Page:An Essay On Hinduism.pdf/133
regarding "good manners." But there are some things which they do not freely borrow. It is especially the case when they have some rules already on those matters to which they adhere. In Europe or America, if the people simply know the Hindu or the Chinese ideas, regarding the propriety and impropriety, very little change in the occidental customs will be brought about, even if they see the rationality of the ideas of the Orientals. Similar is the case in India. If the Hindus believe in the rationality of some European ideas, but have too great a regard for their own traditions to discard them, the changes in the traditional customs take place by the introduction of fictions. Let me give a few concrete cases to illustrate the process, where the people tried to make the rules of purity and pollution suitable to modern times.
(1) Rules of purity and pollution require that a high caste man should not drink water touched by a low caste man; if he does drink he should make an atonement. When the water was supplied to individual families in the cities by the pipes, the question arose whether a man becomes polluted by drinking that water, and if so is it necessary for him to make an atonement. When this question came before the council of a certain caste, they declared that the water tax which the people pay for using the water to the city or to the government may be regarded as an adequate fine to make that atonement.
(2) When many Hindus received treatment from European physicians, the medicine which the physicians gave often contained water. Now water touched by a European is impure. Sometimes the medicine which the physicians gave contained even brandy. The propriety of drinking that medicine began to trouble the Hindu