Description of the character, manners, and customs of the people of India; and of their institutions, religious and civil / by the Abbé J.A. Dubois ; translated from the French manuscript.

  • Jean-Antoine Dubois
Date:
1817
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Description of the character, manners, and customs of the people of India; and of their institutions, religious and civil / by the Abbé J.A. Dubois ; translated from the French manuscript. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    work, we have inserted the following extract of a letter from Major « Wilks, late Acting President at Mysore, in which country the Abbé € Dubois has chiefly resided, addressed to the Military Secretary of “ our late President : « € The Manuscript of the Abbé Dubois on Indian Casts, was « put into my hands by the author early in the year 1806, and so “ far as my previous information and subsequent inquiry have “ enabled me to judge, it contains the most correct, comprehen- “ sive, and minute account extant in any European language of “ the Customs and Manners of the Hindus. Of the general « utility of a work of this nature, I conclude that no doubt can “ be entertained. Every Englishman residing in India is inte- “ rested in the knowledge of those peculiarities in the Indian * casts which may enable him to conduct with the natives the “ ordinary intercourse of civility or business without offending “ their prejudices. These prejudices are chiefly known to Euro- “ peans as insulated facts, and a work which should enable us to “ generalize our knowledge by unfolding the sources from which “ those prejudices are derived, would, as a manual for the younger “servants of the Company, in particular, be productive of public “ advantages, on which it seems to be quite superfluous to enlarge. € Being desirous of obtaining for the work the advantage of | “ a testimony to its merits of greater weight than any which I ‘ could presume to offer, I submitted it to the perusal of a gen- © tleman of high literary eminence, who returned it to me with “ an eulogium which more than justified the opinion I had pre- ‘ viously formed, but without the permission (which had been the “ chief object of my communication) to make a public use of his “ name.’ “ The Manuscript was communicated to Lord William Bentinck pre- « viously to His Lordship’s departure, and Mr. Petrie has explained “ in a separate Minute the reasons which prevented the subject from “ being earlier noticed. The Abbé Dubois having no means of editing ‘ the work at his own charge, and it being obviously of public import- ‘ ance that so useful a compilation should not be withheld, it became
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