ment is carefully kept from the sex.* As they are always confined to domestic duties, and carefully excluded from the company of the other sex, a Hindoo sees no necessity for the education of females, and the shastrus themselves declare, that a woman has nothing to do with the text of the védů: all her duties are comprized in pleasing her husband, and cherishing her children. Agreeably to this state of manners, respectable women are never seen in the public roads, streets, or places of resort. What would a European say, if the fair sex were at once to be excluded from public viewand if, in every public assembly, every private walk, every domestic circle, he was to meet only the faces of men! When a child is ill, the mother, supposing that her milk is the cause of its sickness, abstains from bathing, eating sour food, fish, &c. and partakes of food only once a day. Sometimes, after making a vow, and promising some gift, if the deity will restore her child to health, she abstains from cutting the child's hair until the expi ration of the vow; others tie up a lock of hair, and repeat over each hair in the lock the name of a different deity: this clotted hair may frequently be seen on the heads of children. Though the children of the highest and the lowest casts seldom play in company, yet the offspring of casts which more nearly approximate are often seen in the streets, playing together with the utmost freedom; and indeed if a child at play should have food in its hand, and the child of another cast partake of it, it is not much noticed. Hindoo children play with earthen balls, and with the small shells which pass for money. Bigger boys amuse themselves in different kinds of inferior gaming, as dice,t throwing kourees, &c. ; in boyish imitations of idolatrous ceremonies; in kites; leaping; wrestling; in a play in which two sides are formed, bounds fixed, and each side endeavours to make incursions into the boundary of the other without being caught; in hide and seek, and the like. Children are seldom corrected, and having none of the *An old adage is always present with the Hindoos, that if a woman learn to read, she will become a widow. -I am informed, however, that women teach the female children of kayŭst'hus and bramhuns to cut figures in paper and plantain leaves, and delineate other forms with paste on seats, walls, &c. Many are taught to spin thread, which is perhaps the most general female employment among the Hindoos. + At the full moon in Ashwin the Hindoos sit up all night and play at dice, in order to obtain the favour of Lukshmee, the goddess of wealth. moral advantages of the children of christian parents, they ripen fast in iniquity, and among the rest in disobedience to parents.* At a very early age, they enter the paths of impurity, in which they meet with no checks either from conscience, the virtuous examples of parents, or the state of public morals.—A bramhăn, who appeared to respect Christianity, was one day reading the first chapter of the epistle to the Romans in Bengalee; and while going over this melancholy description of the sins of the heathen, he confessed, with a degree of astonishment, how remarkably applicable it was to the manners of his own countrymen. SECTION II. Marriages. THE Oodwahu-tüttwŭ, a work on the civil and canon law, mentions eight kinds of marriage: 1. Bramho, when the girl is given to a bramhun without reward.-2. Doivu, when she is presented as a gift, at the close of a sacrifice.-3. Arshŭ, when two cows are received by the girl's father in exchange for a bride.-4. Prajapŭtyŭ, when the girl is given at the request of a bramhŭn.-5. Asooră, when money is received in exchange for a bride.-6. Gandhŭrvŭ, when a marriage takes place by mutual consent.†—7. Rakshŭsă, when a bride is taken in war; and 8. Poishachu, when a girl is taken away by craft. A Hindoo, except he be grown up, as in second marriages, never chooses his own * Hindoo youths occasionally leave their homes at ten, twelve, or fourteen years of age, without leave from their parents, and visit different holy places, partly from a disposition to wander, and partly from ideas imbibed in their childhood from hearing stories relative to the merit of visiting holy places. Some afterwards send letters, to acquaint their parents, that they have proceeded to such a holy place; others return after a lapse of some months, while others never return; but after a young person has left home without acquainting his parents, they often conclude that he is gone to some idolatrous ceremony, or to bathe in Gŭnga, or to some holy place. + The pooranus relate, that formerly, when a king's daughter had not been married in childhood by the contract of her parents, and she was grown up to be old enough for marriage, she might solicit of her father to have what is called a shŏyŭmbărŭ wedding, in which the girl chooses her own husband. To enable her thus to choose, the king makes a great feast, and invites multitudes of kings, and from amongst them the girl chooses her husband. Ramů, Urjoonŭ, Krishnŭ, Nŭlŭ, and others, are all said to have been chosen by the princesses to whom they were afterwards united. P wife. Two parents frequently agree while the children are infants, to give them in marriage, but most commonly a parent employs a man called a ghŭtáků, to seek a suitable boy or girl for his child.* The son of a shoodru is often married as early as his fifth year; the son of a bramhun, after being invested with the poita, at seven, nine or eleven. Delays to a later period are not unfrequent: parents cannot always obtain a suitable match, or money is wanting; marriages also must be regulated by the cast, and by complicated cus-, toms. Amongst the middling ranks, five hundred roopees are often expended, and amongst the rich many thousands, at the marriage of a son. One of the Hindoo shastrus gives the following directions respecting the quali ties of a wife:-" She who is not descended from his paternal or maternal ancestors within the sixth degree, is eligible by a twice-born man for nuptials. In connecting himself with a wife, let him studiously avoid the following families, be they ever so great, or ever so rich in kine, goats, sheep, gold and grain: the family which has omitted prescribed acts of religion; that which has produced no male children; that, in which the védu has not been read; that, which has thick hair on the body; and those, which have been subject to [here a number of diseases are mentioned.] Let a person choose for his wife a girl, whose form has no defect; who has an agreeable name; who walks gracefully like a young elephant; whose hair and teeth are moderate respectively in quantity and in size; whose body has exquisite softness." The following account of the person of Sharuda, the daughter of Brimha, translated from the Shivů poorană, may serve as a just description of a perfect Hindoo beauty: This girl was of a yellow colour; had a nose like the flower of the sesamum; her legs were taper like the plantain tree; her eyes large like the principal leaf of the lotus; her eye-brows extended to her ears; her lips were red like the young leaves of the mango tree; her face was like the full moon; her voice like the sound of the cuckow; her arms reached to her knees; her throat was like that of a pigeon; her "The espousals, or contract before marriage," among the Romans, says, Kennett, "was performed by an engagement of the friends on both sides," loins rarrow like those of a lion; her hair hung in curls down to her feet; her teeth were like the seeds of the pomegranate; and her gait like that of a drunken elephant or a goose. Each cast has its own order of ghutikus, which profession may be embraced by any person qualified by cast and a knowledge of the ghuti ku shastris. They sometimes propose matches to parents before the parents themselves have begun to think of the marriage of their child. Many of these men are notorious flatterers and liars,* and, in naking matrimonial alliances, endeavour to impose in the grossest manner upon the parents on both sides. If the qualities of a girl are to be commended, the ghutiku declares, that she is beautiful as the full moon, is a fine figure, of sweet speech, has excellent hair, walks gracefully, can cook and fetch water, &c. After the report of the ghitiku, a relation on each side is deputed to see the children, and if every thing respecting cast, person, &c. be agreeable, a written agreement is made between the two fathers; and in this way, persons are united in wedlock with as much indifference as cattle are yoked together; matrimony becomes a mere matter of traffic, and children are disposed of according to the pride of parents, without the parties, who are to live together till death, having either choice or concern in the business. These very early marriages are the sources of the most enormous evils: these pairs, brought together without previous attachment, or even their own consent, are seldom happy. This leads men into unlawful connections, so common in Bengal, that three parts of the married population, I am informed, keep concubines. Many never Some ghŭtukŭs are not employed in making marriage agreements; but, after studying the books belorging to their profession, they subsist on the gifts received at weddings, and quarter then selves on those koolēēt ŭs ard shrotriyus who are rich men. When a ghŭtŭkŭ visits such a koolēēnŭ or shrotriyu, he rehearses a number of honourable qualities which he ascribes to the ancestors of his host; but if this person be not disposed to be liberal towards him, he endeavours to bring forward all the violations of the rules of the cast into which he or his ancestors may have fallen; and sometimes this disappointed ghì ti ku endeavours to involve the person in disgrace among his friends, or in the presence of large assemblies of bramhuns. In almost all families there are faults respecting the cast, which are well known to these ghŭtukos, and which they know how to use as means of extorting money. + Among the vŭngshujus, those families which have sunk lowest in honour, meet with great difficulties in finding girls for their sons, and it is not uncommon for the ghatukus to impose the child of a shōōdrů upon sucha vũngshujŭ as the daughter of a bramhun. visit, nor take their wives from the house of the father-in-law, but they remain there. a burden and a disgrace to their parents; or, they abandon the paternal roof at the call of some paramour. Early marriages also give rise to another dreadful evil: almost all these girls after marriage remain at home, one, two, or three years; and during this time numbers are left widows, without having enjoyed the company of their husbands a single day these young widows, being forbidden to marry, almost without exception, become prostitutes. To these miserable victims of a barbarous custom are to be added, all the daughters of the koolēēnus, who never leave the house of the father, either during the life, or after the death of their husbands, and who invariably live. an abandoned life. The consequences resulting from this state of things, are, universal whoredom, and the perpetration of unnatural crimes to a most shocking extent. : Some days or weeks before a wedding takes place, a second written agreement is made between the two fathers, engaging that the marriage shall take place on such a day. This is accompanied sometimes with the promise of a present for the daughter, which may amount to ten, fifty, or more roopees. On signing this agreement, a dinner is given, in general by the girl's father; and gifts are presented to the bramhuns present, as well as to the ghůtŭků, according to the previous agreement, perhaps five, six, eight or ten roopees. Where a present is made to the father of the girl, which is very common at present, the cast of the boy is not very respectable : in the most reputable marriages, the father not only gives his daughter without reward, but bears the expences of the wedding, and presents ornaments, goods, cattle, and money to the bridegroom. Three or four days before the marriage, the bodies of the young couple are anointed with turmerick, and the boy, day and night, till the wedding, holds in his hand the scissars with which the natives cut the betle nut, and the girl holds in her hand the iron box which contains the black colour with which they daub their eyelids. The father of the boy entertains all his relations, and others; to relations giving a cooked dinner, to others sweetmeats, &c. and the father of the girl gives a similar entertainment to all his relations. After this, the rich relations feast the bridegroom and |