The National Register.
London, England, 1821-01-08 00:00:00

LETTER FROM TUE REV. W. WARD.
misslosAaT IN INDIA. TO THE IoADIES OE ?ATM
AND THE UNITED 111210D011.
There ire in Ilindosehon 75,000,000 of your sex who
Call neither read our write; and 30,000,000 of these are
British suujerts. In every country not ameliorated by
Christianity tile state of woman 011 S always been most
deplorable; but the klindou legislators have absolutely
made their acquisition of the knowledge of letters a
curse, and they are by a positive prohibition denied all
access to their Scriptures. B. tog thus degraded, even
by their sacred writings, women in India are in a state
of ignorance and superstition, which has no parallel in
the history of tribes the most savage and barbarous.
A female is despised as soon as she is born: she conies
into the world amidst the frowns of her parents and
friends, disappointed that the child is not a boy. Every
mother • g the tribe of Rajpoots puts her female •
child to death as soon as born. While I was its Bengal
I was 'Wormed of We case of a Rajpoot who hail Seared
one of tits daughters, and she lived till she attained the
age when India girls are marriageable. A girl in the
house of a Rajpoot was, however, so extraordinary a
circumstance that 110 'Weill chose to permit his son to
marry her. The fattier then by:atne alarmed for her
chastity and the honour of his family, and he, there-
fore, took her aside one day, and with a hatchet cut her
to pieces! These are the circumstances into which your
sex enter into lite in British India.
In childhood and youth they have no education, no
cultivation or any kind whstever. There is not a single
girl's school in all India ; and the mother being herself
entirely unlettered, mil being the devoted victim of a
dark and cruel superstition, is utterly incapable of im-
proving her child. The first days of the girl are, there-
fore, spent its an inanity which prepares her for a life
doomed to be spent in superstition and vice. •
In the age of comparative childhood she is united in
marriatee without any knowledge of or having ever seen
her husband: when they meet together for the first
rinse, they are hound together for life. Thousands who
are thus married in a state of childhood, lose their hus-
bands without having ever lived with them, and are
doomed to a life of widowhood; for the law forbids
tnem to re-marry. Parents in some cases marry 50 or
fib daughters to one Branifiun, that the family may be
raised to honour by a montage relation to this man.
These females never live with the husband, but in the
houses of their own parents, or they leave the houses
in which they have been thus sacrificed fur the supposed
honour of the faintly, and enter the abodes of infamy
and ruin.
Supposing the female, however, to have been united
to a person who really becomes attached to her; what
a mother without the knowledge of the alphabet!—
' wholly unacquainted with mankind, and with all the
employments of females in a civilized country; unable
either to snake, to mend, or to wash the clothes of her
household! She never sits to eat with her husband,
but prepares his food, waits upon him, and partakes ot
what he leaves. 14 a friend of the other sex calls upon
her husband, she retires. Site is veiled, or goes in a
covered palanquin if she leaves the house. She never
mixes in public companies. She derives no knowledge
from the other sex, except from the storks to which site
may listen from the mouth of a religious mendicant.
She is, in fact, a mere animal kept for burden or for
slaughter in the house of her husband. A case lately
occurred in Calcutta of a girl being burin alive on the
Niteroi pile with the dead body of the youths with whom
inc was that day to have been warn-11. You will be
prepared now, Ladies, to expect that such a system of
mental darkness will have rendered the sex in India the
devoted victims of idolatry: and such victims no other
country, however savage, however benighted, can boast.
What must be the state of the female mind when toil-
limos are found throwing the children of their vows into
the sea, when a guard of Hunk* soldiers arc necessary
to prevent mothers throwing their living children into
the jaws of the alligators, these mothers standing and
watching the animal while it crushes the hones, tears
the flesh, and drinks the blood of their own offspring!
How deplorable the condition of your sex, when super
sti.ion thus extinguishes every sensibility of the female,
and every feeling of the mother, and makes her inure
savage than the tiger which howls in the forest, which
always spares and cherishes its own offspring.
At the calls of superstition, many females immolate
themselves by a voluntary death in the sacred rivers at
India A nand of mine, at the junction of the J (mina
stud the Gooses, at Allahabad, in one morning, saw,
his own window, lb females, with pans of water
fastened to their side's, sick theit.selves in the river, a few
bubbles of air arising only to the surface of the water
after they were guise dos it. The drowning of so corny
kittens in England would excite more horror here than
tre drowning ut lb of your own sex iu India!
But horrors still deeper are connected with the state of
female society in India. 'lite English magistrates in
the presidency of Bengal, w theiv annual official returns
to the Calcutta state, that in the year 1817
(three years ago) 706 women, widows, were tidier burnt
alive or buried alive with the dead bodies of their
tins-
hauds, iii that pal tof Britisu India. is there any thing
like OM iu the whole records of tumor? Hese hires like
these, and so nuineroits, ever been kindled any where
else on earth—or graves like these ever bean opened f
Two temales roasted alive every day ui one port 01 B.uit,h
India alone 1 At noon-d sy, arid ht tile latest nee sit
Numerous spectators, the poor widow, ensnared 411,1
drawn to tile funeral elle, IS tied to ilie dead heel),
pressed down on the logins by strong levers, and bumiu
alive, her screams amidst toe daisies tieing &tin/tied by
shouts and music. Amidst the speeldlinS is her ow a
eon, her first born, who, tren.endous idea: has set sir, 444
ale 1)41,, and tvatxtelik> our 11104rC.S of tile flames %ditch
are to Colisuille the In ing another to asses, the uwtlieu
woo fed I from her breast, and dandled 1001 oil her
knees, and who once looked op to hint as the support of
the declining days r,f herself and his lather.
I have seen three widows thus burnt Atte, and could

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