Avowals meaning

These being too incoherent to serve for a legal report, a false account of the friar's avowals was drawn up and published.

At the same time one also meets with frank avowals of a superstitious fear lest any irregularity in the performance of the obsequial rites should cause the Fathers to haunt their old home and trouble the peace of their undutiful descendant, or even prematurely draw him after them to the Pitri-loka or world of the Fathers, supposed to be located in the southern region.

It simply shows that it is now old- fashioned to make public avowals of racial sentiment.