Page:History of India Vol 9.djvu/283

 CHAPTER VIII HINDU MANNERS AND CUSTOMS AS DESCRIBED BY THE DUTCH MISSIONARY ABRAHAM ROGER 1640 A. D. ONE of the most interesting accounts of the man- ners and customs of the people of Southern India is given by the Dutch missionary Abraham Roger, who resided at Pulicat, north of Madras, from 1631 to 1641. His chief informant was an outcast but intelligent Brahman named Padmanabha, who conversed with him in Portuguese. Roger returned to Holland, after five years at Batavia, in 1647, and died at Gonda in 1649. Two years later his widow published at Leyden his memoirs of India, entitled De Open-Deure tot het ver- ~borgen Heydendom, or " The Open Door to Hidden Heathendom," which appeared in a German version at Nuremberg in 1663 and in a French rendering at Am- sterdam in 1670. Dr. Louis H. Gray has here trans- lated portions of the work into English for the first time; and his version, which is comprised in this chap- ter, preserves the atmosphere of the original in a par- ticularly happy manner. ' Our purpose in this treatise is not only to set forth the life and the customs of the Bramines, but 237