Law, or the Ordinances of Menu—Comprising the Indian System of Duties, Religious and Civil.”
This is the fountain-head of those rules which constitute the laws of life for the women of India, and, terrible as many of them are in their undisguised deformity here, they have been made ever more hideous and horrible by the added ingredients of bitterness which they received as they flowed down through the ages, and were expressed in Puranas and Shasters, in traditional teachings, popular dialogues, in the Hindoo drama, and in their literature generally. We shall quote from these to illustrate and justify the representations given of woman's lot in that land
“Where the skies forever smile,
And the oppressed forever weep.”
In drawing a picture of woman in India, we first speak of her birth; and here we are met with the terrible fact of female infanticide, so common in that land. This is an ancient, systematic, and prevalent crime among the Hindoos. Not especially among the poor or the debased, but prevailing chiefly among the Rajpoot families, some of the proudest and wealthiest of the tribes of India. The doctrine and practice, and the unblushing avowal of this unnatural crime, on the part of its perpetrators, are such as cannot be found anywhere else on earth. And the infernal custom has so drugged their consciences, that even the mothers themselves of these destroyed little ones have declared their insensibility of any feeling of guilt, even where the deed has been done by their own hands.
Girls are not desired, not welcome; and when they come, and must live—as British law now demands, where its power can reach them, that life must be held sacred—still they can be at least ignored, if not despised. Why, if my native friend had six children, three boys and as many girls, and I happened to inquire, “Lalla, how many children have you?” the probability is he would reply, “Sir, I have three children;” for he would not think it worth while to count in the daughters.
They cannot understand our Christian feelings in rejoicing over
