Although the Hindoos are naturally the most inoffensive of all mortals,
yet does their humanity consist more in abstaining from injurious, than
in the performance of beneficent actions. There is a wonderful mildness
in their manners, and also in their laws, which are influenced by their
manners; by which the murder of an human creature, and of a cow, are the
only crimes that are punished by death. Yet with all this gentleness of
disposition, they are inferior to the boisterous Europeans, with all
their vices, in the virtues of compassion and generosity. They are
wanting in that tenderness which is the most amiable part of our nature.
They are less affected by the distresses and dangers, and even the
accidental deaths of one another, than any nation I know in the old or
new world. Yet they love to excess: a proof, either of the inconstancy
of the human character; or that the amorous passion is not derived from
the noblest part of our nature.
This insensibility of the Hindoos to the distresses and dangers of their
fellow-creatures, appears to me a wonderful phenomenon. Perhaps that
despotism which has long been exercised under the Mogul tyranny, by
familiarising the mind to scenes of death, has blunted a sense of its
terrors. Perhaps those ideas of predestination and irresistible fate,
which prevail in Asia, and in all despotic governments, prepares the
mind for an acquiescence in all events. An English gentleman was
standing by a native of Hindostan when an enormous and fierce tiger
leaped from a thicket, and carried off a screaming boy, the son of one
of his neighbours. The Englishman expressed symptoms of the most extreme
horror, while the Hindoo remained unmoved. “What,” said the former, “are
you unaffected by so dreadful a scene?”--“The great God,” said the
other, “would have it so.”--Whatever may be the cause, it is certain,
that death is regarded with less horror in India than in any other
country in the world. The origin and the end of all things, say the
philosophers of India of the present time, is a vacuum. A state of
repose is the state of greatest perfection: and this is the state after
which a wise man aspires. It is better, say the Hindoos, to sit than to
walk, and to sleep than to wake; but death is the best of all.
According to the Gentoo laws, criminals sentenced to death are not to be
strangled, suffocated, or poisoned, but to be cut off by the sword;
because, without an effusion of blood, malefactors are supposed to die
with all their sins about them; but the shedding of their blood, it is
thought, expiates their crimes. The unjust punishment of Nundcomar, who
was hanged on a gibbet against the laws of his country, and even by an
_ex post facto_ English law, was aggravated by that circumstance of
horror, that he died without an effusion of blood.
The Hindoos are well acquainted with the nature of simples, and apply
them judiciously either in performing cures which require not
amputation, or in effecting death by quick or slow poisons. They have
been for ages in the practice of inoculating for the small-pox; on which
occasion, as well as on others, they have recourse to the favourable
mediation of charms, or spells.
Although the practice of Hindoo women burning themselves on the funeral
piles of their husbands, and embracing in the mean time their dead
bodies in their arms, be not so general now as it has formerly been, yet
does it still prevail among some of the wives of men of high caste or
condition: and although this effort of frantic love, courage, and
ambition, be deemed an aggrandizement of the family and relations of
both husband and wife, but especially of the wife’s, yet their friends
and relations constantly endeavour to dissuade the women who declare
their resolutions of burning, from carrying them into execution. Even
the Brahmins do not encourage this practice.
The causes which inspire Hindoo women with this desperate resolution,
are, I imagine, the following:
In the first place; as the wife has, from her earliest infancy, been
betrothed in marriage to her husband, and from that time has never been
permitted to see another man; as she is instructed to believe that he is
perfectly accomplished, and taught to respect and honour him; as, after
consummation, she is shut up from the company, conversation, and even
the sight of other men, with still greater care, if possible, than
before, being now debarred from seeing even the father or elder brother
of her husband, the bonds of her affection must needs be inconceivably
strong and indissoluble. To an European lady the zenana naturally
appears in the light of an horrible prison: but the daughters of Asia
never consider confinement to the zenana as any hardship. They consider
it as a condition of their existence, and they enjoy all the happiness
of which they have any conception; their whole desires being concentered
and fixed on their husband, their food, jewels, and female attendants.
In the second place, if the wife survive her husband, she cannot marry
again, and is treated as an inferior person, and an outcast from her
family. Nay, she is obliged, in her mournful and hopeless widowhood, to
perform all the offices of a menial servant.
In the third place, she is flattered with the idea of having
immortalized her name, and aggrandized her children, and her own and
husbands families.
Lastly, she is rendered insensible to the pains and horrors of what she
is to suffer, by those intoxicating perfumes and mixtures which are
administered to her after she has declared her final and unalterable
resolution--I say her final resolution, because one or two declarations,
of an intention to die with her husband, is not sufficient.
The strength of her resolution undergoes a probation. There is a certain
time prescribed by the Gentoo law, during which her family and friends
exert their utmost influence in order to dissuade her from burning; and
if she persist in her resolution to the end of that period, it is not
lawful to use any more persuasions with her, to abandon it. If she
should alter her purpose after that period, she would be punished with
the loss of all castes, and live in a state of the most complete misery
and contempt. Nay, if an European or Christian does but touch her very
garment with his finger, when she is going to the pile, an immediate
stop is put to the ceremony, she is forced to live an outcast from her
family, and from the Gentoo religion.
You will doubtless, my friend, have curiosity to know, in what manner,
after all their stimulatives to perseverance, the tender sex, among a
soft and effeminate people, sustains the near approach, of a scene so
full of awe and horror. Amidst her weeping relations and friends, the
voluntary victim to love and honor alone appears serene and undaunted.
A gentle smile is diffused over her countenance: she walks upright, with
an easy but firm step; talks to those around her of the virtues of the
deceased, and of the joy with which she will be transported when her
shade shall meet with his; and encourages her sorrowful attendants to
bear with fortitude the sight of those momentary sufferings which she
herself is going to feel.--Having ascended the funeral pile, she lays
herself down by the body of her husband, which she fervently embraces.
A dose of narcotic mixtures is then administered for the last time; and
instantly the person, whose office it is, sets fire to the pile.
Thus the most determined resolution of which we can form any conception,
is found in the weaker sex, and in the soft climes of Asia. It is to the
honour of that sex and those climes, that the greatest courage they
exhibit, is the effect, not of the furious impulses of rage and revenge,
but conscious dignity and love.
It might naturally be imagined by an European, that the several wives of
one man (for polygamy is general throughout all Asia) would regard one
another with mutual jealousy and aversion: and that they in reality do,
has been asserted by writers of high reputation. The fact however is
quite otherwise: they visit one another with great friendship and
cordiality; and if they are of the same caste, will occasionally eat
together.--The husband is restrained from eating with his wives, either
by a regard to custom; or, as I have been informed by some of the
Gentoos themselves, by a precept of their religion.
Notwithstanding the extreme antiquity of most Indian nations, I am told
that in India beyond the Ganges, on the confines of Aracan and Pegu,
there is a people (if solitary savages roaming through woods in quest of
prey, deserve the name of people) that appear to be in the very first
stage of society. They are the only people in the known world that go
absolutely naked, without the smallest covering on any part of their
bodies. They live on fruit, which grows spontaneously, in the
uncultivated deserts they inhabit, in great abundance; and on the flesh
of animals, which they tear alive and devour. They sit on their hams,
with their legs and arms disposed in the manner of monkeys. At the
approach of men, they fly into their woods. They take care of their
offspring, and live in families, but seem to have no ideas of
subordination of rank or civil government. I have never had occasion to
see this race of mortals myself, but I have conversed with several
persons who have seen them; all of whom concur in the general account of
them, which I have now given you.
[[Notes:
“The unjust punishment of Nundcomar”: Nand Kumar or Nandakumar,
d. 1775.]]
* * * * *
CHARACTER OF THE SWEDES,
From the Letters of Mrs. Wollstonecraft.
The Swedes pique themselves on their politeness; but far from being the
polish of a cultivated mind, it consists merely of tiresome forms and
ceremonies. So far indeed from entering immediately into your character,
and making you feel instantly at your ease, like the well-bred French,
their over-acted civility is a continual restraint on all your actions.
The sort of superiority which a fortune gives when there is no
superiority of education, excepting what consists in the observance of
senseless forms, has a contrary effect than was intended; so that I
could not help reckoning the peasantry the politest people of Sweden,
who only aiming at pleasing you, never think of being admired for their
behaviour.
Their tables, like their compliments, seem equally a caricature of the
French. The dishes are composed, as well as their’s, of a variety of
mixtures to destroy the native taste of the food, without being as
relishing. Spices and sugar are put into every thing, even into the
bread, and the only way that I can account for their partiality to
high-seasoned dishes, is the constant use of salted provisions.
Necessity obliges them to lay up a store of dried fish, and salted meat,
for the winter; and in the summer, fresh meat and fish taste insipid
after them. To which may be added, the constant use of spirits. Every
day, before dinner and supper, even whilst the dishes are cooling on the
table, men and women repair to a side-table, and, to obtain an appetite,
eat bread and butter, cheese, raw salmon, or anchovies, drinking a glass
of brandy. Salt fish or meat then immediately follows, to give a further
whet to the stomach. As the dinner advances, pardon me for taking up a
few minutes to describe what, alas! has detained me two or three hours
on the stretch observing; dish after dish is changed, in endless
rotation, and handed round with solemn pace to each guest: but should
you happen not to like the first dishes, which was often my case, it is
a gross breach of politeness to ask for part of any other till its turn
comes.
* * * * *
THE POVERTY OF THE LEARNED.
From Curiosities of Literature.
To mention those who left nothing behind them to satisfy the undertaker,
were an endless task.
Agrippa died in a workhouse; Cervantes is supposed to have died with
hunger; Camoens was deprived of the necessaries of life, and is believed
to have died in the streets.
The great Tasso was reduced to such a dilemma, that he was obliged to
borrow a crown from a friend, to subsist through the week. He alludes to
his distress in a pretty sonnet which he addresses to his cat,
entreating her to assist him, during the night, with the lustre of her
eyes, having no candle by which he could see to write his verses!
The illustrious Cardinal Bentivoglio, the ornament of Italy and of
literature, languished, in his old age, in the most distressful poverty;
and, having sold his palace to satisfy his creditors, left nothing
behind him but his reputation.
Le Sage resided in a little cottage on the borders of Paris, and
supplied the world with their most agreeable romances; while he never
knew what it was to possess any moderate degree of comfort in pecuniary
matters.
* * * * *