54

HINDOSTAN ILLUSTRATED.

tlieir timidity and apathy are not so offensive as their total want of sentiment. Not-withstanding the absence of refinement of feeling in the Hindoo character generally,the people of the plains manifest a high sense of honour: their marriages may be con-tracted without respect to that mutual affection which seems so requisite for thesecurity of domestic happiness; but they regard female chastity as an essential, and,if not so easily roused to jealousy as the Mohammedans, will not brook dishonour, andwill sacrifice themselves, as well as those nearest and dearest to them, rather than seetheir women degraded. In the hills, no sort of respect is paid to the sex. Womenare looked upon as expensive articles, since every man must purchase his wife; and inorder to diminish the sum spent upon the acquisition and the support of this domesticslave, four or five brothers will be content with a revolting partnership in her affections.The demand being so small, it is generally supposed that the infanticide common tomany of the Rajpoot tribes is practised with regard to daughters, it being difficult todispose of a large family to advantage ; at least, no satisfactory reason is given for thepaucity of females,—who are not found unmarried in the houses of their parents, aswould be the case if their number bore any proportion to that of the men. Sucha wretched state of things cannot fail to retard the progress of civilization, which inall countries is more easily carried on by means of the women, and children, who are ofcourse influenced by their mothers, than by the adult male portion of the community.Women, on account of the greater liveliness of their imaginations, are readily inducedto adopt novel modes of thinking, and, wherever they are in sufficient numbers to haveany weight, will, notwithstanding every effort to depress and degrade them, obtaina very considerable degree of influence over the other sex. Thus, even amongst theAmerican Indians, the squaws, though looked upon with contempt and disdain by theirlordly masters, have contrived to introduce many innovations, both in religion andmanners, in several of the tribes, which they have adopted from their Europeanassociates, while there are histories of the heart to be found in the annals of the wildestand most barbarous of these untamed savages. The Hindoo of the plains, though sunkin sensuality, occasionally evinces some finer feeling, and will, in the pursuit of a romanticattachment, afford materials for the poet ; but nothing of the hind can exist amid apeople who can neither understand or appreciate the charm of female purity ; while thewomen, so long as the abominable system of polygamy prevails, which has been fromtime immemorial established in the Himalaya , must remain in their present wretchedand most contemptible condition. In speaking thus of the native character, we mustdeplore the melancholy circumstances which have produced it, rather than inveighagainst the people themselves, on account of the inevitable result of some inexplicablenotions which prevailed in a remote antiquity, and of which they have never yet beentaught the fallacy. It is impossible, in passing through a foreign country, not to speakwith reprehension of systems and customs which militate against the ideas of personsfarther advanced in morality and civilization ; but we ought to be cautious in our cen-sures, to pity while we condemn, and, moreover, (when, as in India , we have the oppor-tunity,) to use our best endeavours to introduce a better code of morals, and to try the