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the infant of her womb?” Yes; while we see the cow butting with her horns, and threatening the person who dares to approach her young, we see woman in India, (at Saugur Island,) throwing her living child in the outstretched jaws of the alligator!* [1] At that awful and affecting moment, too, when body and soul are parting—and when those under the influence of our benevolent religion, are paying every attention which affection can suggest, to soothe the pangs of death, at such a time the Hindoo is hurried to the side of the Ganges, or some other sacred river, where he is laid, in the agonies of death, exposed to the burning sun by day, and to the dews and cold by night; he is laid on the earth, and there immersed up to the middle in the stream, while his relations stand round tormenting him, in these his last moments, with superstitious rites, and increasing a hundredfold the pangs of death.
But if christianity has greatly conduced to raise the moral character of Man—it has in a very great degree retrieved that of woman from the degraded state in which heathenism places her; and in no country is their situation more debased than in Hindostan. The anxiety of the Hindoo to obtain a son, who may present the funeral offerings, upon which he supposes his future happiness to depend, and the expenses attending the support and marriage of girls, makes the birth of a female an unwelcome event;
- ↑ See Ward's Farewell Letters.
