Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 51

AUTHOR'S PREFACE
11
I was in India.
I cannot say whether these usages are the
same to the north of that river and in Hindustan proper
but if any differences there be it is probable that they
exist only in form.
There is no place in India which does
not possess certain customs and practices of its own, and
it
would be impossible to give descriptions of them all.
Fundamentally, however, caste constitutions are the same
everywhere. Furthermore, however many the shades of
difference between the various castes, however diversified
;
customs that control them, only slight differences
between the various forms of religious belief. Indeed,
the religion of the Hindus may be said to form a common
centre for the numerous elements which constitute Hinduism
in its widest sense.
Moreover there is a certain general
uniformity of rule and practice in everyday social matters,
which compels one to look upon the different masses of
the population as belonging in reality to one big family.
Nevertheless, whatever I may say in the following pages
must not be given a too general meaning, for it is hardly
necessary to point out that in such a huge country there
are many peculiarities of language and custom which are
purely local in character. For instance, a careful observer
would see less resemblance between a Tamil and a Canarese,
between a Telugu and a Mahratta, than between a French-
man and an Englishman, an Italian and a German.
Even when they migrate or travel from one province
to another, natives of India never throw off what I may
call the characteristics of their natal soil.
In the midst of
their new surroundings they invariably preserve their own
language and customs.
On the Malabar coast one may count five different
tribes, established from time immemorial, within a hundred
leagues of territory north and south.
They are the Xairs
or Naiftiars, the Kurgas or Kudagas, the Tulus, the Kon-
kanis, and the Kanaras.
Although amalgamated in some
degree, each of these tribes still preserves to the present
day the language and mode of life peculiar to the place
from which it originally sprang. The same thing may be
remarked throughout the Peninsula, but especially in the
Tamil country and in Mysore, where many families of
Telusus are to be found whose ancestors were obliged for
the
exist