Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A. (Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D.
Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India
Mrs Sudha Rani Maheshwari, M.Sc (Zoology), B.Ed.
Former Principal, A.K.P.I.College, Roorkee, India
“Long before the European nations knew anything of hygiene, and long before they realized the value of tooth-brush and a daily bath, the Hindus were, as a rule, given to both. Only twenty years ago London houses had no bath-tubs and the tooth-brush was a luxury.”
LAJPAT RAI, L: Unhappy India, Calcutta 1928 pp 280
It will seem incredible to the provincial mind that the same people that tolerated such institutions as child marriage, temple prostitution and suttee was also pre-eminent in gentleness, decency and courtesy. Aside from a few devdasis, prostitutes were rare in India, sexual propriety was exceptionally high. “It must be admitted” says the unsympathetic Dubiois, “that the laws of etiquette and social politeness are much more clearly laid down, and much better observed by all classes of Hindus, even by the lowest, than they are by people of corresponding social position in Europe.” The leading role played by sex in Occidental conversation and wit was quite alien to Hindu manners, which forbade any public intimacy between men and women, and looked upon the physical contact of the sexes in dancing as improper and obscene. A Hindu woman might go anywhere in public without fear of molestation or insult; indeed the risk, as the Oriental saw the matter, was all on the other side. Manu warns men: “Women are by nature ever inclined to tempt man; hence a man should not sit in a secluded place even with his nearest female relative” and he must never look higher than the ankles of a passing girl.
Cleanliness was literally next to godliness in India; hygiene was made an essential part of piety. Manu laid down, many centuries ago, an exacting code of physical refinement. “Early in the morning,” one instruction reads, “Let him” “bathe, decorate his body, clean his teeth, apply collyrium to his eyes, and worship the gods”. The native schools made good manners and personal cleanliness the first courses in the curriculum. Every day the caste Hindu would bathe his body, and wash the simple robe he was to wear; it seemed to him abominable to use the same garment, unwashed, for more than a day. “The Hindus,” said Sir William Huber, “stand out as examples of bodily cleanliness among Asiatic races, and, we may add, among the races of the world. The ablutions of the Hindu have passed into a proverb.”
Yuan Chwang, 1300 years ago, described thus the eating habits of the Hindus:
They are pure of themselves, and not from compulsion. Before every meal they must have a wash; the fragments and remains are not served up again; the food utensils are not passed on; those which are of pottery or of wood must be thrown away after use and those which are of gold, silver, copper or iron get another polishing. As soon as a meal is over they chew the tooth-stick and make themselves clean. Before they have finished ablutions they do not come in contact with each other.
The Brahman usually washed his hands, feet and teethes before and after each meal; he ate with his fingers from food on a leaf, and thought it unclean to use twice a plate, a knife or a fork; and when finished he rinsed his mouth seven times. The toothbrush was always new- a twig freshly plucked from a tree; to the Hindu it seemed disreputable to brush the teeth with the hair of an animal, or to use the same brush twice: so many are the ways in which men may scorn one another. The Hindu chewed almost incessantly the leaf of the betel plant, which blackened the teeth in a manner disagreeable to Europeans, and agreeable to himself.
Hindu law books give explicit rules for menstrual hygiene, and for meeting the demands of nature. Nothing could exceed in complexity and solemnity the rituals for Brahman defecation. The twice-born (dwij) must use only his left hand in this rite, and must cleanse the parts with water; and he considered his house defiled by the very presence of Europeans who contented themselves with paper. The outcastes, however, were less particular, and might turn any roadside into a privy. In the quarters occupied by these classes public sanitation was confined to an open sewer line in the middle of the street.
In so warm a climate clothing was a superfluity, and beggers and saints bridged the social scale in agreeing to do without it. Untill the late 18th century it was probably the custom in south India to go naked above the waist. Children were dressed for the most part in beads abd rings. Most of the population went barefoot; if the orthodox Hindu wore shoes they had to be of cloth, for under no circumstances would be use shoes of leather. A large number of the men contented themselves with loin clothes; when they need more covering they bound some fabric about the waist, and threw the loose end over the left shoulder. The Rajputs wore trousers of every color and shape, with a tunic girdled by a ceinture, a scarf at the neck, sandals or boots on the feet, and a turban on the head. The turban had come in with the Moslems, and had been taken over by the Hindus, who wound it carefully around the head in varying manner according to caste, but always with the generosity of a magician unfurling enfless silk; some time one turban, unravelled, reached a length of 70 feet. The women wore a flowing robe-colourful silk sari, or homespun khaddar- which passed over both shoulders, clasped the waist tightly, and then fell to the feet; often a few inches of bronze flesh were left bare below the breast. Hair was oiled to guard it against the desiccating sun; men divided theirs in the center and drew it together into a turf behind the left ear; women coiled a part of theirs upon their heads, but let the rest hang free, often decorating it with flowers, or covering it with scarf.The men were handsome, the young women were beautiful and all presented a magnificent carriage, an ordinary Hindu in a loin cloth often had more dignity than a European diplomat completely equipped. Pierre Loti thought it “incontestable of perfection and refinement among the upper class” in India. Both sexes were adept in cosmetics, and the women felt naked without jewelry. A ring in the left nostril denoted marriage. On the forehead, in most cases, was a painted symbol of religious faith.
According to the laws of Manu and the practice of the world a lie told for good motives is forgivable; if, for example, the death of a priest would result from speaking the truth, falsehood is justifiable. But Yuan Chwang tells us: “They do not practice deceit, and they keep their sworn obligations…They will not take anything wrongfully in favour of India, reports the Hindus of the 16th century as “religious, affable, cheerful, lovers of justice, given to retirement, able in business, admirers of truth, grateful, and of unbounded fidelity.” “Their honesty,” said honest Keir Hardie, “is proverbial. They borrow and lend on word of mouth, and the repudiation of adebt is almost unknown,” “I have had before me” says a British judge in India, “hundreds of cases in which a man”s property, liberty and life depended upon his telling a lie, and he has refused to tell it.” How shall we reconcile these conflicting testimonies? Perhaps it is very simple: some Hindus are honest and some are not.
Nevertheless there is comparatively little crime in India, and little violence. By universal admission the Hindus are gentle to the point of timidity, too worshipful and good-natured, too long broken upon the wheel of conquest and alien despotisms, to be good fighters except in the sense that they can bear pain with unequalled bravery. Their greatest faults are probably listlessness and laziness; but in the Hindus these are not faults but climatic necessities and adaptions. The Hindus are sensitive, emotional, temperamental, and imaginative; therefore they are better artist and poets than rulers or executives. They can exploit their fellows with the same zest that characterises the entrepreneur everywhere; yet they are given to limitless charity, and are the most hospitable hosts this side of barbarism (Atithi devo bhava). Even their enemies admit their courtesy, and a generous Britisher sums up his long experience by ascribing to the higher classes in Calcutta “polished manners, clearness and comprehensiveness of understanding, liberality of feeling, and independence of principle, that would have stamped them gentlemen in any country in the world”.
The Hindu genius to an outsider, seems sombre, and doubtless the Hindus have not had much cause for laughter. The dialogues oh Buddha indicate a great variety of games, including one that strangely resembles chess; but neither these nor their successors exibit the vivacity and joyousness of Western games. Akber in the 16th century, introduced into India the game of polo (From the Tibetan word pulu, Hindu Balti dialect polo, meaning ball;cf. The Latin pila) which had apparently come from Persia and was making its way across Tibet to China and Japan; and it pleased him to play pachisi( the modern”parches”) on squares cut in the pavement of the palace quadrangle at Agra, with pretty slave-girls as living pieces.
Frequent religious festivals lent colour to public life. More decorous were the wedding festivals that marked the great event in the life of every Hindu. At the other end of life was the final ceremony-cremation. In Buddha’s days the Zoroastrian exposure of the corpse to birds of prey was the usual mode of departure; but persons of distinction were burned, after death, on a pyre, and their ashes were buried under a tope or stupa-i.e., a memorial shrine. In later days cremation became the privilege of every man. In Yuan Chwang’s time it was not unusual for the very old to take death by the forelock and have themselves rowed by their children to the middle of the Ganges, where they threw themselves into the saving stream. Suicide under certain conditions has always found more approval in the East than in the West; it was permitted under the laws of Akber to the old or the incurably diseased, and to those who wishes to offer themselves as sacrifices to the gods. Thousands of Hindus have made their last oblation by starving themselves to death, or burying themselves in snow.
References
WILL DURANT:Our Oriental Heritage New York 1954
BEBL,AUGUST:Women under Socialism.New York 1923
DUBIOS ABBE J. A: Hindu Manners Cusstoms and Ceremonies. Oxford, 1928
WILLIAMS, H.S:History of Science.5v New York, 1904
WATTERS, T.: On Yuan Chuang’s Travels in India 2v London,1904
SUMNER,W.G: Folkways. Boston, 1906
WOOD, ERNEST: An Englishman Defends Mother India. Madras, 1929
MULLER MAX: India: What Can It Teach Us? London,1919
MUKERJI,D.G: A Son of Mother India Answers. New York, 1928
SMITH, V.A: Akbar.Oxford, 1919
FRAZER,R.W:Litrary History od India. London1920