Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 86

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ANTIQUITY OF CASTE CEREMONIES
task, however, would be such a difficult one that I can
hardly believe that any proposal of the kind would ever
enter an intelligent person's head.
Everything is always
done in exactly the same way even the minutest details
are invested with a solemn importance of their own, because
a Hindu is convinced that it is only by paying rigorous
attention to small details that more momentous concerns
are safeguarded.
Indeed, there is not another nation on
earth which can pride itself on having so long preserved
intact its social customs and regulations.
The Hindu legislators of old had the good sense to give
stability to these customs and regulations by associating
with them many outward ceremonies, which, by fixing
them in the minds of the people, ensured their more faithful
observance. These ceremonies are invariably observed, and
have never been allowed to degenerate into mere forms that
can be neglected without grave consequences. Failure to
perform a single one of them, however unimpoitant it
might appear, would never go unpunished.
One cannot fail to remark how very similar some of
these ceremonies are to those which were performed long
ago amongst other nations. Thus the Hindu precepts
about cleanness and uncleanness, as also the means em-
ployed for preserving the one and effacing the other, are
similar in many respects to those of the ancient Hebrews.
The rule about marrying in one's caste, and even in one's
family, was specifically imposed upon the Jews in the laws
which Moses gave them from God \ This rule, too, was
in force a long time before that, for it appears to have been
general amongst the Chaldeans. We find also in Holy
Writ that Abraham espoused his niece, and that the holy
patriarch sent into a far country for a maiden of his own
family as a wife for his son Isaac. Again, Isaac and his
wife Rebecca found it difficult to pardon their son Esau
for marrying amongst strangers, that is, amongst the
Canaanites and they sent their son Jacob away into
a distant land to seek a wife from amongst their own
;
;
people.
In the
same way to-day, Hindus
1
Numbers
residing in a foreign
xxxvi. 5-12.