Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies

Abstract

THE work of the Abbe Dubois, both in the original French, and in the English editions—the one published in 1816, the other some thirty odd years ago—has long been a standard work on modern Indian customs, much valued and frequently quoted by ethnologists. But strange to say, what has hitherto been known as the Abbe's work is in fact merely a rough sketch and (as Mr. Beauchamp says) “only an extremely poor representation of what the Abbe's great work really was.” The history of the book is peculiar. The French MS. of the original draft was placed in the hands of Major Wilks in the year 1806, when the Abbe had been about fourteen years in India. Major Wilks studied the work, and on his recommendation the MS. was, in 1807, purchased by the Madras Government and transmitted to London for translation and publication. Yet the English translation was not published until 1816. In 1815 the MS. was returned to the Abbe, and he “put into it all the additions and corrections suggested by many years of additional study and investigation; and when he sent it back to the Government of Madras, it was, practically speaking, a different work altogether.” However, neither this revised MS., nor a finally corrected copy prepared by the Abbe three years later, have ever been used for the editions hitherto published, although both MSS. were sent to England and preserved in the India Office Library. One copy of the finally revised MS. was left in the records of Fort St. George, and this has now been translated and edited by Mr. Beauchamp, so that at last we possess the Abbe's work in its final and corrected shape. Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies. By the Abbe J. A. Dubois. Translated from the Author's later French MS., and edited with notes, corrections, and biography by Henry K. Beauchamp. With a Prefatory Note by the Right Hon. F. Max Muller, and a Portrait. Pp. xxxvi + 730. (Oxford: at the Clarendon Press, 1897.)