Hindu Manners Customs & Ceremonies

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Abbe J.A. Dubois was a French Catholic missionary in India who journeyed to and around the country in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and turned his decades of observation into what was, for many years, the definitive Western work on Indian culture.

Henry K. Beauchamp translated the French manuscript of Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies by Abbe J.A. Dubois into English. He was the fellow of the University of Madras and the Royal Historical Society. He was also a member of the Royal Asiatic Society.

Though Europeans have possessed settlements in India for more than three centuries, it is only within recent times that authentic details have been obtained with respect to the people who dwell in this vast country and whose ancient civilization, methods of government. manners, creeds, and customs, are nevertheless so well worthy of notice. It is impossible to doubt for a moment that science and art flourished amongst these nations at an epoch when our most civilized countries of the West were still plunged in the dark abyss of ignorance. The various forms of their institutions, both political and social; their knowledge of mathematics, especially of astronomy; their systems of metaphysics and ethics: all of these had long ago made the people of India famous far beyond their own borders; while the renown of Hindu philosophers had reached even Europe. The many ill-informed and often contradictory narratives about India which have been published in modern times have deservedly fallen into discredit. Yet, it must be admitted, some good work has been done by certain Literary Societies that have of recent years been established in India, the members of which, possessing access to original sources of information, have begun to survey with a more critical eye these records of divine and human knowledge, whose depositaries have hitherto guarded them with zealous care behind a veil of mystery. Without doubt the members of these Societies, distinguished as they mostly are by their erudition, will continue to devote special study to the languages of the country and to make abundant use of the sources of information open to them. Yet, it must be confessed, the information which we possess about the people of India is very meagre compared with that which it is most important for us to acquire. The ancient history of their country is, for one thing, enshrouded in chimera and fable, and, unfortunately, such incoherence and such obscurity prevail in their written records, which are our only means of really getting at the truth, that it is not too much to presume that we shall never succeed in throwing proper light on all this mass of absurdities. The most popular and best known of these written records are the Ramayana, the Bhagavata, and the Mahabharata'; but the informa tion which their authors give about the dates, events, and duration of the different dynasties; about the heroes of India and their prowess in war; about the various revolutions which occurred in the country and the circumstances which led to them; about the beginnings of Hindu polity; about the discoveries and progress in science and art; in a word, about all the most interesting features of history, all information of this kind is, as it were, buried amid a mass of fable and superstition.

My readers will see in the following pages to what extremes the people of India carry their belief in and love for the marvellous. Their first historians were in reality poets, who seem to have decided that they could not do better than compose their poems in the spirit of the people for whom they were writing. That is to say, they were guided solely by the desire to please their readers, and accordingly clothed Truth in such a grotesque garb as to render it a mere travesty from an historical point of view. The Indian Muse of History thus became a kind of magician whose wand performed wonders. The successors of these first poet-historians were actuated by the same motives, and even thought that it added to their own glory to improve on their predecessors, and to surpass them in the absurdity of their fictions.

While waiting for inquirers, more skilful than myself, to find a way through this labyrinth, which to me is absolutely inextricable, I offer to the public a large number of authentic records which I have carefully collected, and which, for the most part, contain particulars that are either unknown or only partially known, in the hope that they will be found not altogether devoid of interest. I believe, at any rate, that they will be acknowledged to contain some useful materials for future savants who may undertake a complete and methodical treatise on the people of India, a task which is far beyond my powers and which moreover I could not possibly have laid seeing that I was without literary aids of any kind upon myself, during my long and absolute seclusion amongst the natives of the country.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages