Americans to understand or sympathize with, the general horror which parents in India feel in view of the supposed disgrace which would rest upon them and theirs in the event of their daughters remaining unmarried.
An additional explanation is found in the relation which a son bears to the Shraad of his father—those funeral rites at which he is to officiate, and which are considered essential to the happy transmigration and future welfare of the departed parent; so that the birth of a boy, and of each in succession, is an assurance of salvation to the father, while, as sacrifice and religious rites are all denied to women, a girl is regarded as of no moral moment whatever. She is a mere secular creature, whose life is considered as forfeited if the father concludes that there is no reasonable prospect of a suitable marriage for her, or that his means wont allow him to contemplate the customary nuptial expenses of his tribe. What girls are saved from death are usually those first born; the later ones have not a chance of life, those spared requiring their death as a necessity of their position and dignity.
This wholesale destruction of human life in the homes of India is a parental responsibility; but at whose hands have these innocents perished? By the midnight assassin, or the Indian tomahawk or scalping knife? No, no; let humanity shudder. They are the mothers—the unhappy mothers—who, in the name of false honor, demon pride, and hereditary fictions of rank or purity of lineage, have no compassion on the fruit of their own womb, who imbrue their hands in the blood of their new-born babes.
Say, ye happy American mothers, who have fondled your smiling babes, and clasped them to your bosoms as the most precious gifts of Heaven, if ever such a tale of woe as this has sounded in your ears? It will be a satisfaction to you to reflect that the lady missionaries whom your societies are now sending to that land, and who carry right into the center of these homes your Christian sentiments and feelings upon this subject, may be designed by God to work out a remedy for an evil which has hitherto defied human law and all that man alone could do for its extirpation.
