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THE SATURDAY REVIEW OF LITERATURE, MARCH 7, 1925, p. 580

Among the Hindus

Among The Brahmins and Pariahs. By J. H. Sauter. Translated from the

German by Bernard Miall. Boni & Liveright. 1924. $3. Reviewed by Charles

A. KofoidHERE are colorful and intimate glimpses into the daily life of the Hindu

people as interpreted by one who though alien lived for many years among themand by transfusion became a blood brother of Arun the Brahmin. By even closer

bonds he has linked himself to the intellectual and religious moods of this mystical,emotional, passionate people. The environmental contrasts of vast plain and

mountain peak, of drouth and flood, of fountains, of fecundity and the plague, of

sordid squalor and regal magnificence, are paralleled by the more strikingantithesis of the sensualism of the temple life on the one hand and the purity and

elevation of the religious teaching on the other. The author's experiences reveal the

intenseness of the Hindu. It appears in the fakir who sits immobile in the templecourt in the curses of the Kurumba, in the terror these imprecations inspire amongthe thieving outcasts, in the swami who immuremures himself for fifteen days, in

the refinement of ablutions of Brahmin, in the ramifications of the blight of saste,

in wifehood and widowhood; in fact, in every human relation. Judicial moderationand proportion are not pre-eminent Hindu qualities. The Indian temple must have a

thousand pillars.

The author seeks to create an Indian atmosphere. He does it by eliminatingall externals of the customary Occidental interpretations of the Orient. His readers

are brought at once without warning into the Brahmin home, into the Calcutta

opium den, to the temple of celebration, into the cemetery of the plague-strickenvillage, into the school of the yogi, and into the gossip and lore of the Road. Since

the days of Kim no writer has so widely opened the doors of India to Western eyesor so sympathetically shown us the Indian mind at work on the daily tasks and age-

old problems of this intensely interesting people. The translator has carried over

into English the graceful and forceful style of the original, a feat which adds much

to the atmosphere of the work. Scientific criticism may find flaws in theobservations and interpretations of the writer and even charge him with

exaggeration or fakingbut these are phases of the author's artistry in creating this

quite compelling representation of Indian life and characteristics.An important discovery was recently made at Columbia University. It is an

unpublished portion of Sebastiano Serlio's manual of architecture published in the

sixteenth century, and said to have great architectural and bibliographical interest,destined to affect the modem judgment of the French Renaissance.

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Editorial Reviews

Ever since the advent of British rule in India the inquisitive Europeans havebeen busy making deep study of the life of Indian people-their ancient past and

also their present. Since India is as large as Europe minus Russia, they found it a

land of endless variety of geography, climate, culture, religions, sprawling plains,arid deserts, dense forests, great rivers, lofty mountain ranges and above all a

society boasting of the highest to the lowest stages of culture and which was atonce the most affluent and at the same time swallowing in most abject poverty.

Some belonged to the fairest of the human race and some dark no less than theNegroes of Africa. The present volume gives one of the most interesting and at the

same time most realistic description of the Indian society as it existed in the

opening decades of the twentieth century. The author, a German traveler, stayed inIndia for fifteen years in the course of which he traveled from the Malabar coast

to the fields of the Himalayas and saw every part of the country, watching from

close quarters the social life as led by the natives of India as well as by the whitemen, who ruled over them. As soon as the book appeared in German, it becamemost popular among European readers and was soon translated in several other

European languages including its present translation in English. During his

sojourn, the author observed the antiquity of Hinduism and its timeless existence.In his own words.. nations have come and gone, the sacrifices and the hymns to

the Devas (gods) are even today offered up and sung as in the days of the great

Gautama. In vain did the Muslim Moghuls with despotic cruelty strive to enslavethe soul of Hinduism to their Crescent. Inspite of all, Brahminism has remained

erect, unchanging through the changing ages, like a rock admits foaming

breakets. And then follow most charming accounts such as of the 14 years oldravishing beauty Malka of the China towns redlight area of Calcutta where he

was taken by the Police Inspector Macnaughten and to the underworld of opiumdens of Chinese quarters. This is followed by the heart-rending life story of

Brahmin ascetic Sita Bai whom he found singing on her instrument. She became a

widow at the age of 12, an orphan at the age of 17 when she lost her entire family

in a devastating famine. The most delectable account in the book is that in whichhe describes his memories of malabar, the Pearl of India, nestling in its marvelous

garland of palam trees, the wild and rugged Ghats climbing steeply to the table

land of India and the life story of the Brahman boy Kumaran who became aChristian Convert and lived to serve the lepers in whose colony he made his

permanent home against the stiff opposition of his parents and where he ultimately

got infected by the fatal disease and died a noble death in the service of the lepers.