The Hindoos as They Are: A Description of the Manners, Customs and the Inner Life of Hindoo Society in Bengal — John Shaqi
The Hindoos as They Are: A Description of the Manners, Customs and the Inner Life of Hindoo Society in BengalSivachandra Vasu
Religion
The Hindoos as They Are: A Description of the Manners, Customs and the Inner Life of Hindoo Society in Bengal
Sivachandra Vasu
Hindus; India -- Social life and customs; Women -- India
The general state of Hindoo female society, as at present constituted,
exhibits an improved moral tone, presenting an edifying contrast to the
gross proclivities of former times as far as popular amusements are
concerned. The popular amusements of the Hindoos, like those of many
European nations, have rarely been characterised by essentially moral
principles. But the loose and immoral amusements of the former time do
not now so much interest our educated females. The popular Native
_Jatras_ (representations) do not now breathe those low, obscene
expressions, which was the wont only some thirty years back, yet they
are not, withal, absolutely pure or elevated. It is true that some of
them are touching and pathetic in their themes, not jarring to a moral
sense but admirably adapted to the taste of a people having a supreme
respect for their idolatrous and mythological systems, from which most
of these _Jatras_ are derived. The marvellous and the supernatural
always exact an instinctive regard from the ignorant and the credulous
multitude, destitute of the superior blessings of enlightenment. The
_Panchaly_ (represented by female actresses only) which is given for the
amusement of the females, especially at the time of the second marriage,
is sometimes much too obscene and immoral to be tolerated in a zenana
having any pretension to gentility. On such an occasion, despite a
strict conventional restriction, a depraved taste clearly manifests
itself. Much has yet to be done to develope among the females a taste
for purer amusements, and such as are better adapted to a healthy state
of society.
In Hindoo females there is a prominent trait which deserves to be
commended. Moses, Mohammed, and Manu, observes Benjamin Disraeli, say
cleanliness is religion. Cleanliness certainly promotes health of body
and delicacy of mind. When that excellent prelate, Heber, travelled in a
boat on the sacred stream of the Ganges, seeing large crowds of Hindoo
females engaged in washing their bodies and clothes on both sides of the
river, at the rising and setting of the sun, he most emphatically
remarked that cleanliness is the supreme virtue of Hindoo women. In the
Upper Provinces, at all seasons of the year, hundreds of women could be
daily seen with baskets of flowers in their hands slowly walking in the
direction of the river, and chanting songs in a chorus in praise of the
"unapproachable sanctuary of Mahadev, the great glacier world of the
Himalaya, with its wondrous pinnacles, rising 24,000 feet above the
level of the sea, and descending into the amethyst-hued ice cavern,
whence issues, in its turbulent and noisy infancy, the sacred river of
India." They display a purity, a sincerity, a constant and passionate
devotion to their faith, which present a striking contrast to the
conduct of men steeped in the quagmire of profligacy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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