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in momentary prayer. Paradise is in her view. She sees her husband awaiting with approbation the sacrifice which shall restore her to him dowered with the expiation of their sins, and ennobled with a martyr's crown. What wonder if, dazzled with these visionary glories, she heeds not the shouting throng, the ominous pile? Exultingly she mounts the last earthly couch which she shall share with her lord. His head she places fondly on her lap. The priests set up their chant-it is a strange hymeneal-and her first-born son, walking thrice round the pile, lights the flame. If the impulse which can suffice to steel a woman's nerves to encounter so painful a death, and to overpower the

dent; but his remonstrances were quickly neutralized by an adroit hint to the prince from a native courtier, "that if the widow's purpose were thwarted, she might utter some imprecations fatal to the state!" On this his Highness declared that he would stand neutral in the matter-"he would neither assent nor dissent-the messenger might do his best." The Brahmins and crowd of course interpreted this as it was meant; they jostled the emissaries of the chargé d'affaires, and even threw out threats against that officer himself, in case of any further interference. Musicians now came out from the palace to assist at the ceremony; a sumptuous dress and ornaments were presented to the woman; and thus decorated and attend-yearnings of her heart towards the children ed, she was conducted to the place of sacrifice. Secret orders to use dispatch had in the mean time been sent by the Prince; and so well were these obeyed, that within three hours of Luchmun Brahmin's death his widow had shared his obsequies.

It is true that cases are on record in which, at the supreme moment, women have lost courage, and, starting from the pile, have torn off their sacrificial garlands, and cried aloud for mercy! Unhappily, too, it is not improbable that on such occasions the fatal belief that a suttee's resolution once voluntarily taken is irrevocable, may have caused the bystanders to thrust the victim remorselessly back into the flames; or if, from British interposition, a rescue has been effected, the woman has, it may be, survived only to curse the pity which, to save her from a few moments of pain, has deprived her, as she deemed, of ages of happiness. These things have been; but, with very rare exceptions, the suttee has been a voluntary victim. Resolute, undismayed, confident in her own inspiration, but betraying by the tone of her prophecies-which are almost always auspicious-and by the gracious acts with which she takes leave of her household, and by the gifts which she lavishes on the bystanders, that her tender woman's heart is the true source whence that inspiration flows, the child-widow has scarcely time to bewail her husband ere she makes ready to rejoin him. She is dressed like a bride, but it is as a bride who has been received within the zenána of her bridegroom. Her veil is put off, her hair unbound; and so adorned and so exposed, she goes forth to gaze on the strange world for the first time, face to face, ere she leaves it. She does not blush or quail. She scarcely regards the bearded crowd who press so eagerly towards her. Her lips move

she may leave behind her-if such an impulse is, even to the eye of philosophy, a strange evidence of the power of faith, and of the depth and strength of tenderness— surely we may well conceive how the superstitious Hindoo should trace in it more directly the finger of God himself. They, we are persuaded, will best cope with this superstition-for they alone will comprehend the grounds on which it rests-who, content with the weapons of truth, will own, that love, and beauty, and death-terror, wonder, pity-never conspired to form a rite more solemn and affecting to the untutored heart of man.*

The confirmation that the Kotah case appeared to give to the current opinions on the danger of interference, had naturally caused an official neutrality on the subject to be prescribed more strictly than ever to our Residents at native courts; and a complete inaction was the order of the day. Not to multiply instances of this policy, we may mention that in 1842 Lord Ellenborough

stone, "that in Guzerat women about to burn are "I have heard," says Mr. Mountstuart Elphinoften stupefied with opium. In most other parts this is certainly not the case. Women go through all the ceremonies with astonishing composure and presence of mind, and have been seen seated, unconfined, their joined hands to their heads with as little among the flames, apparently praying, and raising agitation as at their ordinary devotions. The sight of a widow burning is a most painful one; but it is hard to say whether the spectator is most affected by pity or admiration. The more than human serenity of the victim, and the respect which she receives from all around her, are heightened by her gentle demeanor and her care to omit nothing in distributing her last presents, and paying the usual marks of courtesy to the bystanders; while the cruel death that awaits her is doubly felt from her own apparent insensibility to its terrors."-History of India, i. 361.

expressly declined to sanction an offer made by the chargé d'affaires at Hyderabad, to procure from its Mohammedan ruler a prohibition of the rite.

he was accredited. The prince of Jypore was a minor, and the government was carried on by a council of regency, over which the Major presided. Not only did he thus possess a more direct voice in the adminis

It was in the midst of this general despondency that Major (now Lieutenant-tration than his post of chargé d'affaires Colonel) Ludlow, chargé d'affaires at Jypore, conceived the idea of assailing the superstition in its stronghold. His scheme was simple and not new-qualities which are the best evidence of the difficulties that had hitherto prevented its execution. Long ago, Oriental scholars, both native and European, had shown that the rite was not only unsanctioned, but inferentially forbidden, by the earliest and most authoritative Hindoo scriptures. Nay, Colonel Tod in his book on Rajpootána had actually indicated this anomaly in Hindoo doctrine as the best point of attack for abolitionists to select. Yet though that valuable work was published in 1829, and though the author, from the position he long held as chief diplomatic officer in the country he so well describes, had the amplest opportunities for carrying out his own suggestion, it was reserved for Major Ludlow, in 1844, to put it to the test of practice, and to vanquish the obstacles which had hitherto confined it to the dreamland of speculative benevolence.

would have given him, but he had already so used this vantage-ground as to dissipate to an extraordinary degree the jealousies likely to be excited in his native colleagues by any interference with their domestic customs. He had even contrived to bring the other Rajpoot states to combine with Jypore for an object not wholly alien from that which he had at present in view. Then, as now, the abuse which he had undertaken to assail concerned their zenánas; and his bitterest opponents were likely to be found amongst the priests.

The explanation of this previous inaction is not difficult. Scholars, it is true, had proved Suttee to be an innovation and a heresy; but it was an innovation of 2000 years' standing, and a heresy abetted by the priesthood since the days of Alexander. Though unnoticed by Menu, the supplementary writings with which the Hindoos, like the Jews, have overlaid their primitive books, are profuse in its praise. Above all-let the force of the appeal from the more recent to the primitive code be what it might-it could not but be attended with suspicion when proceeding from religionists who equally repudiated both the one and the other. It is no matter for surprise that Englishmen should have hesitated long to assail with the delicate weapon of theological criticism a rite thus strong in remote antiquity, in venerated records, in a hierarchy at once ignorant and unscrupulous, and in the associations with which innumerable traditions of womanly courage and constancy had ennobled it in the eyes of the Hindoo people. His resolution once taken, however, there were circumstances in Major Ludlow's position not unfavorable to the enterprise. He enjoyed peculiar opportunities of intercourse with the nobles of the court to which VOL. XXV. NO. I

Old maids, as some of our readers have probably heard, are sadly depreciated in the East. A Rajpoot girl who remains long unwedded is a disgrace to her house; but that was not the only danger which but a few years ago her father had to fear. Should he succeed in finding her a husband, the chances were that the family estates would be hopelessly encumbered in providing the gratuities claimed by the priests and

minstrels who were certain to flock to the nuptials. No Rajpoot is above the dread of satire and imprecations; and those worthies notoriously dispensed their blessings and applauses, or their curses and lampoons, according to the price at which their services were retained. The result was that their favor was purchased at almost any cost. "The Dahima emptied his coffers on the marriage of his daughter," ran a favorite distich of these venal bards, "but he filled them with the praises of mankind." The Rajpoots at large were not disposed to be Dahimas, nor yet to brave the scandal of housing marriageable daughters. They found refuge from the dilemma in infanticide. Parents reared just so many girls as they could afford to marry off, and destroyed the rest. The criminality of the practice was, indeed, acknowledged. Rajpoot decorum demanded that it should be veiled in secrecy ; but that was all. A trifling penance absolved the perpetrator. Nobody dreamed of dragging such affairs into publicity. If a son was born, the fact was announced to inquirers with exultation; if a daughter, the answer was-Nothing! and those who came to congratulate went silent away. It must not be supposed that this system had grown up to such monstrous maturity without some

degree of resistance on the part of the native rulers. It appears that here and there, and at various periods, a Rajpoot prince had sought to reach the evil by sumptuary enactments in restraint of nuptial gratuities; but that fear of the reproach of their kinsmen in neighboring communities had invariably deterred his subjects from taking advantage of the remedy.

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had rid the Rajpoots of a practice which their consciences condemned. Could he rid them of one to the full as terrible, which they revered? He had rescued her child for the mother. Could he rescue the mother for the child? It was doubtless much for an Englishman to hope to tear aside the prescriptive sanctions which for twenty centuries had elevated the Indian widow's cruel martyrdom into the holiest of mysteries; but if the shock was ever to be given, it was now, and at Jypore. The resident Vakeels would communicate it to all the Rajpoot states; and whenever Rajpootána should lead the way in breaking through "the traditions of the elders," Hindostan at large was tolerably certain to follow.

The hour, the place, and the man, all favored the design. One lion, however, there was in the path. Major Ludlow could not hope that the permission given him to use his personal influence with the convention of Vakeels to promote measures against female infanticide, would be extended to any similar undertaking against Suttee. The acknowledged criminality of the one practice and the reputed sanctity of the other made here all the difference; and we have already alluded to the belief on the part of the Brit

Major Ludlow conceived that he saw his way to improving on these precedents. He conjectured that if the various states throughout Rajpootána could be brought to agree to a common scale of such largesses, apportion ed to the revenue of the bride's parents, with uniform penalties for all demands in excess, the problem might be solved. Nothing, however, is harder than to bring the tenacious principalities of Rajpootána to act together on any subject. What could seem more so than to bring them to work in concert on a question involving points so delicate as the largesses to be dispensed on their daughters' weddings, and the comparative claims of their minstrels and priests? It was certain, too, that, failing this agreement, no measure of the kind could be demanded of them by the British Government without a breach of the treaties that secured the freedom of their internal administrations. In spite of these ob-ish authorities, which so many facts had stacles Major Ludlow obtained permission to do his best, on the single condition of using no direct solicitation towards the chiefs. His first efforts were thus confined to his brother diplomatists, and such native deputies as resided at Jypore for the purpose of communicating on plunder-cases. The latter, gradually coming into the idea, promulgated it among their respective governments; and by this indirect process he at length succeeded in obtaining the enactment of an international sumptuary law which has rid Rajpootána of a most frightful scourge and stigma.

Never probably before, since the origin of the Rajpoot states, had their jealousies and divisions been even temporarily suspended. But the advantage of this concert was rendered palpable to them by their delivery from a ruinous system of extortion, with all its frightful and unnatural results. They were aware that the merit of this social, rather than political, reform, was due to Ludlow's private exertions; and thus between him and themselves there sprung up a relation on such subjects, which the antipathies of race and religion very seldom allow of among Englishmen and Hindoos. What, then, if he could avail himself of these aids to accomplish an infinitely harder undertaking? He

seemed to substantiate, that the efforts of our diplomatists in the independent states to check the rite had tended only to an opposite effect. As an essential condition therefôre to success, and on pain of having his operations summarily suspended, Major Ludlow was compelled to work unseen. He determined, if possible, to induce two or three trustworthy and influential natives to undertake the cause; to ply them with the critical objection drawn from the older scriptures; and by declaring his own resolution to remain neutral till public opinion had declared itself, to excite in them the ambition of taking the lead. He found a person admirably adapted to his purpose in the Financial Minister of the court at which he was accredited. Seth Manick Chund belonged to a sect whose distaste for destruction in all its forms is singular even in the East. The Oswal tribe do not wilfully slay the meanest animal. Carrying out the doctrine of the transmigration of souls to its logical result-viewing in every insect a possible human intelligence, and as yet blissfully ignorant of the revelations of the oxy-hydrogen microscope-their priests carry besoms to sweep the ground on which they tread, and cover their mouths with gauze, to avoid the scandal of inhaling

their ancestors, or of crushing them whole- | six months he was induced to put forth a sale under foot. One result of this tender- document, in which he adopted all the theoness for life in every form is, that they dis- logical arguments, and declared authoritaapprove of Suttees. To the Financial Minis- tively that the self-immolation of widows was ter, therefore, and to his own head Moon- less meritorious than their practising "the shee, Major Ludlow communicated all the living suttee of chastity and devotion !" This arguments he thought likely to be of use; was evidently half the battle. Major Ludand thus charged, they betook themselves to low now personally entered into the contest, the High Priest of Jypore. so far as to cause the manifesto to be shown Warily, and as if on their own account, at his residence to the various Vakeels who they pressed this important dignitary with came there to transact business; and these the omission of all mention of Suttee in the in their turn communicated its contents to Code of Menu; with the inferential prohibi- their masters. A religious agitation sprung tion of the rite in the denunciations contain-up and spread widely. At the same time ed in that work against suicide; and with there could be little doubt that, let the imits promise to widows living chastely of eter-pression produced by the High Priest's decinal felicity with their husbands-whereas even the writings which countenanced the sacrifice, limited the duration of its recompense to the comparative bagatelle of fortyfive millions of years. In addition to these objections, already familiar to Oriental scholars, Major Ludlow supplied his emissaries with two others at least as efficacious. Pope's Universal Prayer embodies, it appears, a favorite sentiment of Hindoo❘ moralists:

"What conscience dictates to be done, Or warns me not to do;

This teach me more than hell to shun,

That more than heaven pursue."

But the Hindoo divines assert, not only that the love of goodness for its own sake ought to prevail over the hopes of posthumous reward, but that the slightest intrusion of an interested motive is fatal.. What more easy than to apply this dogma to the poor widow bent on earning by a cruel death her own and her husband's salvation? Her devotion was represented as a mercenary calculation of profit and loss. She did but mock the Deity with the unclean sacrifice of a selfish bargain. Was the martyr's crown her aim? She had forfeited it by that very aspiration! Major Ludlow wound up these arguments by a shrewd appeal to national pride. Suttee (urged his emissaries), unwarranted by Menu, was the evident invention of some degenerate race, whose women were worthless, and whose widows, if they survived, would bring reproach on the memory of their lords. To such it might be left. The honor of Rajpoot husbands was in safer keeping; and the fair fame of their daughters was aspersed by the mere retention of so disgraceful a security!

The High Priest received these representations with surprising candor. In less than

sion be what it might, no man of rank-least of all a Rajpoot sovereign-would be anxious to proclaim himself the first convert.

To iterate day by day the same arguments -to be ever on the stretch to discover methods of rendering them more efficient to confirm the wavering-to encourage those who were already compromised as abolitionists-above all, to keep within the delicate line that severed his private advocacy of the High Priest's dictum from his official adhesion to it-here was an arduous combination of aims; and the Major knew that if he failed in any one of them, a quick and mischievous reaction of public opinion would render the object of all his toil more distant than ever, and expose him to the censure of But what then? It his own Government. was the old alternative of every man wiser and braver than his fellows; the criterion would be success. If he did not win the palm of a benefactor of his race, he must be content to be reproached as a meddler whose untimely zeal had but injured a noble cause.

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Within a few months of the issue of the High Priest's manifesto, that personage died. Never, not even during his last sickness, did he receive the slightest message or civility from Major Ludlow; so important was deemed to give no ground for the imputation of a secret understanding between them. While, therefore, it was part of the good fortune attending this enterprise that the High Priest should have left the scene in the odor of sanctity before he had leisure to retract or modify his opinion, it was probably due to Major Ludlow's caution that the public faith. in the honesty of the manifesto remained to the last unshaken.

And now the fruit of all this untiring energy began to appear. One by one the members of the Council of Regency declared themselves in favor of the legal prohibition

of Suttee, though they did not as yet think proper to pledge the infant sovereign to so critical a measure. Most of the nobles connected with the Court were avowed abolitionists, and three of the tributary provinces of Jypore actually issued enactments against the rite. Their example was followed by several petty neighboring states.

To persons unacquainted with the influence of Rajpootána on Hindostan, so sudden an interruption of the torpor of ages must have appeared too momentous to be ascribed

issuing of the circular (August 23d, 1846) the Council of Regency at Jypore led the way among the great independent Rajpoot states in declaring Suttee penal on all parties engaged in it, principals as well as accessories. Lord Hardinge, then at Simla, at once caused a notification of this event, coupled with an expression of thanks to Major Ludlow, to be Major Ludlow believed that the time was published in the Government Gazette (Sept. come for bolder measures. Everything de- 22, 1846); and so vast and so swift was the pended on the utmost publicity being given effect of this example, and of the prominence to the adhesions he had already received. thus judiciously assigned to it, that before Great as was the general respect for the de- Christmas his Lordship was enabled to anceased High Priest's authority, the timid nounce the prohibition of Suttee by eleven out were not likely to be converted except in of the eighteen Rajpoot principalities, and by good company, and, as has been said, the five out of the remaining sixteen free states timidest of all in a matter of Rajpoot ortho- of India! Of the whole territory then exdoxy would be the Rajpoot sovereigns. He empt from internal control, more than twowas aware, indeed, that rumor had already thirds were gained over to the cause of abobefriended him in this respect. The resi-lition within four months from the Jypore dent Vakeels had, as a matter of course, proclamation.* kept their masters throughout Rajpootana well acquainted with the progress of the strange agitation at Jypore. But those functionaries had no access to the letters which, in his capacity of President of the Council of Regency, he had from time to time received tolerable approach to accuracy, a view of the proThe following table gives, we believe, with a from the leading abolitionists; and such doc-gress of the cause of abolition among those states uments, forming collectively a very imposing which have the control of their internal affairs:record of opinion in high places, had now accumulated in his hands. These he resolved to turn to account. He sent copies of the whole correspondence to two or three of his brother diplomatists in Rajpootána, in order that they might communicate it to the Courts to which they were attached. The result was his first and only check. His official superior, apprised by the circulation of these documents, took alarm and arrested the whole proceeding. The mortification to Ludlow must have been great; but there remained so much to be done, and by means so foreign to the routine of official experience, that we can scarcely be surprised that the first impression inspired by the promulgation of the plan was one of distrust. When, however, a year had passed without any evil resulting from the agitation of the subject, the able superior who had thus felt it his duty to interpose his authority, so far withdrew his opposition as to issue a circular to the chiefs, urging, on the grounds already taken, not indeed the prohibition of Suttee, but the imposition of penalties on all persons abetting the widow in the rite..

Happily the event surpassed these cautious advances, and proved how little Major Ludlow had overrated the strength of the movement. In eight months' time from the

Jypore
Kotah
Jhalawar
Boondee
Jessulmere
Banswarra
Purta bgurh
Doongurpore
Kerowlee
Sirohee
Dholepore

ABOLITIONIST (18).
Rajpootána.

Ameer Khan (Mohammedan)

Square Miles.

13,427

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3,102

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1,287

2.291

9,779

1,440

1,457

2,005

1,870

3,024

1,626

1,633

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