This Is A Passive Force, And Its Passiveness Only Makes It More
Formidable.
Western education and English influence can do nothing
to change it.
There exists only one course of action for the
excommunicated; he must show signs of repentance and submit to
all kinds of humiliations, often to the total loss of all his
worldly possessions. Personally, I know several young Brahmans,
who, having brilliantly passed the university examinations in England,
have had to submit to the most repulsive conditions of purification
on their return home; these purifications consisting chiefly in
shaving off half their moustaches and eyebrows, crawling in the
dust round pagodas, clinging during long hours to the tail of a
sacred cow, and, finally, swallowing the excrements of this cow.
The latter ceremony is called "Pancha-Gavya," literally, the five
products of the cow: milk, curds, butter, etc. The voyage over
Kalapani, the black water, that is to say the sea, is considered
the worst of all the sins. A man who commits it is considered
as polluting himself continually, from the first moment of his
going on board the bellati (foreign) ship.
Only a few days ago a friend of ours, who is an LL.D., had to
undergo this "purgation," and it nearly cost him his reason. When
we remonstrated with him, pointing out that in his case it was
simply foolish to submit, he being a materialist by conviction
and not caring a straw for Brahmanism, he replied that he was bound
to do so for the following reasons:
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