THE LATEST INCIDENT IN BENGAL.
What fools the Hindoos must be !' exclaim sensible Euro- peans, who would be furious, nevertheless, if deceived into eating human flesh, or if they knew that human milk was sold in London publicly, as it is said to be in Hong Kong ; and the exclamation is, of course, in one way justified, for it is foolish enough to think that what a man eats can affect his spiritual welfare ; but let us try to understand what it was that moved a population generally so tranquil and submissive. Hindoo thought is strangely unlike Western thought; but it is not often purely irrational, still less disconnected. From his own point of view, the Bengalee, in eating ghee corrupted with fat, was the victim of a terrible outrage. His idea, based on his whole philosophy and sanctioned by the teaching of centuries, is that, in order to rise into a higher life and ensure to the soul its necessary dominance over the body—without which man, in his judgment, is not man, but only an animal—it is indis- pensable that the body should preserve its ceremonial purity. Without that, the spirit is tainted, or rather, as we under- stand Hindooism, is kept in bondage to its own servant. The body must be free of certain degradations, which may be external and entirely involuntary, but which are degradations none the less, as much so in extreme cases as rape would be to a European lady. The will, which alone in Christian theology can be degraded, would be innocent and untouched ; but there would be defilement none the less. First among these degradations of the body is the eating of forbidden food, because that actually enters the stomach ; and first among the impure foods is any edible, except fish or an animal offered in sacrifice, in the preparation of which a life must have been destroyed. Any such food is offensive, for no Hindoo can take the life he cannot give ; but if the food is beef, it is additionally horrible, because the bull or cow ought to be reverenced—a rule as old as the Aryan race, and probably devised to protect the draught-cattle on which the tribes depended for locomotion—while if it is pork, it is disgusting, all Asia, for a reason it is not necessary to specify here, holding swine to be marked out by the Almighty as specially and visibly unclean. Such diet, if voluntary, can be the result only of inordinate license, license fatal to the soul's ascendency, and to every Hindoo not ignorant, or a hypocrite, or an infidel, is from his very heart anathema; while if involuntary, the fact, though not precisely the sin, of degrada- tion, remains. The progress upwards is stopped, and the whole being, which though dual is yet one, becomes impure. No man in such a position can perform the needful sacrifices with any hope that they will be acceptable either to the gods or to that all-pervading Spirit which is beyond because it includes the gods. No man can acquire any "merit," and without merit what is to prevent his descent into a lower scale of being? No man can even keep those segregating rules which Europeans term the rules of caste, and which, though to an immense extent social and designed to secure useful secular ends—which at a heavy price they do secure, caste, for example, preventing the competition of an over-numerous people from resulting in starvation wages—are also believed to aid in ensuring ceremonial purity. The shraddh, the grand ceremonial by which filial piety secures—not heaven, that is an error—but release for the father's spirit, is, if performed by a defiled person, more than an ineptitude, a blasphemy. The entire framework of Hindoo society, that which keeps the vast, and on the whole beneficial, system in working order, and without which it would speedily be the foulest of anarchies, perishes if ceremonial purity is dis- regarded; and it is fatally disregarded when unclean meat is swallowed, whether by consent or under duress. It is this which renders " conversion " so detestable, the true Hindoo caring little about opinion, but being utterly unable to tolerate cere- monial impurity. The most wretched Hindoo is convinced of its value, even though he may hardly apprehend—he always knows in a way, just as a Neapolitan or an untaught Irishman knows the Catholic faith—the thought upon which his conviction is founded. We may imagine, therefore, the horror of that im- mense community at the adulterated ghee, the eagerness to put down the accursed thing, the spirit in which the action of the Government would be scrutinised the moment the offence was made known. If it would not help the people under such circumstances, though insurrection might be impossible, it was an accursed Government, not to be obeyed by any one to whom the lotus was a symbol, except perforce. It was fortunate that the Government understood ; most fortunate that it was not itself accused of complicity with the manufacturers of ghee.
We have often been asked how it happens that this reverence for ceremonial purity has not produced occasionally great catastrophes, overthrowing Governments and destroying dynasties ; and the answer is not easy to find. Why, for instance, will not the bad ghee destroy the caste of millions? We suppose the true answer is that in extreme cases all men set their creeds aside, just as the Jews, in the siege of Jerusalem, after being constantly attacked on the Sabbath, at last waived their Sabbatarian principles and struck back. Hindooism, however, does afford two remedies in such eases, one social and one spiritual. Nobody can enforce a caste-law except the caste itself ; and if by any accident, as might have happened in this matter of the ghee, a whole caste is affected, the penalty of expulsion becomes inoperative, and, in fact, no severe punish- ment could be inflicted. That lenity does not, of course, remove the spiritual consequence of impurity; but then, expiation does, and the right of settling the form of expiation devolves upon the priesthood, which in such matters is nearly as free and as powerful as the Papacy, and, like the Papacy, would be guided by considerations of ex- pediency. The explanation is not, however, quite satisfactory, for sincerely pious Hindoos constantly quit secular life, and take to the hermit life in Benares or elsewhere, because of some accidental taint; but we suppose that if the whole system of Ifin.cloo thought could be explored, we should find an ultimate difference admitted between voluntary and involuntary degrada- tions of the body. It is never openly admitted ; and Nuddea would protest with one voice that the involuntary swallow- ing of beef-tea was inexpiable by any conceivable rite—the Pundits did pass some resolution like this about the Tagore family—but still, the difference must be admitted somehow. If it were not, Hindooism could be destroyed by a purely external act of violence, and we do not think the great doctors of Hindooism would admit that. The occurrence is, in fact, like some of the Protestant deductions from the doctrine of infallibility, one which it is impossible to pronounce out of the question, yet everybody knows will never happen. The rigid system will bend somehow, and all Hindoos, or a large -section of them, will never be formally pronounced outside the pale of Hindooism. It would be requisite to obtain evidence that all the ghee eaten was impure, and that you perceive, and the Pundits would perceive very clearly, is evidence unprocurable by man.
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