________________
186 THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[June, 1905. = & nursery rhyme to a child;* quote a text from the Pali Scriptures to a Burman or a text from the Quran to Musalman; speak any one of these things with all the force, vigor and raciness of the vernacular, and you will find as your reward the attention arrested, the dull eye brightened, the unmistakable look that comes of a kindred intelligence awakened. The proverbs of a people do not merely afford & phase of anthropological study; they are a powerful force working for influence.
Let me take another class of men largely educated at the Universities,- class which one would like to see entirely recruited from amongst those who have been subjected in early life to the University method of training, - the missionaries. Now, what is the missionary in practice required to do P He is required to bring about in alien races a change of thought, which is to induce in them what we consider to be a higher type of faith and action than their own religion or belief is capable of inducing. There is perhaps no more difficult task to accomplish than this on a scale that is to have a solid effect on a population, and surely the first requisite for success is that the missionary himself should have an insight into three mental characteristics, at any rate, of those he is seeking to convert: - that is to say, into their customs, their institutions, and their habits of thought. That this applies with tremendous force in the case of civilised peoples is obvious on very slight consideration, bat it is possibly not equally well understood that it is no less applicable in reality in the case of the semi-civilised, and even of the untntored savage. There is perhaps no human being more hidebound by custom than the savage. It should be remembered that custom is all the law he knows. Custom, both in deed and thought, represents all the explanation he has of natural phenomena within his ken. It controls with iron bands all his institutions, and the eustomary institutions of savages are often complicated in the extreme, and govern individual action with an irresistible power hardly realisable by the freer members of a civilised nation. Let any one dive seriously, even for a little while, into the maze of customs connected with taba, or with the marriage customs, - laws if you like, -of the Australian aborigines or of the South Sea Islanders, and he will soon see what I mean.
So far as regards civilised peoples, what individual of them is not bound and hampered by custom and convention in every direction? From what does the civilised woman, who, as we say, falls, suffer most? From the law or from custom? What is her offence? It is against law? Or, is it against convention ? If it were against law, would the law pursue her so long, 80 persistently and so relentlessly as does custom? I quote this as an incontrovertible example of the irresistible nature of public feeling among our own class of nations. Well: Among vast populations the most heinous offence, the one offence customarily unpardonable is to become a pervert to the faith, that is, to become a convert to Christianity. Some of my readers may have seen the result of committing that offence. I can recall a case in point. I knew a medical man, by birth a Brahman and by faith a Christian, with an European education. What was his condition ? His habits were not English and he could only associate on general terms with English people, and then he was an oatcast from his own family and people, in s sense so absolute that a Christian realises it bat with difficulty. That was a lonely life indeed and few there be of any nation that would face it. But mark this. He was ostracised, not because of any crime or any evil in him that made hin, dangerous, but because of custom and the fear of breaking through castom on the part of those connected or associated with him
B. 9., Ram nam ladda :
Gopal nam ghi, Har Id nam miert: Ghol ghol pl.
