he merchant answered me, "if any one not
belonging to our caste has fixed his eyes for a long time upon one of
our cooking utensils, we have to wash that article thoroughly, and throw
away the food it contains. You have polluted my milk and no one will
drink any more of it, for not only were you not contented with fixing
your eyes upon it, but you have even pointed to it with your finger."

I had indeed a long time examined his merchandise, to make sure that it
was really milk, and had pointed with my finger, to the merchant, from
which side I wished the milk poured out. Full of respect for the laws
and customs of foreign peoples, I paid, without dispute, a rupee, the
price of all the milk, which was poured in the street, though I had
taken only one glass of it. This was a lesson which taught me, from now
on, not to fix my eyes upon the food of the Hindus.

There is no religious belief more muddled by the numbers of ceremonious
laws and commentaries prescribing its observances than the Brahminic.

While each of the other principal religions has but one inspired book,
one Bible, one Gospel, or one Koran--books from which the Hebrew, the
Christian and the Musselman draw their creeds--the Brahminical Hindus
possess such a great number of tomes and commentaries in folio that the
wisest Brahmin has hardly had the time to peruse one-tenth of them.
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.
Manu was incontestably a great legislator and a great thinker, but
he has written so much that it has happened to him frequently to
contradict himself in the course of a single page. The Brahmins do
not take the trouble to notice that, and the poor Hindus, whose
labo