MR. S. H. CHIPLONKAR.-It is only 26 per cent. even if the Brahmins are included. The proportion of Hindu married girls under fifteen to their total number, is 27 per cent. in Gujarat, 26 per cent. in the Deccan, 21 per cent. in the Konkan, 33 per cent. in the Western Carnatic, 28 per cent. in the city of Bombay, and 6 per cent. in Sind. The total number of Hindu girls under ten, at the last census was, in Gujarat, 287,840, and out of these 250,113 were single, 36,582 married, and 1,145 widowed. In the Deccan, out of 659,379 girls under ten, 594,849 were found single, 63,077 married, and 1,453 widowed.

MR. RAMANUJCHARI. My hair stand on end when I hear of virgin widows under ten. In Southern India the evil is much more rampant. There girls are married from 6 months up to 12 years, especially among the Brahmins.

MR. C. SUBBARAYA AIYAR.-The figures given in the Madras Census report suggest that between 6 and 7 is the average age for females among Brahmins. To quote the words of the report:-"Some are married before seven, and nearly all are married before ten."

MR. T. PATTABHIRAM.-The Brahmins are only 4.94 per cent. of the whole Indian population. The Brahmin female population for the whole of India is 6,606,000, and of this number, 31 per cent. are widows, 21 per cent. unmarried and the rest married. These are not discreditable figures.

MR. S. H. CHIPLONKAR.-So also the figures for all Hindus generally do not show any very high averages. In the Panjaub the percentages of Hindu married and widowed girls and boys under ten, respectively, are 3 and 13; in the Madras Presidency 4 and; in the North-West Provinces 5 and 23; in the Central Provinces 8 and 2; in the Bombay Presidency 10 and 23; in the Bengal Presidency 14 and 51⁄2; in the Berars 21 and 4.

A HINDU SOCIAL REFORM MISSIONARY.-I say these figures do not show the real extent of the evil, for they only show how many girls and boys under ten were found married or widowed at the Census of 1881, and not how many were really married or widowed under ten. A girl, for example, married at the age of six in 1875 and being nearly 12 years old in 1881, would not appear in the statistics relating to married girls under ten. If you suppose that the girls found married under ten were the only girls so married, then it would follow that the Hindu women shown as married in the 7th decade in the Census report, were married in that decade. But none believes that 6,84,000 Hindu women are married when past the age of sixty, or that 17,53,000 are married between 50 and 60, or that 43,42,000 are married between 40 and 50, or that 87,97,000 are married between 30 and 40, or that 66,51,000 are married between 20 and 25, or even that 53,23,000 are married between 15 and 20. No candid Hindu can deny what Mr. Telang says that the custom of premature marriage is "all but universal." Taking, however, the Census figures as to girls under ten and fourteen into consideration, is it not a mournful fact that no less than 19,32,000 Hindu girls under ten were found married, and no less than 63,000 widowed, at the Census? Twenty lakhs of married and widowed girls under ten is a sight not seen anywhere out of India. Then, besides these twenty lakhs, we have no less than 43,95,000 Hindu married, and 1,74,000 widowed, girls from ten to fourteen years of age. This gives us, then, 45 lakhs and three quarters more. We have thus 65 lakhs of married and widowed girls under fourteen. The aggregate number of Hindu single, married, and widowed males in 1881 was roundly 8,44,00,000, and of Hindu females 8,16,00,000. Of these former 3,97,00,000 were married and of the latter 2,50,00,000; but mark, gentlemen, that while there were only 44,05,000 widowers, there were no less than 1,61,00,000 widows, in other words the widows were to widowers as 3 to 1. So also, if you examine the figures in detail, you find that the widows keep up this

proportion in the first three decades, while in the latter three their proportion is nearly as 4 to 1. Contrast, again, the proportion of widowed males to married males with the proportion of widowed females to married females. The former is as 1 to 9; the latter is as 1 to 2! What is the significance of this last fact? It is that out of every 4 married women one at least is a widow. And who does not know how this takes place?

SIR T. MADAVA ROW.-Babu H. M. Chandra has shown to us that in Bengal more than one in four girls are wives or widows between 5 and 10 years of age. The Madras Census Report contains a passage about Brahmins, which is especially instructive, as there is little doubt that if a better custom were adopted by them it would, in all probability, be imitated. This is the passage: "There are proportionately 50 per cent. more widows among Brahmins than among other castes, and this surplus may be wholly attributed to the greater extent to which infant marriages occur among Brahmins than is the case with other castes. Certainly one-third, probably a larger portion of the number of Brahmin widows, are widows owing to this custom; that is to say, if Brahmins countenanced infant marriage only to the extent that other castes do, there would be nearly 60,000 fewer unhappy women in their caste. The total figures show that there are 80,000 widows under twenty, and the foregoing remarks suggest that the Brahmin custom is responsible for three-fourths of this."

DR. RAJENDRALALA MITRA.-But, Sir, the less the number of widows, the greater the number of maids who can never have husbands. You know well enough that in England maids number not by thousands-but by hundreds of thousands, and you will not have the hardihood to tell me that all of them or the bulk of them are chaste.

MR. KALIANRAI H. DESAI.-I say 'ditto' to the learned doctor.

MR. T. PATTABHIRAM.-The unmarried and widowed females among the Brahmins come up to 523 per cent., while in Europe they come up to 67 per cent. of the total female population there, or 143 per cent. more.

MR. M. T. PILLAI.-I must ask you, gentlemen, to consider the difference between the conditions of women leading lives of celibacy of their own accord, enjoying all the innocent comforts and pleasures of life, and those of the Hindu widows who are looked down upon as inauspicious, sinful creatures, destined to live miserably without the comforts and pleasures of life.

It is true, as Sir Alfred Lyall says, that "the general social effect and result must be detrimental wherever a large body of unmarried women exists, whether these be widows or spinsters." But "the position of a single woman is", he continues, "no doubt more tolerable in England from the greater freedom and security and the much higher social consideration and sympathy that women of every status enjoy there", while Mr. White's inquiries (at the time of the Census) went to show that, at 30 years of age, a Hindu woman is generally an old woman; and Sir Alfred states that "this most likely is the reason why the proportion of Hindu women living in widowhood begins to get excessive in the fourth decade of life."

RAO SAHEB MAHIPATRAM RUPRAM.-I think it is absurd to institute any comparisons between English maids and widows and their Hindu sisters. English country life is very pure, but in the towns of course, where "wealth accumulates and men decay," temptations abound, and extremes of riches and poverty produce those "silent crimes of capitals" of which we have all heard. But we have heard of them so much because the English live in glass-houses, so to say, because they are not given to nursing their diseases, and propagating them among their brethren, and handing them down to their

posterity. It is always easy to pick out the specks and blemishes of others--but we ought also to "see ourselves as others see us", and not vindicate early marriage "as the only safeguard", to use Professor Wordsworth's words, "against universal sexual license", for every right-thinking Hindu ought to admit that this argument is "a confession of moral incompetence", as the learned Professor puts it, which no people with any self-respect should advance.

As to Hindu young widows, without going the length of charging one and all with wicked conduct, I can safely say that a large number of them go astray, and the consequences are horrible. Attempts at procuring abortions, which in some cases terminate in death, and murder of pregnant widows by their relations are the results. No English woman is old at thirty. Life is not a blank for her even when past forty. I would say, with the poet,

'Life has its bliss for these, when past its bloom.

As wither'd roses yield a late perfume.

Serene and safe from passion's stormy rage, How calm they glide into the port of age." Can we say this of Hindu widows?

KUMAR P. BHUSHAN DEVA.--Premature marriage is not. only a pernicious custom because it ages wives at thirty, or gives us virgin or unhappy widows-but because it leads to the deterioration of the race. This was admitted even by the ancient medical science of the Hindus, the Ayur Vedas.

RAM SHASTRI.-The deterioration of the race can't be the effect of this custom, unless we suppose that every premature marriage is at once consummated. But I deny this most strongly.

DR. SAKHARAM ARJUN.-The truth is the baneful effects. of early consummation have been so patent and far-reaching that men who would not budge an inch from their orthodoxy