32. UTAMRAM N. MEHTA.-The fact is that the masses of the high caste Hindus are practically against the remarriage of widows, though a great many of them speak in its favour. About 30 years ago the public opinion was so strong against it, that no one dared to speak publicly on the subject while they can do so now freely and without molestation. If things go on as they have in the course of the last 30 years, there is a hope that in course of time the reform now recommended will be carried out by the people themselves.

33. AMBALAL S. DESAI.-Speaking of Gujarat, I may safely assert that it (the evil of enforced widowhood) exists in a very small degree among the agricultural classes who form the main bulk of the total population. It is in the urban communities, the Brahmins, the Banyas, and the kindred classes, that widowhood is enforced as an institution. Even among them the number of cases of females that are condemned by custom, prejudice, social tyranny and the like, to lifelong misery and whose age may excite compassion is very small. I believe the census reports will bear out these remarks.

As things stand now, few, if any high class widows will think of complaining of the ill-treatment of them by their relatives or even strangers. There will be complaints, no doubt, but, I fear they will mostly be found to have proceeded from women of no character, acting from mean and selfish motives, whom it will be hardly proper to encourage by a free offer of State support.

It is not the priest that excommunicates, but the caste, the priest merely acting as its mouthpiece and executive officer.

34. PANDIT NARAYAN KESOW VAIDYA.-A government servant of very high standing and position, lost his first wife by whom he had a son. He married a second wife when he was of 48 years: by her he had children also. After his 55th or 57th year he was pensioned; his second wife died, and a few months afterwards he married a third, aged 10 or 11. He had, it is stated, paid some money for the marriage and

made provision for her too. Soon after he died, his heirs, it is said, caught hold of the keys of the box, did away with the documents &c., and the poor creature is now, I understand quite helpless and dragging a miserable life. This instance occurred in the district of Ratnagiri, where the Brahmin element is strong. I will cite a case which occurred in the neighbouring district of Kolaba. A man of considerable property, a widower, evidently in his 57th year or so, married a girl of 11 years. He had given her ornaments worth about Rs. 3,000, assigned a certain sum for her to go to Benares and other sacred places, given her permission to adopt a son, and in the event of any dispute or disagreement taking place between the adopted son and her, she was to have for her absolute use a certain amount annually. The old man fell ill of diabetes and his medical advisers told him to go for a change of air in the Deccan, where after a lingering sickness of 2 or three months, he died, leaving a will wherein the above intentions were duly provided. All, however, was unavailing. It is stated that the genuine document was substituted for by another; and it was given out that the boy to be adopted by the lady had already been adopted by the dying man. The boy's father became Vahivatdar,* took hold of the keys, cash, ornaments and everything that could be gathered, and the widow was left to her fate with only Rs. 100 a year. Many other examples can be cited to show the fate of widows after the demise of their husbands.

35. GOKULDAS KAHANDAS PAREKH.-In the higher castes when a widow remarries she immediately loses her caste, and the decree of the caste deprives her of the company and association of her parents, brothers, sisters and others for whom she would have considerable love and affection, but no such result follows adultery, however clear and convincing be its evidence.

36. HONOURABLE V. N. MANDLIK.-There is no enforced widowhood in India at present......To become a widow is a mis* Manager.

fortune. There is no balm to a soul so wounded, except the one obtained by entering into a higher kind of life, abnegating oneself on the altar of duty, and sacrificing self to a higher self in a manner recognized by the highest religious sanctions as well as by the sanction of society, and by training the mind and body so to live in this world as to qualify one's self for a higher. This is the accepted doctrine and practice of the Hindu Shastras which the highest minds have adopted and still pursue more or less successfully. What does the actual condition of the people disclose? The simple but effective Savitri Upakhyana which is religiously observed throughout Hindustan shows that the second marriage of a woman is opposed to Hindu religious convictions. The Savitri day or days are the holiest festivals for females in India. Government may refer to authorities from the Mahabharata down to the Vrataraja.

I cannot, I regret, accept with complaisance the compli ment which the present writer impliedly gives to the Hindus as being so utterly incapable of self-action. Such a supposition argues ignorance of history, past and present. The Hindus have never lost their originality through countless revolutions and varying cycles of time. Has the effect of English Education which has brought them into contact with Milton and Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Tennyson, Goldstücker and Müller and their worthy compeers in the republic of letters, so enfeebled their intellect as to make them forget their own Bhishma Bali-Vashitha and Janaka and other illustrious ancestors and lose their own self-respect. The Hindu Community may have its short-comings; but, with submission, it need not fear its detractors, whoever they may be. Leaving the past (the memory of which is scrupulously preserved by the daily practices of the people), if a modern Ahalyabai at Indore could dispense justice like Dharmaraja from behind the parda, could strike terror into the hearts of neighbouring princes by plain letters, and yet could so sanctify her life as to make her shrine an object of devotion to her votaries at the

present day, the widows of India are in excellent company, and need no lecture from the present writer.

37. JASWANTSING, THAKORE SAHIB OF LIMBDI.--There is indeed no doubt that the system of enforced widowhood is a social evil, which it must be the endeavour of every true reformer to eradicate.

SECTION III. BENGAL PRESIDENCY.

38. C. H. TAWNEY, DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION.Dr. Trailakya Nath Mitra observes in his Tagore Lectures for 1879 p. 211 that very few marriages have taken place among high castes under Act XV. of 1856, because the Hindu Community at large has not accepted Pandit Iswar Chandra Vidiasagar's interpretation of the Shastras as correct. "The movement would have succeeded better, if instead of an appeal to the Legislature, which is alien in its constitution, a grand congress of the Hindus, learned in the Shastras throughout the country, and representing all possible shades of opinion, had been held under the presidency of one of its respected teachers, and the orthodox nature of the measure had been established by the decision of such an assembly. Such a decision would have been among the Hindus what the decree of an œcumenical council is among Roman Catholics, and would have been accepted by the mass of Hindus as genuine Shastra and the social reform would have been carried out most successfully."

Babu Radhika Prusanna Mookerjia states that Raja Pramatha Bhushan Dev Roy of Naldanga in Jessore has come forward with his vast influence to tread in the footsteps of Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar. There is clearly a small but energetic party in Bengal working in favour of the remarriage - of widows.

39. C. T. METCALFE, COMMISSIONER ORISSA DIVISION.It is gravely argued that wives would poison their husbands to get rid of them, and so marry other husbands more congenial to them, if widows were at liberty to marry. Many other opinions expressed in the papers before me are so childish and foolish that the only remark necessary is that it is astonishing that, men who in other matters hold sensible views, can really believe the opinions they express.

40. BABU KEDARESUR ROY.-A Hindu priest is, unlike the priests of ancient Popedom, not competent to excommunicate any; it is the Hindu society which does so.

41. TIPPERAH PEOPLE'S ASSOCIATION.-The real difficulty lies in the fear of social excommunication, which is indeed a very terrible thing to a Hindu widow.

42. KUMAR PRAMATHA BHUSHANA DEVA RAJA.-In Bengal, society is led by rich men of the upper classes, the mass of the people following in their wake. The priests and the Pandits watch which way the wind blows, and shape their opinions accordingly. They have no power to excommunicate or persecute any body. The leaders of society upon whose patronization depends the means of subsistence of the priests and the Pandits, utilize their services to suit their own inclinations. The Pandits readily grant immunity to these leaders, even if they be guilty of gross violation of Hindu social or religious ordinances. Such being the position of the Pandits, they raised a hue and cry against the venerable Vidyasagar, and sheltered under the fangs of the social leaders, set up legions of obstacles to frustrate the noble object he had in view......... ...But the aspect of things has changed during the last 3 or 4 years.........The Vernacular Press in Bengal have taken up the question, in right earnest, and are doing their best to popularise the cause.

43. BABU MENULAL CHATTERJEE.-In the present state of society, widows require special protection by the State. Often the relations of their deceased husbands annoy them