The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14.s6.11

c14.s6.11

The establishment of a town by Kālketu belonging to the lowly and untouchable caste of *vyādha* (hunter or fowler) is an important item in this work.²⁵ And this furnishes the poet with an occasion for describing the diverse races and classes of population, the occupational structure of the people,—the milkmen, the Kāyasthas, the Brāhmaṇas etc., and the different wards of the city. The Moslems also come in for treatment and their manners and customs, marriage ceremony, and other social institutions have commanded the author’s attention. In this realistic account given over to the Moslem *mores* the Mollahs (Moslem priests) are described as officiating in the *jabāi* (i.e., ceremonial sacrifice) of hens and of she-goats for the Moslem householder. The poet is objective enough to mention that the fee obtained by the Moslem priest in connection with the hen-“sacrifice” is 40 cowries (=0-0-6 pies approximately) and that that for the she-goat “sacrifice” is *the head of the animal plus* 120 cowries (=0-1-6 pies approximately). It is interesting sociologically to observe that in sixteenth-century Bengal the Moslem householders are described in a manner which we of today should consider similar to the *āchāra* or practice of the Hindus in so far as the services of a priest in regard to the *jabāi* or sacrifice of animals are being requisitioned. The socio-religious *rapprochement* between Hindus and Moslems is a phenomenon that strikingly arrests our notice.