In India we find strict veracity
most prevalent among the wildest and half-savage tribes of the hills
and jungles in Central India, or the chain of the Himalaya mountains;
and among those where we find it prevail most, we find cattle-
stealing most common; the men of one tribe not deeming it to be any
disgrace to _lift_, or steal, the cattle of another. I have known the
man among the Gonds of the woods of Central India, whom nothing could
induce to tell a lie, join a party of robbers to lift a herd of
cattle from the neighbouring plains for nothing more than as much
spirits as he could enjoy at one bout. I asked a native gentleman of
the plains, in the valley of the Nerbudda, one day, what made the
people of the woods to the north and south more disposed to speak the
truth than those more civilized of the valley itself. 'They have not
yet learned the value of a lie,' said he, with the greatest
simplicity and sincerity, for he was a very honest and plain-spoken
man.
Veracity is found to prevail most where there is least to tempt to
falsehood, and most to be feared from it. In a very rude state of
society, like that of which I have been speaking, the only shape in
which property is accumulated is in cattle; things are bartered for
each other without the use of a circulating medium, and one member of
a community has no means of concealing from the other the articles of
property he has.
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