And yet, though we have found no indications of true love, I can see reasons for Dalton’s exclamation,
“It is singular that in matters of the affections the feelings of these semi-savages should be more in unison with the sentiments and customs of the highly organized western nations than with the methodical and unromantic heart-schooling of their Aryan fellow-countrymen.”
Whether these wild tribes are really more like ourselves in their amorous customs than the more or less civilized Hindoos to whom we now turn our attention, the reader will be able to decide for himself after finishing this chapter.
CHILD MURDER AND CHILD MARRIAGE
Twenty years ago there were in India five million more men than women, and there has been no change in that respect. The chief cause of this disparity is the habitual slaughter of girl babies. The unwelcome babes are killed with opium pills or exposed to wild beasts. The Pundita Ramabai Sarasvati, in her agonizing book, The High Caste Hindu Woman, writes with bitter sarcasm, that
“even the wild animals are so intelligent and of such refined taste that they mock at British law and almost always steal girls to satisfy their hunger.” “The census of 1870 revealed the curious fact that three hundred children were stolen in one year by wolves from within the city of Umritzar, all the children being girls.”
Hindoo females who escape the opium pills and the wolves seldom have occasion to congratulate themselves therefor. Usually a fate worse than death awaits them. Long before they are old enough, physically or mentally, to marry, they are either delivered bodily