Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/30

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INTEODUCTION.

sent out a

number of men distinguished

in science, administration,

and war, and though the light of Eastern learning has paled, and the sword rarely finds opportunities of winning fame, they still provide the English Government of North India with numbers of its ablest servants, and contribute one of the most important of its

elements to the only learned profession

—the

bar.

As

culti-

vators the Muhammadans are scattered all over the country, and vie with the Kurmi and the Murio in industry and the sue cessful tillage of the finer crops, such as sugar and opium as weavers they share with the lower Hindu caste, from whom their artizans are mostly derived, the monopoly of the manufacture of cotton cloths. The comparatively small numbers of the Muhammadans are a far less significant proof of the importance of Oudh as a centre of Hinduism than the enormous numerical predominance of Brahmans. The sacred class counts no less than 1,400,000 souls (or about one-eighth of the whole), and between a fifth and a sixth of the Hindu population, and every one of them is invested with a reverence which no extreme of abject poverty, no infamy of private conduct, can impair, and which is beyond anything

which a mind not immediately conversant with the

facts can conare invariably addressed with the titles of divinity or highest earthly honour. The oldest and highest of the members of other castes implore the blessing of the youngest and poorest of theirs ; they are the chosen recipients of all charity, and are allowed a license in their private relations with the inferior castes which would be resented as a deadly injury in any but themselves. In return for this position of unparalleled suceive.

They

premacy they renounce actual empire, of which they admit the Chhattris to be the proper repositories, and number only six among the taluqdars of the province. The most important of these—the late Mahdraja Man Singh and Raja Krishn Datt Rdm

Gonda— acquired their estates, not as ancient chieftains, but in the later days of Muhammadan rule, the one as a Government official of exceptional ability, the other as a large capitalist, whose wealth and influence made him indispensable ahke to the revenue collector and the villager. The main duties of the Brahman are, not the service of particular deities, for that is usually left to the religious orders which are above caste, but the direotion of the family life of the people down to the smallest acts-—from the solemnization of marriage and performance of funeral rites to the selection of a favourable day for starting on a journey or cutting the ripened porn. No ceremony, no feast, is perfect unless conducted under

of