Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

on pain of degradation, and loss of all earthly connections.

The whole of the literature of the country is assigned to the first tribe exclusively, with all its honours and emoluments. In this arrangement, the actual exceptions to this rule are all contrary to the terms and the spirit of the Hindoo institutions. Upon the shoodra who shall dare attempt to require a knowledge of learning of his country, the most horrible anathemas are poured: for reading the veda "a shoodra is condemned to have boiling oil poured into his throat; for hearing it, into his ears; for committing it to memory, he is to be put to death." Munoo says, "Of that king who stupidly looks on, while a shoodra decides causes, the kingdom itself shall be embarrassed like a cow in deep mire."

The effect of these interdictions is, that if a brahmun be reading the veda, and a shoodra happen to come near, the degraded wretch stops his ears, or runs away, lest the wrath of the gods should fall upon him.

Thus all the honours of the country are confined to one hereditary class, without any regard to wealth, education, or character. But what is worse, these honours are, as is seen, connected with the degradation and slavery of full three-fourths of the population; so that while one-fourth is elevated to an equality with the gods, and receives the honours of deity, the other threefourths are in a more degraded state than the African slave; for these slaves never drink the water in which the slave-holder has washed his feet, never collect the dust which has fallen from his feet, and wear it as a charm to frighten away disease.

On our inquiring lately into the truth of this latter circumstance, it came to our knowledge that the dust from the feet of a thousand brahmuns, and even of a lack. has actually been collected, and drachms of it disposed of, from time to time, as a specific against various diseases. There is now living, at Calcutta, a spice-seller, named Vishnoo-sah, who believes that, by a pinch of the dust shaken from the feet of a lack of brahmans, worn as a charm, he was cured of the leprosy; and this poor infatuated man comes into the street (at Chitpore) daily, both in the forenoon and afternoon, and stands and bows in the most reverential manner to every brahmun who passes by him. Should a brahmun pass by without receiving this honour, he calls out to him,

[ocr errors]

and says, "Oh! Sir, receive my salaam. He has now for years paid these honours to this tribe, firmly believing that he owes his deliverance from the most dreadful of diseases to the virtues imparted by them to the dust shaken from their feet. Amongst others who have gathered and preserved the dust from the feet of a lack of brahmuns, are mentioned the names ef Gunga Govinda-sing, and of Lalababoo his grandson. The former, preserving this dust in a large sheet, as often as he was visited by brahmuns, took them aside, and made them shake the dust from their feet upon this sheet for the good of mankind. Even the dust collected from the feet of single brahmuns is given away in pinches, and is inclosed in gold, silver, and brass caskets worn on the body, and carried about as a charm against diseases, evil spirits, &c. When a poor Hindoo leaves his house, to proceed on some difficult business, he rubs a little of this dust on his forehead; and, if it remain on his forehead till he arrive at the place where this affair is to be adjusted, he feels certain of sue

cess.

In addition to this mark of superstitious devotion to this tribe, we have heard that it is common, six days after the birth of a child, to rub the dust from the feet of the brahmun guests upon the forehead, the breast, and other parts of the child's body, as a security against disease.

It is further very common for a shoodra to solicit a brahmun to dip his feet into a little water, which he brings in a cup for the purpose, that he may receive the benefits insured to the individual who drinks the water in which a brahmun has washed his feet. The water must not be the water of the Ganges; for that would be, in the brahmun, an act of disrespect towards the sacred stream. Instead of putting his whole foot into the vessel or cup, however, the brahmun generally satisfies the shoodra by immersing only his great toe. Some preserve, in the house, a quantity of water thus impregnated with divine virtue, and drink of it daily.

The same abject subjection to this tribe of their countrymen is seen in the article of eating. To entertain a number of brahmuns is an act of transcendant merit, and to eat their offals is equally meritorious. Some villages do not contain a single house of brahmuns; and the passage of a brahmun

through the village is, therefore, hailed with the greatest joy, and considerea as a most auspicious circumstance. One of the richest of the villagers entreats him to stay and honour the village by permitting them to prepare a meal for him. A large quantity of rice, and other articles, is prepared; and after this sacred guest has eaten to perfect satiety, the remainder is carefully collected, and a few grains sent as an invaluable present to each family.

The shoodra is even taught to believe that, by eating constantly from the plantain leaves which have been used at meals by brahmuns, he shall lose the degradation of continuing a shoodra, and, in the next birth, be infallibly born a brahmun.

Although the bride and bridegroom are enjoined to keep a rigid fast on the day of their nuptials, and every kind of aliment is forbidden them, yet if a brahmun invite them to eat his orts, the law of the shastra is immediately dispensed with. The same fast is enjoined on the day a father dies; but the offals of a brahmun's meal may be eaten, and the fast be thus broken without blame.

The inferior orders of Hindoos are separated from all communion with each other by the law of the caste : they never eat together; and transgression herein would involve the loss of caste, and bring upon the offenders disgrace and ruin. But should a number of shoodras of different orders happen to be at the house of a brahmun, they may all eat there as on privileged ground. Thus the very laws themselves, laws the violation of which insures a forfeiture of every thing dear to the individual, are suspended in the presence and at the caprice of those gods upon earth.

No shoodra may perform, through the priest, a brahmun, any ceremony whatever, without presenting gifts to a brahmun.

Should a brahmun beat a shoodra, and should the latter, while enduring the pain, threaten to complain to the magistrate, he is at once pacified by the representation that the brahmun has, in this act, been really conferring a blessing on him.

It might naturally be supposed that such a yoke as this would be so intolerable that men could never be kept under it; that they would revolt and reject such abominable pretensions as these. Let us then survey the massy walls and the iron gratings of this pri

son-house of the shoodras, and consider the interest which the jailors have in preventing the escape of any of their prisoners.

The penalty connected with the loss of caste is the loss of the whole world. The offender is not only rejected by father, mother, brother, sister, and all that are dear to him, but by all his countrymen. He in vain looks through this inhospitable world; not a hut will open its door to him, and henceforth he can see no more the face of father, mother, brother, or sister, or even of his wife or children. He must tear from his heart every tender tie and recollection, and must hide his head amongst the most degraded outcasts, without the least hope of ever again seeing the faces of those who gave him birth. His own father and mother will run away at his presence, as from one infested by some deadly distemper. Many an individual involved in these circumstances, by his own trespasses, or those of his wife, or some near relative, has abandoned the world, and become a religious mendicant, or has fled to Benares as a place of refugeor has put an end to his existence. Others have offered a thousand, two thousand, ten thousand, a lack of rupees, to be restored to caste, without success. Here then is a prison, far stronger than any which the civil tyrannies of the world have ever erected; a prison which immures many millions of innocent beings.

We may judge of the interest which the brahmuns have in the continuance of the caste, from the following circumstances:-After the taxes of Government and the bare necessities of the body have been provided for, almost the whole property of the productive classes comes into the lands of the brahmuns. The Hindoo legislators have united religious ceremonies with almost every civil transaction: and the performance of these ceremonies is the exclusive right of the brahmuns, and they are ever connected with presents and feasts to brahmuns. From the Kurmu-Lochun, extracts from which have already appeared in the Friend of India, it appears that religious ceremonies are multiplied to an almost boundless extent among the Hindoos; a stronger proof of which can scarcely be given than the circumstances which have occurred respecting this book. After printing it, the publisher finds that the people are absolutely afraid of purchasing and perusing it, because the proofs hereby

brought before them of their religious omissions, are so frightfully numerous. The brahmuns, like so many tax-gatherers, present themselves to the poor shoodra at every turn, and demand attention to some ceremony, and the accustomed fee. They work upon his superstition and his fears; they urge the example of his relations and neighbours, they threaten some domestic calamity and the horrors of some degraded birth in futurity, unless the ceremony to which they summon his unwilling attention be performed. A brahmun knows how profitable it is to remind the shoodra, that "the brahmuns are the mouths of the Gods."

In Calcutta and its vicinity, multitudes of brahmuns derive their support from trade; but this is not the case in the interior: there, almost every brabmun derives his support from his profession as a priest, from the temple lands, or from the performance of the almost innumerable ceremonies which are enjoined upon the population, of which those connected with weddings and funerals are the most productive. Still those which are performed for the removal of some evil, or the acquisition of some good, are also a highly fruitful source of revenue, seeing they apply to every object of hope and fear which belongs to the life of an indolent, covetous, and superstitious people. For instance, one man has a religious ceremony performed that such a plan may succeed; another that such a speculation may be profitable; another that such an evil may be removed; and thus the superstitious terrors, the cupidity, and the easily excited hopes of this people are constantly throwing them at the feet of the brahmun, who, like the vulture, is ever on the scent for his prey. To gain a cause in a court of justice, to obtain service, to remove sickness, and on numerous occasions of a similar nature, the brahmun is called to move the gods in favour of the person who presents the fee. In short, the Hindoo never thinks of putting his shoulders to the work of removing the ten thousand real and imaginary ills of life-if a straw lie in his way, he calls the brahmun and entreats him to come with his enchantments to remove it.

A wedding, or a shraddha, affords a fine opportunity for these sons of rapacity; and they are out on the scent after these things with all the eagerness, and sometimes with all the clamour and noise of the jackal. When a person is ill, and there are little hopes of recovery, the brahmuns who

expect to be invited to the feast accompanying the ceremonies after death, begin to calculate the expenses attending the feast, and often pass jokes on the person whose mother perhaps is in the agonies of death. A case is within recollection, when the mother of a voidya was very ill, and continued in this state many weeks. A brahmun, addressing the son of this old woman, and lamenting that she lingered so long, said, "These voidya females never die." Thus the brahmuns, like so many vultures ready to pounce upon their prey. wait with impatience the departure of the soul from the body. On these occasions, a thousand brahmuns at once are sometimes feasted, and carry away. as presents bedsteads, horses, boats, cows, palankeens, gold, silver, and brass utensils, silks, shawls, broadcloth. garments, &c. &c. Sometimes as much as two or three thousand ru pees are given to the brahmuns merely in cash and food, Where a brahmun finds no employment as a priest, he lives on the community, and wherever he goes he finds the houses, and shops, and purses of the people open to him as a privileged pensioner.

As the guardians of the caste, therefore, we may naturally suppose that the brahmuns are ever vigilant; and though there are no officers amongst them whose express duty it is to bring delinquents to punishment, yet there vigilance enough in the whole body on this head: and the prisoners are so completely within their power, and the men of property so ready to throw in the whole weight of their influence to enforce reverence to the priests, that he must be a bold shoodra who shall claim the right to think and act for himself. When even a brahmun of fends against this law, the honour of the caste, and the dread of pollution and ruin, rouse all his relatives against him, who are obliged to abandon him, unless a powerful bribe to those at the head of this division of the tribe becomes efficacious.

Thus the whole frame of Hindoo society is anti-social; and this afflicted people are placed under a regular system of organized oppression, extending even to the minutest domestic arrangement, interfering with every part of that intimate and endeared intercourse which can form the only solace of human society, and subjecting every thing sacred in hospitality, in friendship, and family connections, to the cupidity, the intrusion, the despotic caprice of a wretched inquisitor.

Friend of India, No. V.

[merged small][graphic]

Anxious to give the earliest account of every new discovery connected with, the arts, we this week present our readers with an additional engraving-a view of a New Carriage invented by Mr. Birch, an eminent coachmaker, of Great Queen-street. This new vehicle, to which the very appropriate name of the PROTEAN has been given, is now a great attraction to the fashionable world, where its variety of appearance and elegance, under all its forms, excite universal admiration.

The original form of the Protean is that of a phaeton, from which it can be transformed in a short time, and with very little trouble, into five other vehicles, all of different shapes, and suited in accommodation to their respective purposes.

The great advantages arising from this invention are as follow: First, that the Protean is a perfect driving phaeton, with a seat for two servants behind: secondly, a cabriolet to be driven by the coachman, the main body being behind, and the steps always remaining, that the persons behind or before can get out without assistance, and the ladies or gentlemen can always be sheltered from the wet.

A gentleman possessing such a phaeton would not like to use it upon every occasion, therefore, if he pleases, it can, by the most simple means, be ren

dered a curricle with a head: but if it be fine weather, and a head be considered unnecessary, it may be lightened by a simple change; and by substituting shafts for a pole, may have a gig with a head; but if chosen without a head, it makes one of the lightest and most complete dennets ever seen.

Such is the lightness and susceptibility of the construction, that this kind of talismanic] transformation may be effected in a few moments by any two persons, altogether unacquainted with the art. The machinery wheel is highly finished, and displays characteristic airiness and elegance.

ANECDOTES OF DOMESTIC

LIFE.

Filial Piety--The great law of nature has implanted in every human breast, a disposition to love and revere those to whom we have been taught from our earliest infancy, to look up for every comfort, convenience, and pleasure in life. While we remain in a state of dependence on them, this impression continues in its full force; but certain it is, that it has a tendency to wear off, as we become masters of ourselves; and hence the propriety of those laws by which, in the institutions of different nations, it has been attempted to guard against a degeneracy into filial ingratitude and disobedience.

[ocr errors]

"Honour thy father and thy mother," was the command of the Divine Author of the Jewish dispensation. "That thy days may be long in the land," is the peculiar reward which he promises to those who obey the solemn injunction. And as he has been pleased to express his approbation of a steady adherence to this law, by singular marks of favour, so also did he punish the breach of it by exemplary displeasure; death was the only expiation for this offence.

Nor have the Jews been the only nation who have looked upon disobe dience to parents, as worthy of capital Iunishment.

In China, let a son become ever so rich, and a father ever so poor, there is no submission, no point of obedience, that the latter cannot command, or that the former can refuse. The father is not only absolute master of his son's estate, but also of his children, who, whenever they displease him, he may sell to strangers. When a father accuses his son before a mandarin, there needs no proof of his guilt, for they cannot believe that any father can be so unnatural as to bring a false accusation against his own son. But should a son be se insolent as to mock his father, or arrive at such a pitch of wickedness as to strike him, all the province where this shameful act of violence is committed, is alarmed; it even becomes the concern of the whole empire; the Emperor himself judges the criminal. All the mandarins near the place, are turned out of their posts, especially those in the town where he lived, for having been so negligent in their instructions; and all the neighbours are reprimanded for neglecting, by former punishments, to put a stop to the wickedness of the criminal, before it arrived at such flagitiousness. With respect to the unhappy wretch himself, they cut him to a thousand pieces, burn his bones, raze the house in which he lived, as well as those houses that stand near it, and sow the ground with salt, as supposing that there must be some hopeless depravity of manners in a community to which such a monster belonged.

The filial duty is the same with the prince and the peasant in China; and the Emperor, every New Year's Day, pays a particular homage to his mother, in the palace, at which ceremony all the great officers of the state assist.

The Persians, according to Herodotus, held the crime of domestic rebellion, in nearly as much detestation as

the Chinese, but they treated it after a more refined manner. They looked on the striking or slaying of a father, as an impossible offence; and when an accident of the kind happened, adjudged that the defender could not be the son of the party injured or slain, but must have been superstitiously imposed on him as such.

Cicero observes, that Solon, the wise legislator of Athens, had provided no law against parricide; and that being asked why he had not? he answered, "That to make laws against, and ordain punishments for, a crime that had been never known or heard of, was the way to introduce it, rather than prevent it."

In Rome, no less than six hundred years, from the building of the city, had elapsed, before so much as a name for the crime of parricide was known amongst them. The punishment ordained for the first who stained his hands with the blood of the author of his being, was, that he should be scourged till he was flayed, then sown up in a sack, together with a dog, a cock, a viper, and an ape, and so thrown headlong to the bottom of the

sea.

It is a great stain on the character of the more recent ages of the world, that the crime should ever have become of less rare occurrence; yet in nothing, perhaps, have the ways of God to man been more signally justified, than in the punishment which has sooner or later followed all deviations from filial love and duty. So proverbial indeed, has this become, as to make any particular illustration of the fact, wholly unnecessary. Be ours, therefore, the more pleasing task to record a few of the far more numerous instances, in which sons have done honour to human nature, by the honour which they have paid to the authors of their being.

The exploit which procured for Eneas, the title of the Pious, is known to all who have read of the siege of Troy; that of the brothers Anapias and Amphinomus, which was altogether similar, is of less notoriety. In the 477th year before the Christian era, an eruption took place of Mount Etna, and the inhabitants of its vicinity_were in the most imminent danger. Every one hastened to load himself with what he valued most, and to fly from the spot. One aged couple alone, were too old and infirm to move; but Providence had blessed them with two affectionate sons, Anapias and Amphinoinus, who

« VorigeDoorgaan »