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Updated: June 9, 2025
It had a showy label reading, "Exshaw No. 1 Cognac". Nagendra Babu's conscience accused him of disobeying the Shástras; but the die was cast. He could no longer exist without a daily dose of the subtle poison; and gradually increased it to a tumblerful, forgetting to add water. His faithful wife did her best to wean him from the fatal habit.
He also studied the Christian Scriptures and was slightly versed in the Hindu Shastras. He became dissatisfied with the Pantheism of his mother faith; the caste system grated upon his nerves, and the idolatry and the superstitions of the land, and especially the gross immorality of the people, roused him to deep thought and activity.
The fact is we are so used to bear everything, hands down, the ravages of Nature, the oppression of rulers, the pressure of our shastras to which we have not a word to say, while they keep eternally grinding us down. 22nd September 1894.
Because, for a Hindu to be told that in order to salvation he must forsake the idols which his forefathers have worshipped for hundreds of years, and adopt the creed laid down in the Shastras of another nation, is to him the height of absurdity.
When so learned a teacher affirms that widow-marriage is approved by the Shastras, who can contradict? And if you say that though allowed by the Shastras it is not countenanced by society, that if I carry out this marriage I shall be excluded from society, the answer is, 'Who in Govindpur can exclude me from society?
Leaving aside the four books of the Vedas; the Puranas which are written in Sanscrit and composed of eighteen volumes containing 400,000 strophes treating of law, rights, theogony, medicine, the creation and destruction of the world, etc.; the vast Shastras, which deal with mathematics, grammar, etc.; the Upa-Vedas, Upanishads, Upo-Puranas which are explanatory of the Puranas; and a number of other commentaries in several volumes; there still remain twelve vast books, containing the laws of Manu, the grandchild of Brahma books dealing not only with civil and criminal law, but also the canonical rules rules which impose upon the faithful such a considerable number of ceremonies that one is surprised into admiration of the illimitable patience the Hindus show in observance of the precepts inculcated by Saint Manu.
The practice of infanticide was really based on the recommendation of Sati, literally the "method of purity" which the Hindoo shastras require when they recommend the bereaved wife to burn with her husband.
A person, however distressed, should never solicit a miser for alms, or one that speaketh ill of others, or one that is unacquainted with the shastras, or a dweller in the woods, or one that is cunning, or one that doth not regard persons worthy of regard, or one that is cruel, or one that habitually quarrels with others, or one that is ungrateful.
For is it not laid down in all the Shástras, that even an abhisariká, were she dying for her lover, must notwithstanding observe times and seasons, choosing for her expedition only proper opportunities, such as are afforded by a winter night, or a dense fog, or the confusion caused by a whirlwind or an earthquake or an uproar, or a revolution in the state, or an illness of the king, or a festival, when all the citizens are drunk, or sleeping, or when the city is on fire.
Against its impulse to speak I clenched my jaws; for one word against Brahm or the Triad or the Shastras would doom me; one act of kindness to the outcast Brahmans who now and then dragged themselves to die on the burning sands a blessing said, a cup of water given and I became one of them, lost to family, country, privileges, caste. The love conquered!
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