Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 329

BRAHMINS AS COURTIERS
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They would perform their ablutions
exercises.
they would offer the sacrifice
regularly three times a day
called sraddha to their ancestors, a ceremony which they
they would look after
alone have the right to perform
their households, paying particular attention to the educa-
and they would devote all their
tion of their children
leisure moments to reading the Vedas and other sacred
But
writings, to acquiring knowledge, and to meditation.
the poverty of many of their number, and the avarice and
ambition which are the ruling passions of each and all,
preclude the possibility of such a philosophical mode of
religious
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;
existence.
Naturally cunning, wily, double-tongued, and servile,
they turn these most undesirable qualities to account by
their main object,
insinuating themselves everywhere
upon which they expend the greatest ingenuity, being to
gain access to the courts of princes or other people of high
This end achieved, they quickly gain, by their
rank.
hypocritical conduct, the affection and confidence of those
who have received them and very soon the best and
most lucrative posts are the reward of their pressing atten-
Thus it happens that the prime ministers of Asiatic
tions.
Shut up in their
princes are almost always Brahmins.
palaces, and plunged in voluptuous idleness, the nominal
rulers rarely give a thought to anything beyond the means
of increasing their enjoyments, creating fresh amusements,
and giving new zest to their passions by ever-varying
means. The welfare of their people and the government
of their country are very secondary considerations, if not
matters of indifference. Women, baths, perfumes, obscene
•dances, filthy songs, each in turn excite their senses. Only
flatterers of the lowest type and despicable procurers are
allowed to come near them, and these are always ready to
applaud the dissolute vagaries of their master.
That the Brahmins, thus raised to positions of importance
at the courts of these slothful and useless princes, do not
forget their relatives and friends, can well be imagined.
Indeed they usually divide the most lucrative of the sub-
ordinate posts among them. Thus surrounded by creatures
upon whom they can rely and who can also rely upon them,
a tacit collusion is established, by means of which each one
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