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Updated: May 1, 2025
And if he did not see these things which were on the surface, what could he know of matters that lie deeper? Now the first and most important thing to be known respecting the Purbhoo, the fundamental fact of him, is that he is not a Brahmin.
Quicker than the dart of the python, the fierce onset of the kingly tiger, the sudden flash of the forked and quivering lightning, was the grasp made at the outstretched arm by the practised Brahmin. His tenacious fingers closed tightly round the other's wrist. One sudden wrench, and he had the blacksmith's arm bent back and powerless, held down on the little fellow's own shoulders.
One curious instance is given of a man speaking in the person of Devee, and of himself as a third person, saying to a Brahmin: 'You are going to the Concan: take this fellow with you. He was happy and pure, performing my worship, &c.
With the Gentoos, certain impurities or disgraces, though without any guilt of the party, infer loss of caste; and when the highest caste, that of Brahmin, which is not only noble, but sacred, is lost, the person who loses it does not slide down into one lower, but reputable, he is wholly driven from all honest society. All the relations of life are at once dissolved.
But his wife said, "You had better go again to our son-in-law, the Jackal, and see what he can do for us." So next day the Brahmin climbed the hill again, as he had done before, and went to call upon the Jackal. When the Jackal saw him coming he was not very well pleased. So he went to meet him, and said, "Father-in-law, I did not expect to see you again so soon."
On the morning of Tuesday note the day of the week the 24th of the following November, Ummed Singh Upadhya, head of the most respectable and most extensive Brahmin family in the district, died, and presently came a deputation of his sons and grandsons to beg that his old widow might be allowed to burn herself upon his pyre.
The world and all its inhabitants are at the mercy of cruel, fickle and unjust gods; the gods are under the influence of the Brahmins; hence the Brahmins are holy men and must be treated accordingly. No Hindu will offend a Brahmin under any circumstances, lest his curse may call down all forms of misfortune. A Hindu proverb says: "What is in the Brahmin's books, that is in the Brahmin's heart.
There was a little grove of mango-trees, rather stunted, as they are in the north, and away at one corner of the plantation was a well with a small temple where a Brahmin, related to all the best families in the neighbouring village, dwelt and collected the gifts bestowed on him and his simple shrine by the superstitious, devout, or worldly pilgrims who yearly and monthly visited him in search of counsel, spiritual or social.
"Is this custom," asked the Brahmin, "an advantage or a tax on your estate?" "A tax, indeed! Why it is worth from four to five hundred head a-year." "And how much is it worth to your neighbour?" "I presume nearly as much." "Do your vassals get rich by the bounty you give them?" "As to that matter, some who are lucky succeed very well, and the rest make a living by it."
Perhaps," added Kenelm, with a deeper shade of thought on his brow, "it is this perpetual consciousness of struggle; this difficulty in merging toil into ease, or stern duty into placid enjoyment; this refusal to ascend for one's self into the calm of an air aloof from the cloud which darkens, and the hail-storm which beats upon, the fellow-men we leave below, that makes the troubled life of Christendom dearer to Heaven, and more conducive to Heaven's design in rendering earth the wrestling-ground and not the resting-place of man, than is that of the Brahmin, ever seeking to abstract himself from the Christian's conflicts of action and desire, and to carry into its extremest practice the aesthetic theory, of basking undisturbed in the contemplation of the most absolute beauty human thought can reflect from its idea of divine good!"
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