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Description of the Character, Manners, and Customs of the People of India
Description of the Character Manners and Customs of the People of India Author:Jean Antoine Dubois Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAR II. ADVANTAGES RESULTING FROM THE DIVISION OF CASTS. A HERE are many persons that have thought so little about the genius and character of the differe... more »nt nations that people the earth; of the influence of education, of religion, of climate, of food, upon their manners, desires, and customs; that they are astonished how beings radically of the same nature and of the same feelings, should so exceedingly differ from each other. Such men are trammelled by the prejudices of education. They can see nothing well ordered but in the police of their own country. Every thing there being in good method, they desire to put all nations of the earth on the same footing; and whatever does not fall within their limits, is denounced by them as barbarous or ridiculous. They will not consider that, though the nature of man is universally the same, it is nevertheless subject to be modified by the circumstances of the country, by the climate, the education and prejudice incident to each people; and that the rules laid down and followed in one nation would be subversive of another. I have heard many individuals, otherwise of great judgment, so full of the prejudices they had brought with them from Europe, as to decide most erroneously (according to my opinion) on the subject of the division of the Hindus into casts. This.distinction appeared to them, not only as not promoting the good of society, but also as ridiculous, and calculated merely to oppress the members of the state and to disunite them. , For my part, having been in a situation to observe the character of the Hindus, and having lived amongst them for many years, as abrother and a friend, I have formed an opinion upon this subject altogether opposite. I consider the institution of casts amongst the Hiudu nations as the happies...« less