were
Furthermore, the Brahmins became so demora-
lized by these debauches that they allowed their hosts to
eat with them, thus shamelessly committing a threefold
breach of those laws of their caste which they are most
excluded.
especially enjoined to keep.
These little orgies sometimes entail very unpleasant con-
sequences.
The Sudras' wives are, of course, obliged to
be in the secret, and as La Fontaine says
:
Rien ne pese tant qu'un secret
Le porter loin est difficile aux dames.
Hindu women are by no means exceptions to this rule.
A Brahmin woman whom I knew, allowed herself to be
persuaded by a Sudra woman, a friend of hers, to eat
part of a stew which the latter had cooked, and she even
went so far as to say she thought it excellent. A short
time afterwards the two friends quarrelled, and at the end
of a violent altercation the Sudra woman, to punish her
adversary and silence her at the same time, publicly pro-
claimed the sin which the other in a moment of greediness
had committed. Covered with shame and confusion at
this unexpected revelation, which she found it impossible
to refute, the poor Brahmin woman fled from the place in
despair, vowing, too late, that she would never allow herself
to be caught again.
The use of intoxicating liquors is more common than
the eating of forbidden food, as it is so much less liable