ferior nature, and such as by no means detract from its substantial merits. The thanks of every friend to sound religion are due to the learned prelate for the zeal and ability with which he has stepped forward to support its cause against error and fanaticism. We rejoice to hear that the work is obtaining extensive circulation; and we trust that it will have considerable effect in giving a proper tone and direction to public opinion on these important matters.

ART. XII. Hindu Infanticide. An Account of the Measures adopted for suppressing the Practice of the Systematic Murder by their Parents of Female Infants; edited, with Noles and Illustrations, by Edward Moor, F.R.S. London. 1811.

HERE are a few species, and but a few, of the brute creation, which occasionally destroy their offspring immediately on the birth, an anomaly in the law of nature commonly followed by another, that of devouring them. But as the latter usually takes place among domestic animals, it is obvious that hunger has no share in the transaction; and that it may rather be ascribed to some temporary derangement (occasioned, perhaps, by agonizing pain) of the instinctive solicitude, interwoven with the constitution and existence of every living creature, to protect and preserve its young. 'The lord of the creation,' however, who boasts of his reasoning facul ties, has, in all the nations of antiquity, and in many of modern times, from some assignable motive, sacrificed or exposed his own children. He does not indeed eat them,-except in China, where a Swedish traveller was told that this diet was prescribed for the cure of a particular disorder; and though he subjoins, with great naïveté, that he is not quite sure of the fact, yet he has no doubt that plenty of food might be procured for this salutary purpose, notwithstanding the number of patients, and the long regimen of fifty days which is required for each case.

We hear, even now, of men who are supposed to have a peculiar relish for human flesh, and especially for that of their enemies; but these are to be found only among the most barbarous of mankind. These are objects of general abhorrence; but some excuse may be found for the savage, if, when hard pressed by hunger, he is driven to relieve himself from a feeling of despondency, and his child from the misery of famine, by putting an end at once to its sufferings and existence; an event which sometimes happens to the aged, as well

* Per Ty alternis diebus, alternis jejunio.' Toreen's Voyage in Osbecks” Chana, vol. ii. p. 235.

as to the infant, in the desarts of Africa and America. These are sacrifices made to necessity; but it is not so easy to discover any palliation for the destruction of those human victims which have bled on the altars as acceptable offerings to the gods. From motives of religion or patriotism, from a belief that, by sacrifices of this kind, some national calamity might be averted, or some general blessing obtained, thousands of innocent children have fallen by the hands of their parents. Equally reprehensible, because equally preposterous and unnatural, are the reveries of those political madmen, who have deluded mankind into a belief of the wisdom of a law, according to which such children only as were born perfect ought to be reared, and of those speculative economists who would regulate the number of souls to be saved, by the number of acres in cultivation, and the productive quality of the soil. The Stagyrite is not the only philosopher who, scared at the idea of a redundant population, recommended the means of checking such a tendency. If the polished Greeks, indeed, could be persuaded to receive such barbarous practices, we need not be surprised to find their servile imitators, the Romans, adopting the same doctrines, and putting in practice the same inhuman measures, and thus legalizing, as it were, child-murder. Here, however, both Greeks and Romans had the humanity to stop; and to make the magistrate, instead of the unhappy parent, the executioner.

But the nation which, in modern times, has been the most severely reprobated for the practice of infanticide, is China. That the practice of exposing children (though not of eating them, as the Swedish naturalist was led to believe) does exist in that country, must be granted; but we are persuaded, at the same time, that the early Jesuits have, through interested motives, grossly exaggerated the extent of the practice. In the first place, they have carefully concealed from Europeans the important circumstance that Foundling Hospitals abound in China; and that such living children as are exposed in the streets, by indigent parents, are so placed, not under the supposition of their being carried to one common grave with the dead ones, as the missionaries have pretended, but with the conviction that they will be carefully picked up by the police officers; which is actually the case. Neither are there sufficient grounds for concluding that the deceased children, exposed in the streets, have previously been murdered by their parents. A funeral, in all the cities of China, is necessarily attended with considerable expense, as every corpse, by a municipal regulation, must be interred beyond a certain distance from the walls. The bodies of children of indigent parents, whether still-born or the victims of disease, are therefore placed in the streets, in order that they may be removed by the proper officers and buried at the public expense.

Not one word of this is to be found in the voluminous communications of the missionaries. They make a considerable display of their own humanity, by their solicitude to attend at the fatal pit for the purpose of saving the souls of those innocents in whom the spark of life is not quite extinct; and some credit is certainly due to them for taking care also of many of the living children which, we believe, the officers of police make no difficulty in delivering over to them, although aware that it is for the purpose of their being educated in the principles of the Catholic religion. It is not, however, a very honourable part to swell out their catalogue of Neophytes, thus obtained, at the expense of the character of a whole nation. We are glad of every opportunity of endeavouring to exonerate the Chinese from so foul a blot, and, in justice to them, we deem it right to quote from the Remarks" of the editor of the book before us a passage on this subject,-not however that we attach much weight to the authority.

During a residence of several months in Canton, I never witnessed, or even heard of, a case of infanticide. Many thousands of the poorest classes live entirely on the water; among these it is that the instances are supposed to be most frequent. Their situation offers the greatest facilities, and their poverty the strongest inducements, and such instances would be oftenest seen by strangers. Yet I never saw one, and I have been much on the water about Canton, among the most thronged parts of the floating population; nor do I know of any other person having seen one, nor did I, to the best of my recollection, ever hear of any well authenticated case, although, like me, every body has heard of the supposed frequency of the fact. I should not deem the evidence of a drowned child an exception, out of so many thousands crawling about such embarkations as float for miles above and below Canton, many children must doubtless be drowned accidentally; and I have heard a case related as a proof of exposure or of infanticide, that conveyed to my mind a contrary impression. It was of a child seen floating tied to a hollowed gourd. The appendage argued care, rather than

neglect or criminality.'-p. 268.

It would seem then to be reserved for the Hindoos, who have been held up as the most mild and benevolent of mankind, without any avowed or apparent motive, either of religion, patriotism, or poverty, to organize a systematic murder, by their parents, of female infants. This practice, which is truly designated as the most barbarous that ever owed its existence either to the wickedness or weakness of human nature,' would with them appear to be exclusively reducible to a mere selfish principle, less the offspring of prejudice, than of pride and avarice. The first notice of this unnatural custom was communicated by Mr. Duncan, when resident at Benares, to the Governor-General in Council, in 1789, and published by Sir John Shore, in the fourth volume of the Asiatic Re

prac

searches; where it is observed that,' the general practice, as far as regards female infants, is fully substantiated with respect to a particular tribe on the frontiers of Juanpore, a district of the province of Benares, adjoining the country of Oude. A race of Hindoos, called Rajekoomars, reside here; and it was discovered, in 1789 only, that the custon of putting to death their female offspring, by causing their mothers to starve them, had long subsisted, and did actually then very generally prevail amongst them.' It was not attempted, it seems, to keep secret, or to deny, this abominable tice; all of them unequivocally admitted its existence, and the only reason they assigned for it was-the great expense of procuring suitable matches for their daughters, if they allowed them to grow up. It was also discovered that a similar custom prevailed, though in a less degree, among a smaller tribe of people, also within the province of Benares, called Rajebunsies. Mr. Duncan, however, by persuasion and perseverance, but more probably through the influence of the Company, prevailed on some of the chiefs of those tribes to sign a written engagement, by which they renounced in future, for themselves and their posterity, this horrid practice.

From a conversation which Mr. Duncan held with Captain Wilford of Benares, in which the latter informed him that, in some old Greek author in his possession, he had read of the same thing being a practice in his time in Kutch and Guzzerat, he was induced, on his return to Bombay in 1804, to desire Captain Seton, then resident at Kutch, to make every inquiry into so curious a subject. The answer of Captain Seton is as follows: "The custom mentioned in Gajra Bye's relation is in force to this day; every female infant born in the Raja's family of a Rannee, or lawful wife, is immediately dropped into a hole dug in the earth and filled with milk, where it is drowned.' He states, moreover, that this practice was not peculiar to Kutch, but extended to the heads of the Rajput tribes of Guzzerat; that, of the Jarejahs, or collateral descendants of the Rajah's family, only two men of any note had brought up their daughters; and that the expense and difficulty of procuring suitable husbands, were the excuses usually made; but that the Rajah's pretext was, that he considered it beneath him to match his daughter with any man.

In a subsequent letter, he says, that the Jarejahs, to supply the place of those destroyed, purchase wives from another tribe called Soda; and such,' he observes, is the barbarous inveteracy of these women, that, when married to Mahommedans, they continue the same practice, against the inclination and religion of their hus bands; destroying their own progeny without remorse, in view to the advantage of the tribe from which they are descended.'

The origin of this unnatural practice, as related by Sunderji Savaji, a man of credit and respectability, who had long been employed in the purchase of horses within the territories of Kutch and Kattywar, for the use of the British cavalry in India, is as follows:

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'In former times it so happened that, to one of the head men of these Jarejahs several female children were born; and as, among the Hindus, it is incumbent to provide husbands for their daughters, whilst these latter are yet in their non-age, the Jarejah chieftain applied to the family Brahman, or priest, to pursue the necessary measures for getting the said Jarejah's female children contracted in marriage. The Brahman, after making every inquiry, and going about to every place in quest of suitable matches for these children, returned without effecting his object wherefore,' said the Brahman, since to retain your female offspring in the family house, after their arriving at the age of womanhood, is contrary to the rules of religion, I will take them with me, and burn them in the fire; on condition, that it be stipulated on your part, to destroy, at their birth, all issue of the same sex, that shall hereafter be born in your family; laying, as I now do, my solemn malediction, both here and hereafter, on you and yours, if you fail to perform the same, in such manner, that if you shall preserve any of your future daughters, they shall pass their lives in penury and want; nor shall good attend the father or mother of such children.'-p. 29.

Another account of the origin of this detestable custom is given by the Jarejalis.

The

A powerful Rajah of their caste, who had a daughter of singular beauty and accomplishments, desired his Raj-gur, or family Brahman, to affiance her to a prince of desert and rank equal to her own. Raj-gur travelled over many countries, returned, and reported to the prince, that his mission had not proved successful. This intelligence gave the Rajah much affliction and concern, as the Hindoos reckon it to be the first duty of parents to provide suitable husbands for their daughters. In this dilemma the Rajah consulted his Raj-gur; and the Brahman advised him to avoid the censure and disgrace which would attend the princess remaining unmarried, by having recourse to the desperate expedient of putting her to death. The Rajah was long averse to this expedient, and remonstrated against the murder of a wo man, which, enormous as it is represented in the Sastra, would be aggravated when committed on his own offspring. The Raj-gur at length removed his scruples, by consenting to load himself with the guilt, and to become, in his own person, responsible for all the consequences of the sin. Accordingly the princess was put to death; and female infanticide was, from that time, practised by the Jarejahs.'-p. 44.

Major Walker, however, seems to think it probable, from an account he received at Baroda, that it might have arisen from a refu