Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 4.djvu/140

MOULVEES. By this class, therefore, and by the women, what remains of the old traditional and hereditary feeling of grim enmity is kept alive ; and it can only be hoped that it may gradually die out, as it cannot be otherwise modified or extinguished. To education in any English form these classes are deeply and consistently opposed. Any system that has not the Koran for its base is foul and unorthodox. The Koran and kindred books were taught in imperial colleges and universities, and sufficed for glory and honour. What is taught in English schools is latitudinarian, as much for Hindoo infidels as for Mahomedan true believers. Is it possible they can be assimilated? As a consequence, the learned classes of Mahomedans do not use our schools. They adhere to then own traditions; they have schools and private tutors of their own, which suffice for their needs; but they hardly see yet, that a few of their lower classes who have perceptions of existing necessity, are using the despised English schools, and outstripping them in the race of life, for its honours and even its subsistence.

Also so strict an observer of Mahomedan customs of ritual observance as the devout Moulvee He prays five times a day without fail, and says his prayers and recitations from the Koran with devout unction. His postures in prayer are unexceptionable; he has learned them of the purest posture master, and there is not a hair's breadth of difference in the proper positions of his hands, nor does he bend too low, or raise himself too high in the several orthodox bowings and prostrations. His beard and mustachios are trimmed according to the precepts of the Koran, and the skin of his forehead, worn to a callosity where it touches the ground, bears witness to his frequent devout ceremonies. The Moulvee religiously observes the five divine commands: the confession of faith, prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and, if he can, pilgrimage. If he cannot go to Mecca, he sends some one as a substitute, or contributes something to some one who is going, and thus saves his conscience. He fasts rigidly in the Rumzan, he mourns and beats his breast in the Mohorum, and in the solemn prayer for the regnant power, said with the confession of faith at the Bukreed, still prays for the royal family of Delhi, now nigh extinct. In the nocturnal vigils in the "night of power" who so rapt as he? professing to see divine things, to be the medium of " revelations," in which many of his scholars believe. Who more intolerant in India than the Moulvee? Who gathers up his robes as he passes any object likely to defile him, even his own officer's (English) table or chairs, or feet, more carefully to avoid contact, which would involve rites of purification, so carefully as the Moulvee? and who, on any other subject but the law, or the exercise of his profession, is more profoundly and persistently ignorant? The description of a Pharisee applies to him precisely. Who more charitable after his fashion, who more devout, who more respectable and observant of the outward decencies of life, who understands better, or is more sure about the "Turreequt," or path to heaven? In former days he might have