Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 33

DUBOIS' CONCLUSIONS
ENDORSED
composed of Sudras, vagrants, and outcastes
xxvii
of several tribes,
who, being without resource, turned Christians in order to
form connexions, chiefly for the purpose of marriage, or
with some other interested views.'
These various quotations from the Abbe's Letters are
likely to inspire indignation among Christian missionaries,
but his general conclusions certainly find a remarkable
echo in the following extract on Christianity in Mr. Baines's
General Report on the Census of 1891
:
Its greatest development is found where the Brah manic
caste system is in force in its fullest vigour, in the south and
west of the Peninsula, and amongst the Hill tribes of Bengal.
In such localities it is naturally attractive to a class of the
population whose position is hereditarily and permanently
degraded by their own religion, as Islam has proved in
Eastern Bengal, and amongst the lowest class of the inhabi-
tants of the Panjab.
have seen that in the early days
of Portuguese missionary enterprise, it was found necessary
to continue the breach that Brahmanic custom had placed
between certain grades of society and those above them
but in later times, and in foreign missions of the Reformed
Church, the tendency has been to absorb all caste distinc-
tions into the general commission of the Christianity of that
form. The new faith has thus affected the lower classes
more directly than the upper, who have more to lose socially,
and less to gain.'
'
We
;
.
.
.
may
be mentioned that in the agricultural settlement
of reconverted Christians at Sathalli in Mysore, previously
It
alluded
to,
the inhabitants retained theirHindu caste distinc-
and the following observations in Mr. V. N. Narasim-
miyengar's Mysore Census Report (1891) are noteworthy
tions
;
:
Roman
Catholicism is able to prevail among the Hindus
more rapidly and easily, by reason of its policy of tolerating
among its converts the customs of caste and social obser-
vances, which constitute so material a part of the Indian
social fabric.
In the course of the investigations engen-
dered by the census, several Roman Christian communities
'