Hindu manners, customs and ceremonies / by the Abbe J.A. Dubois ; translated from the author's later French ms. and edited with notes, corrections, and biography by Henry K. Beauchamp.

  • Dubois, J. A. (Jean Antoine), 1765-1848.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hindu manners, customs and ceremonies / by the Abbe J.A. Dubois ; translated from the author's later French ms. and edited with notes, corrections, and biography by Henry K. Beauchamp. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    15/790
    BY MAX MULLER as containing the views of an eye-witness, of a man singu¬ larly free from prejudice and of a scholar with sufficient knowledge, if not of Sanskrit, yet of Tamil, both literary and spoken, to be able to enter into the views of the natives, to understand their manners and customs, and to make allowance for many of their superstitious opinions and practices, as mere corruptions of an originally far more rational and intelligent form of religion and philosophy. Few men who were real scholars have hitherto undertaken to tell us what they saw of India and its inhabitants during a lifelong residence in the country, and in spite of the great opportunities that India offers to intelligent and observant travellers, we know far less of the actual life of India than of that of Greece and Rome. There are few men now left who, like the Abbé Dubois, have actually been present at the burning of widows, or who can give us, as he does, the direct reports of eye-witnesses who saw a king burnt with two of his queens joining hands on the burning pile over the corpse of their husband. In the south these Suttees were far less frequent than in Bengal, where in the year 1817 no less than 706 cases of Suttee had been officially reported, and where this practice had at last to be put down by the law during the Governor-Generalship of Lord William Bentinck (1825-1835), thanks chiefly to the active exertions and the moral influence of Ram Mohun Roy. As a trustworthy authority on the state of India from 1792 to 1823 the Abbé Dubois’ work will always retain its value, and in its final and complete form now offered to the public it will be welcome not only to Sanskrit scholars, but to all who take an intelligent interest in that wonderful country. As the Abbé went to India as a missionary, and was a man remarkably free from theological pre¬ judices, missionaries in particular will read his volume with interest and real advantage. F. M. M.