[103] Perez, First Three Years of Childhood, pp. 87, 89.
[104] Sleeman, op. cit. ii. 110.
[105] Cf. Sarasin, Forschungen auf Ceylon, iii. 543 (Veddahs).
The case is different when savages come into frequent contact with foreigners. To deceive a stranger is easy, and no scruple is made of doing so. On the contrary, as we have seen, he is regarded as a proper object of deception, and this opinion is only too often justified by his own behaviour. But when commonly practised in relation to strangers, falsehood easily becomes a habit which affects the general conduct of the man. Hamzé, the teacher of the Druses, said, “When a man once gets into the way of speaking falsely, it is to be apprehended that, in spite of himself, and by the mere force of habit, he will get to speak falsely towards the brethren”; hence it is advisable to speak the truth at all times and before all men.[106] There is indeed abundant evidence that intercourse with strangers, and especially with people of a different race, has had a destructive influence on savage veracity.
[106] Churchill, Mount Lebanon, iii. 225 sq.
This has been noticed among many of the uncivilised tribes of India. “Formerly,” says Mr. Man, “a Sonthal, as a rule, disdained to tell a falsehood, but the influences of civilisation, transfused through the contagious ethics of his Bengali neighbours, have somewhat impaired his truthfulness. In the last four or five years a great change for the worse has become evident, although even now, as a people, they are glorious exceptions to the prevailing idiosyncrasy of the lower class of natives in Bengal. With the latter, speaking the truth has been always an accident; with the Sonthal it was a characteristic principle.”[107] Indeed, the Santals in Singbhúm, who live much to themselves, are still described by Colonel Dalton as “a very simple-minded people, almost incapable of deception.”[108] The Tipperah, “where he is brought into contact with, or under the influence of the Bengallee, easily acquires their worst vices and superstitions, losing at the same time the leading characteristic of the primitive man—the love of truth.”[109] Other tribes, like the Garos and Bhúmij, have likewise been partly contaminated by their intercourse with Bengalis, and acquired from them a propensity to lie, which, in former days, was altogether foreign to them.[110] The Kakhyens are at the present time lazy, thievish, and untrustworthy, “whether their character has been deteriorated by knavish injustice on the part of Chinese traders, or high-handed extortion and wrong on the part of Burmese.”[111] The Ladakhis are, in general, “frank, honest, and moral when not corrupted by communication with the dissolute Kashmiris.”[112] Of the Pahárias, who according to an earlier authority would sooner die than lie,[113] it is now reported that “those who have most to do with them say they cannot rely on their word, and that they not only lie without scruple, but are scarcely annoyed at being detected.”[114] The Todas, whilst they call falsehood one of the worst vices and have a temple dedicated to Truth, seem nowadays only too often to forget both the temple and its object;[115] and we are told that the dissimulation they practise in their dealings with Europeans has been brought about by the habit of paying them for every insignificant item of information.[116] According to an Indian civil servant quoted by Mr. Spencer, various other hill tribes, originally distinguished by their veracity, have afterwards been rendered less veracious by contact with the whites.[117]
[107] Man, Sonthalia, p. 14. Cf. ibid. p. 20.
[108] Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal, op. cit. p. 217.
[109] Lewin, Wild Races of South-Eastern India, p. 216.
[110] Dalton, op. cit. pp. 68, 177.