If, in taking leave of his august guests, he should also signify his sense of the honor they have done him, by presenting each with a piece of cloth or a sum of money, he is assured that he is altogether superior in mind and person to the gods, and that, if he is wise, he will not neglect to remind his friends of his munificence by another exhibition of it within a reasonable time.
In the creed of Asirvadam the Brahmin, the drinker of strong drink is a Pariah, and the eater of cow's flesh is damned already. If, then, he can tell a cocktail from a cobbler, and scientifically discriminate between a julep and a gin-sling, it must be because the Vedas are unclasped to him; for in the Vedas all things are taught. It is of Asirvadam's father that the story is told, how, when a fire broke out in his house once, and all the pious neighbors ran to rescue his effects, the first articles saved were a tub of pickled pork and a jar of arrack. But this, also, no doubt, is the malicious invention of some satirical rogue of a Soodra. Asirvadam, as is well known, recoils with horror from the abomination of eating aught that has once lived and moved and had a being; but if, remembering that, you should seek to fill his soul with consternation by inviting him to inspect a fig under a microscope, he would quietly advise you to break your nasty glass and "go it blind."
But there is one custom which Asirvadam the Brahmin observes in common with the Pariah, and that is the solemn ceremonial of Death. When his time comes, he dies, is burned, and presently forgotten; and it is a consolation for his ever having been at all, that some one is sure to be the richer and happier and freer for his ceasing to be. True, he may assume new earthly conditions, may pass into other vexatious shapes of life; but the change must ever be for the better in respect of the interests of those who have suffered by the powers and capabilities of the shape which he relinquishes. He may become a snake; but then he is easily scotched, or fooled out of his fangs with a cunning charmer's tom-tom;—he may pass into the foul feathers of an indiscriminately gluttonous adjutant-bird; but some day a bone will choke him;—his soul may creep under the mangy skin of a Pariah dog, and be kicked out of compounds by scullions; he may be condemned to the abominable offices of a crow at the burning ghauts, a jackal by the wells of Thuggee, or a rat in sewers; but he can never again be such a nuisance, such a sore offence to the minds and hearts of men, as when he was Asirvadam the Brahmin.
Fortunate indeed will he be, if the low, deep curses of all whom he has oppressed, betrayed, insulted, shall not have availed against him in his last hour. "Mayest thou never have a friend to lay thee on the ground when thou diest!"—no imprecation so fierce, so fell, as that; even Asirvadam the Brahmin abates his cruel greed, when some poor Soodra client, bled of his last anna, thinks of his sick wife, and the darling cow that must be sold at last, and grows desperate. "Mayest thou have no wife to sprinkle the spot with cow-dung where thy corpse shall lie, and to spread the unspotted cloth; nor any cow, her horns tipped with rings of brass, and her neck garlanded with flowers, to lead thee, holding by her tail, through pleasant paths to the land of Yama! May no Purohita come to strew thy bier with the holy herb, nor any next of kin be near to whisper the last mantra!"
Horrid Soodra! But though thy words make the soul of Asirvadam shiver, they are but the voice of a dog, after all, and nothing can come of them. Asirvadam the Brahmin has raised up lusty boys to himself, as every good Brahmin should; and they shall bind together his thumbs and his great toes, and lay him on the ground, when his hour is come,— lest the bed or the mat cling to his ghost, whithersoever it go, and torment it eternally. His wife shall spread beneath him a cloth that the hands of Kooleen Brahmins have woven. Lilies of Nilufar shall garland the neck of the happy cow that is to lead him safely beyond the fiery river, and the rings shall be golden wherewith her horns are tipped. A mighty concourse of clients shall follow him to the place of burning,—to "Rudra, the place of tears,"—whither ten Kooleen Brahmins will bear him; and as often as they set down the bier to feed the dead with a morsel of moistened rice, other Brahmins shall sing his wisdom and his virtues, and celebrate his meritorious deeds. When his funeral pyre is lighted, his sons, and his sons' sons, and his daughters' husbands, and his nephews, shall beat their breasts and rend the air with lamentations; and when his body has been consumed, his ashes shall be given to the Ganges,—all save a certain portion, which shall be made into a paste with milk, and moulded into an image; and the image shall be set up in his house, that the Brahmins and all his people may offer sacrifices before it.
On the tenth day, his wife shall adorn her forehead with a scarlet emblem, blacken the edges of her eyelids with soorma, deck her hair with scarlet flowers, her neck and bosom with sandal, stain her face, arms, and legs with turmeric, and array her in her choicest robes and all her jewels, and follow her eldest son, in full procession, to the tank hard by the "land of Rudra." And the heir shall take three little stones, that were planted there in a row by the Purohitas, and, going down into the water as deep as his neck, shall turn his face to the sun and say, "Until this day these three stones have stood for my father, that is dead. Henceforth let him cease to be a carcass; let him enter into the joys of Swarga, the paradise of Devendra, to be blessed with all conceivable blessings so long as the waters of Ganges shall continue to flow;—so shall the dead Brahmin not prowl through the universe, afflicting with evil tricks stars, men, and trees; so shall he be laid."
But who shall lay the quick Asirvadam, than whom there walks not a sprite more cunning, more malign?
Ever since the Solitaries, odious by their black arts to princes and people, were slain or driven out,—fifteen centuries and more,— Asirvadam the Brahmin has been selfish, wicked, and mischievously busy,—corrupting the hearts, bewildering the minds, betraying the hopes, exhausting the moral and physical strength of the Hindoos. He has taught them the foolish tumult of the Hooly, the fanatical ferocities of the Yajna, the unwhisperable obscenities of the Saktis, the fierce and ruinous extravagances of the Doorga Pooja, the mutilating monstrosities of the Churruck, the enslaving sorceries of the Atharvana Veda, the raving mad revivals of Juggernath, the pious debaucheries of Nanjanagud, the strange and sorrowful delusions of Suttee, the impudent ravishments of Vengata Ramana,—all the fancies and frenzies, all the delusions and passions and moral epilepsies that go to make up a Meerut or a Cawnpore.
Of the outrageous insolence of the Seven Penitents he omits nothing but their sincerity; of the enlightened simplicity of the anchoret philosophers he retains nothing but their selfishness; of the intellectual influence of the Gooroo pontiffs he covets nothing but their dissimulation. He has taught his gaping disciples that a skilfully compounded and plausibly administered lie is a goodly thing,— except it be told against the cause of a Brahmin, in which case no oxyhydrogeneralities of earthly combustion can afford an idea of the particular hotness of the hell devised for such a liar. He has solemnly impressed them with the mysterious sacredness of the Ganges, and its manifold virtues of a supernatural order; to swear falsely by its waters, he says, is a crime for which Indra the Dreadful has provided an eternity of excruciations,—except the false oath be taken in the interest of a Brahmin, in which case the perjurer may confidently expect a posthumous good time. For the rich to extort money from the poor, says Asirvadam, is an affront to the Gooroos and the Gods, which must be punished by forfeiture to the Brahmins of the whole sum extorted, the poor client to pay an additional charge for the trouble his protectors have incurred; the same when fines are recovered; and in cases of enforced payment of debts, three-fourths of the sum collected are swallowed up in costs. Being a Brahmin, to pay a bribe is a foolish act; to receive one—a necessary circumstance, perhaps. Not being a Brahmin, to offer or accept a bribe is a disgraceful transaction, requiring that both parties shall be made an example of;—the bribe is forfeited to the Brahmins, and the poorer party fined; if the fine exceed his means, the richer party to pay the excess.
As the Brahminical interpretation of an oath is not always clear to prisoners and witnesses of other castes, it is usual to illustrate the definition to the obtuser or more scrupulous unfortunates by the old-fashioned machinery of ordeals: such as compelling the conscientious or obdurate inquirer to promenade without sandals over burning coals; or to grasp, and hold for a time, a bar of red-hot iron; or to plunge the hands into boiling oil, and keep them there for several minutes. The party receiving these illustrations and practical definitions of the Brahminical nature of an oath, without discomfort or scar, is frankly adjudged innocent and reasonable.