persons not of the same order, however enlightened, or virtuous, or venerable for age, exposes a man to excision from his wife, children, father, mother, and every other tender relation; but what is still worse, the very reception of such a persecuted individual involves the receiver, though a mother or a wife, (Oh! these mild and humane Hindoos!!) in the same dreadful sentence. Yet all these horrors must be braved by a person perishing with thirst, who should, to save his life, dare to receive even the sacred water of the Ganges, from one of inferior cast; -all this misery must be endured by the person, who, to secure his eternal salvation, should dare to embrace a new religion. Had the cast continued to be what it was under the Hindoo monarchs, and what the framers of its rules wished it to be, all that is terrible in becoming an outcast, and "a vagabond on the face of the earth;" all that is revolting to human nature in losing the esteem of connections, in contempt and persecution, in the fear of perishing through want, and in being excluded from the most distant hope of returning to home and friends on this side death,-all these terrors must have been welcomed by every Christian convert, who must thus have become a martyr the very moment he declared himself on the side of the new religion.

But let us rejoice that the rust of these fetters has nearly eaten them through: there are indications in the present state of Hindoo society, which evince that, on account of the number of transgressors, these barbarous laws cannot be much longer enforced :

1. The social impulse is evidently felt as strongly by the Hindoos as by other nations; and this leads those who have formed friendships in the same neighbourhood to join in offering mutual pledges of hospitality; hence, in numerous instances, we find that groups of Hindoos, of different casts, actually meet in secret, to eat and smoke together, rejoicing in this opportunity of indulging their social feelings. There is also a strong propensity in human nature to pass the bounds prescribed by partial

and short-sighted legislators; and in these private meetings, the parties enjoy a kind of triumph in having leapt the fence, and in being able to do it repeatedly with impunity.

2. Early marriages being necessarily acts of compulsion, and against nature, it too frequently happens, that the affections, instead of fixing upon the law-given wife, become placed upon some one not of the same cast, who is preferred as the darling object of uncontrouled choice: here again the cast is sacrificed and detested in secret.

3. The love of proscribed food in many instances becomes a temptation to trespass against the laws of cast: many Hindoos of the highest as well as of the lowest rank eat flesh and other forbidden food; and, should detection follow, the offenders avail themselves of the plea, "These are the remains of the offerings presented to my guardian deity."

4. The yoke of the cast becomes still more intolerable through the boundless license which a Hindoo gives to his sensual desires; and these temptations to promiscuous intercourse with all casts of females, are greatly strengthened by absence from home for months and years together, which is the case with thousands, especially in Calcutta and other large towns, as well as throughout the native army: hence cohabiting, eating and smoking with women of other casts is so common, that it is generally connived at, especially as it is chiefly done at a distance from the offender's relations.

5. The very minuteness and intricacy of the rules connected with cast also tend powerfully to induce a forfeiture of the privileges it bestows: social intercourse among Hindoos is always through a path of thorns. Cast is destroyed by teaching religious rules to persons of inferior rank, by eating, or by intimate friendship, with such persons, by following certain trades, by forbidden matrimonial alliances, by neglecting the customs of the cast, by the faults of near relations, &c. &c. And where

the cast is not forfeited, in many cases persons are tormented and persecuted to the greatest excess.

From hence it will appear, that an institution, the rules of which are at war with every passion of the human mind, good as well as evil, must, sooner or later, especially if the government itself ceases to enforce these rules, fall into utter disuse and contempt. The present state of Hindoo society respecting the cast, therefore, will cease to be a matter of wonder. No one will be surprised to hear, that, although the Hindoos give one another credit, as a matter of convenience, for being in possession of cast, and though there may be an outward, and, in the higher orders, an insolent show of reverence for its rules, if the matter were to be searched into, and the laws of the cast were allowed to decide, scarcely a single family of Hindoos would be found in the whole of Bengal whose cast is not forfeited: this is well known and generally acknowledged.

The author has devoted one hundred pages, making the THIRD CHAPTER of this volume, to a description of the Manners and Customs of the Hindoos; and upon these he here offers a few remarks in addition to those which close the chapter.

Some have professed to doubt, whether a state of civilization be preferable to a savage state or not; but would it not be the same question in other words, if it were asked whether is to be preferred, the state of man or that of the irrational animals? What is the precise boundary which marks the distinction between the civilized and the savage state? Is it not, that in the former the improvement of the mind is recognized as the highest end of existence, but not in the latter? The Hindoo manners strongly remind us of this distinction.

The Hindoos are said to exercise much tenderness towards women in a state of pregnancy; not, however, from any high sensibility in reference to the sex, but from an anxious concern

VOL. I.

to secure the safe birth of a child, hoping it will be a son, to whom they may commit the charge of releasing them after death from a state similar to purgatory. The rejection, with a degree of horror, of the services of a skilful surgeon, even where the life of the mother is exposed, is another proof that the mind is in a state of great imbecility; while the terrors felt by all parties on these occasions strongly demonstrate the deplorable state of medical science among the Hindoos. The appearance of piety in a family after the birth of a child, however, though blended with the grossest ignorance and superstition, may become an instructive lesson to Christians, as well as an excitement to gratitude for better knowledge. In giving names to their children, also, the Hindoos shew a marked preference for the names of the gods, hereby expressing their veneration for the deity, and their hope that the god whose name the child bears may honour it with his favour.

g

Parents who have been afflicted by the loss of several children in infancy not unfrequently attribute their misfortunes to the prayers of envious persons. If they are afterwards blessed with another child, they give it an unpleasant name, that no one may envy their happiness. In the same spirit, these poor people place on the end of a stick a black rejected cooking-pot streaked with white, and set it up in the midst of a garden of vegetables, that the evil eyes of malicious persons may not destroy the crop. How effectually would the reception of one passage of scripture eradicate all these fears: "The prayers of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord."h How absent from the minds of this people are all ideas of the essential necessity of holy dispositions in our approaches to the Almighty.

Hindoo mothers display an excessive attachment to their offspring: but this fondness, confining its cares to the body, leads

Three kourees is not unfrequently given (Teen Kouree).

How supremely important it is, that the works received by a whole nation as divine, should contain only those sentiments that are capable of imparting a system of perfect morals!

them to feed their children to excess; to indulge them with pernicious food, which brings on early diseases; and to permit evil tempers to grow without correction: and thus maternal affection is converted into the greatest possible bane.

The exercises of the village school exhibit an exclusive concern for secular interests, without the least reference to the enlargement of the mind. A Hindoo has not the most distant idea that schools ought to inculcate morals and the first principles of religion. It is by mere accident that the names of the gods, mingled with other names, form a spelling lesson: a schoolmaster, in the same manner as a head servant, is termed a sirkar; he teaches a certain art useful in obtaining a livelihood. That this is the only idea the Hindoos have of schools, is further proved by the disgraceful fact, that all India does not supply a single school for girls! Their ideas are, that the employments of a woman do not require the assistance of education she can sweep the house, cook, collect cow-dung for fuel, wait on her lord, and feed her children without it, and having discharged these offices with fidelity, the whole work of life is accomplished. The use of the needle, knitting, and imparting knowledge to her children, are duties to which she has no call, and for which she is wholly incapacitated. No wonder that Hindoo society is so degraded, when those who might become the best part of it are treated as irrational, and converted into beasts of burden.

The Hindoos never appear to have considered the subject of marriage as having any thing to do with moral or intellectual advantages. Their laws recognize nothing as the proper ends of marriage but that of perpetuating the species, and leaving a son to perform the funeral rites. A woman is never considered as the companion of her husband, but as his slave, or as a creature belonging to his hŭrum-můhŭl. The Hindoo legislatures considered, that amongst the animals certain species were seen to domesticate in pairs, and they therefore placed men among