of one or two sickly children, and their life is then necessarily spent in looking after household affairs, and often in performing, in higher classes, trivial religious duties.

96. PANDIT BADRI DUTT JOSHI, POLITICAL PENSIONER, ALMORA.-It was scientifically proved by medical men in India, in the days of yore, that infant marriage proves injurious to the physical constitution of both parties, as well as to their progeny. The other day talking to a native physician in my neighbourhood on this subject, I heard him repeat a sloka (verse) from Soosroot (a work on medicine), stating that up to the age of 25 in man, and 16 in girl, the bones and vital fluids do not reach complete development, and consequently any wasting of the latter before that, should be discouraged. He further told me that Slokas of this nature are found scattered all over works on medicine by Soosroot and others. Besides this, the law books of Manu and Jajnavalk, for whom our Hindus have great respect, and consider them as the highest authorities on the Shastras, do not enjoin early marriage, nor do the Vedas, the most sacred books of the Aryans.

How does it (the Native Press) expect that a native gentleman of 25, weakened by the wears and tears of a couple of wives and half a dozen children, would leave home to go to the North-west frontier or the Soudan, and there command a division fighting with the enemy of Her Majesty the Empress of India ?

I am very sorry to see and hear of many men who don't hesitate to dine at Hôtels, use English hats and pantaloons, English soap, biscuits, and brandy, and thereby lose religion, nationality, money, and respect, and call this reform, which they are spreading in the country. But what would be a real reform, they have thrown into the background, and quite neglected.

97. HON'BLE MR. KASHINATH T. TELANG, M.A., L.L.B.Those conclusions may be thus formulated. First that neither caste nor Shastra, as popularly understood, exacts anything

more than that girls should not remain unmarried after attaining puberty. Second that neither caste nor Shastra, as popularly understood, has anything to say in the matter of consummation of marriage. And third, that reform is most urgently called for in regard to the time of consummation, and not so much in regard to the time of marriage.

Upon these conclusions, the question arises-If caste and Shas tra are alike out of the way, what is it that stands in the way of the reform here pointed out? My answer is, that the obstacle is in the family.......................The man who wants to initiate this reform finds his difficulties neither in the Shastras, which are only imperfectly, if at all, understood, nor in the caste, which, as such, has not claimed to exercise jurisdction in the matter, but in those dearest and nearest to him, in his family, and among his relations. To many of these, the proposed new departure is distasteful, first, because it is a new departure; secondly, because it is looked upon as calculated to defer the enjoyment of the great blessing of having a son; and thirdly, though this perhaps only to a small extent, because it is calculated to interfere with the eclat of the celebration of the "second marriage."

98. NAVALRAM LAKSHMIRAM, PRINCIPAL RAJKOT TRAINING COLLEGE.-I look upon early marriage as the curse of Aryavarta, which deteriorating its noble race, has contributed so greatly to its complete effacement as a nation from the political world. Its disastrous influences are still at work in almost every family, in one form or another, throughout the length and breadth of Gujarat at least, as I can testify from my own personal knowledge. The evil is of course more prevalent in towns and among the upper classes, but any where it will be a real phenomenon to see a girl of 14 who is not already married. Generally all classes give away their daughters, in marriage before they have completed their 11th year............The com

*When I say Gujarat I don't include Kattywar, where the marriageable age or both sexes is a little higher; the Rajputs also form a noteworthy exception in many respects.

mon saying "my children were betrothed while in their cradle yet," is the proud expression of the completely satisfied aspirations of a Gujarati parent. I am afraid of being disbelieved by a foreigner, when I say that sometimes betrothals are made even before the children are born, but such is the actual fact, of which any can convince himself by a little inquiry at Ahmedabad, or some other place where Kadwa Kunbis (who have this peculiar custom) are congregated in any large numbers.

99. G. E. WARD ESQ., COLLECTOR, JHANSI.-There are probably among those interesed in the cause many barristers and pleaders of ability. It will be a suitable task for them to examine the existing law, so far as it affects the institutions you seek to destroy, and use their efforts to secure justice in individual cases, and to obtain definite rulings upon points which are at all obscure. I have known cases in which the husband of a woman married for the second time, has been refused redress under S. 498 I.P.C. on the ground that the second marriage was not celebrated with the ceremonials prescribed for first marriages. In my opinion, this was a decided error, but the point is one upon which a trained advocate might have much to urge. What I wish to point out is, that when the effect of the existing law has been tested by the action of the courts after a systematic exposition of the arguments best calculated to forward your object, and by the accumulation of specific cases in which you are of opionion that the existing law in any way supports the institutions you condemn, or does not act harmoniously with the wishes of the best informed social reformers, you will be in a far better position than you are now to recommend any change in the law, and at the same time public opinion will have been much influenced in your favour. I trust that your national association for social reform may soon be established, and that it may be truly national.

100. G. H. R. HART ESQ., PRIVATE SECRETARY TO H. E. SIR JAMES FERGUSSON, GOVERNOR OF BOMBAY.-Sir James Fergusson's own opinion upon the questions discussed in your papers is that held, he supposes, by every European, that infant

marriages do violence to nature itself, set at naught the rights of women as human beings, and are calculated to produce manifold evils; while enforced widowhood entails undeserved misery and frequently leads to crime.

101. A. O. HUME ESQ.-Most entirely do I agree with you that much misery results from these customs (infant marriage and enforced widowhood), that in the present day (whatever may have been the case in times long past) the evil generated by them far outweighs any good with which they can justly be credited--that yearly this disproportion will increase, and that their abolition is even now an object in every way worthy to be aimed at...............

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Though I admit that the evil does on the whole outweigh the good, it is not fair to our people to allow it to be supposed that they are so helplessly blind, as to cling to institutions which are utterly and unmitigatedly bad. In the existing state of the native social problem, no really impartial competent judge will, I believe, deny that, in many cases, these institutions, even yet, work fairly well. There are millions of cases in which early marriages are believed to be daily proving happy ones, and in which consummation having been deferred by the parents (and this my friends say, is the usual case) till a reasonable age (I mean for Asiatic girls), the progeny are, so far as we can judge, perfectly healthy, physically and mentally,

A native friend writes to me.--"The wife, transplanted to her husband's home at a tender age, forgets the ties that bound her to the parental hearth, and by the time she comes of age, is perfectly naturalized in her adopted family, and though she is allowed no wifely intercourse with her husband until she attains a fitting age, still the husband and wife have constant opportunities of assimilating each other's natures, and growing, as it were, into one, so that when the real marriage takes place, the love they feel for each other is not merely passion, but is mingled with far higher and purer feeling. Misfortunes cannot alienate our wives, they have no frowns

for us, even though we commit the most heinous crimes, or illtreat or sin against themselves. Those ignorant of our inner life call this a vile subjugation, and say that we have made our wives our slaves; but those who live amongst us know, that it is the result of that deep seated affection that springs from early association and religious (if you will, superstitious) teaching. Where will you find a wife so true and contented as a Hindu's? Where more purity of thought or more religious fervour than in the Hindu women of respectable families? Our men alas! may be materialists, atheists, immoral, base, but our women are goodness in human shape, and why? Because they have been shown an object on which to concentrate the entire love and veneration of their natures, at a time when their pure hearts were unsullied by any other impressions or ideas, and taught to look up to their husbands, whose faces they could only look on after many solemn ceremonies, as their guardians, protectors, and gods."

Every thing in this world has its darker and brighter sides, and the blackest cloud has some silver lining; and though my friend in his happy husbandhood (for his has been, I know, a happy infant marriage) generalizes too enthusiastically from his own experience, still he has some foundation for his contention; and infant marriage (though fraught with grievous misery in too many cases, though a customs marked for extinction, and daily becoming more and more of an anachronism, and more and more of an evil, taking its results as a whole) has not yet become that unmitigated curse, unrelieved by redeeming features, which, forgive me if I say so, your vigorous onslaught would, it seems to me, lead the European readers to believe.

Do you remember Uncle Tom's Cabin ?............ But for Uncle Tom's Cabin, I fully believe that slavery would have been abolished before now, and without any civil war.

102. HIRANAND KHEMSING B. A. HYDERABAD, (SINDH).-Gold is the chief motive of many parents in our