Hindu manners, customs and ceremonies
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| J. A. Dubois |
from introduction
I now offer to the public I am chiefly dependent on my own research, having hved close and familiar intercourse with persons of every caste and condition of life. Many Europeans settled in India would have been more capable than myself of performing the same task. Still, I may be permitted to doubt whether there has been any person more favourably situated for gleaning information or more zealous in his pursuit of knowledge.
At the same time, he disclaims for his work any general applicability to the whole of India. His observations extend, broadly speaking, to the India that lies south of the Vindyan Range. Even within those Hmits, he is careful to remark that local differences are so many and so marked that 'there is no class or sect or community of Hindus that has not, in addition to the general rules of Hindu society, some domestic usages peculiar to itself So that, as he says, it is impossible to generalize with complete accuracy on any subject connected with them. But though the
Abbe with characteristic modesty leaves to ' the many learned Europeans residing in the country ' the task of compiling from authentic documents ' a more methodical and comprehensive history of the Hindus,' his own work possesses special merits of its own and is far superior to any that could be compiled from books of reference and literary investigations, for, as Major Wilks said of it, ' it was meditated and composed amid the people whom it describes, and in writing it the author followed the only path that has ever yet led to a true delineation of national character, namely, the path of original research and personal observation.'
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