terms of alliance as to have a military Resident at his court Major Walker was the Resident at the time to which this work chiefly relates; and as he was to be at the head of a detachment of English troops, in a grand military progress which was going to be made through the whole peninsula of Guzerat, in the name and behalf of the said Gaikawar and his ally, the Lord Company, in order to settle, once for all, the rate of tribute to be paid by the would-be independent chiefs, he was instructed to combine with the leading purpose a prudent effort to obtain the abolition of infanticide. It was to be prudent, for, as the Supreme Government observes,

-the speculative success even of that benevolent project, cannot be considered to justify the prosecution of measures which may expose to hazard the essential interests of the state; although, as a collateral object, the pursuit of it would be worthy of the benevolence and humanity of the British Government.'

Major (since Colonel) Walker accomplished the projected expedition in 1807; and from Baroda, in the eastern part of Guzerat, despatched to Mr. Duncan, Governor of Bombay, a long report, dated in March, 1808, of the measures which he had employed for the suppression of infanticide in Kattywar. Instead of a brief summary, Mr. Moor has given the whole of this Report, consisting of a series of paragraphs not connected in a continuous composition, and therefore distinguished by numbers, to the amount of more than three hundred. We think this an idle and unconscionable mode of helping out a book to the requisite bulk for bearing, though not without palpable exorbitance after all, the price set on this volume. It might be highly proper in Col. Walker to detail and discourse so largely, and pardonable, barely pardonable, to allow himself in such a total and most miserable renunciation of all method, in a private communication to the Authorities to whom he was responsible, and who might have the friendly patience to abstract and dispose in some orderly form in their minds, the information contained within an immense farrago of unconnected shreds of history and observation. This might be excusable;-though on some ground that we cannot know: as it is certainly impossible to comprehend, why the drawing up of an important document should be exempted from laws, in the neglect of which no composition can make a perspicuous display of its subject. At any rate, however, it is quite inexcusable in Mr. Moor to tax the pocket of the general reader, for the privilege of having also his time and patience taxed with the heavy duty of trying to reduce such a confused mass of notices to any thing like a digested scheme of facts and explanations. The reading public (which is nevertheless to be, at the same time, duly cajoled with compliments to its intelligence and

candour) is truly held in very light esteem, when authors, editors, and publishers, professing to meet its wishes for information on any particular subject, make no scruple of emptying out the whole crude collection of unwrought materials, from which a completely satisfactory exposition of the subject might have been elaborated, at about one-third of the bulk or price. This combination of idleness, presumption, and extortion, is, in the present times, carried to such a flagrant ex-. cess, that even the editor of this volume is to be reckoned anong the minor offenders. If the inquisitive public will continue to tolerate such treatment, a large and encreasing proportion of authors will entirely forget it ever was a rule in literature that an author should himself work out a methodical account of his subject; and will begin to take credit as benefactors to the cause of knowledge for having sold at a most exorbitant rate, and carted out, a blended confused luggage of documents and fragments, from which the purchasers may, if they have time and faculty, make out each one his own notion of the subject.

As for the remainder of our own task in the present case, it will be very fairly disposed of by taking a few notices, here and there, from this very singularly fabricated document of the Resident in Guzerat. The Jarejahs' spoke freely of the custom of putting their daughters to death, and without delicacy or pain, but were more reserved on the mode of their execution. They appeared at first unwilling to be questioned on the subject; and usually replied, "it was an affair of the women;""it belonged to the nursery, and made no part of the business of men." They at last, however, threw off this reserve.' Several acknowledged methods of committing the crime are enumerated; but especially two,-that of putting opium in the infant's mouth, and that of drawing the umbilical cord over its face to prevent respiration. The use of the before mentioned expedient of drowning in milk was not confirmed to Col. Walker. Sometimes the victim is laid down, and left to perish without any application of violence. In short, the mode of perpetration is not subjected to any invariable and indispensable rule; and Mr. Duncan remarks, that

The difference of these modes,' (mentioned by Col. W.) from those learned through other channels, as previously related, are of little moment; and, were evidence wanting, rather add to, than abstract from, the indubitable existence and local notoriety of the general fact. It is admitted that some of these infants are left to the inevitable result of neg. lect; and the Jarejahs are reported to be indeed altogether indifferent as to the manner of putting their female offspring to death, provided the inhuman deed be performed.".

4

Some little ceremony, however, was stated to Col. W. to be observed in determining the infant's destiny.

When the wives of the Jarejah Rajputs are delivered of daughters, the women, who may be with the mother, repair to the oldest man in the house; this person desires them to go to the father of the infant, and do as he directs. On this the women go to the father, who desires them to do as is customary, and so to inform the mother. The women then repair to the mother, and tell her how to act in conformity to their usage,' &c. Col. Walker adds ;

To render the deed, if possible, more horrible, the mother is commonly the executioner of her own offspring. Women of rank may have their slaves and attendants who perform this office, but the far greater number execute it with their own hands.' They have been known to pride themselves on the destruction of their daughters, and to consider their murder as an act of duty; an act which these females, who are mild, modest, and affectionate, would, if married to any other cast, hold in de testation.'

With very rare exceptions, the murder is perpetrated imme diately after the birth; and it would be considered,' says the Resident, a cruel and barbarous action to deprive the infant of life after it had been allowed to live a day or two. Yet he had ground to believe that this still greater atrocity does, sometimes take place. The extinction of such a life is regarded by a Jarejah as an event of the utmost possible insignifi cance. The occurrence excites neither surprize nor enquiry, and is not made a subject even of conversation.'

6

There is some variance between the testimony just now cited, importing a formal consultation of the father of the infant, and the information obtained in a more familiar intercourse with the Jarejahs. According to this later and more direct information, on which Col. W. appears to rest his final statement, the destruction of the child is so mere a matter of course, and so perfectly trifling an affair in the esteem of the father, that it may be perpetrated without being even mentioned to him. Another unimportant difference of representation is, between the precursory information which asserted that the preservation of a female infant would sink the parents into utter disgrace among their tribe, and the later and better evidence that such a singularity would indeed be accounted very foolish, but would not be particularly opprobrious. There is also a slight degree of wavering in the statement, as made at different times and on various evidence, of the number of exceptions to the general custom. But the evidence of all kinds, from all quarters, most perfectly coincides to prove that the instances of females preserved were extremely rare.

It would be quite certain beforehand, that no nation could

have a prevailing crime of which the priests of a false religion would not know how to make their advantage. In the present instance, the wonder is how the Raj. Gurs* can bave been content to make so little.

The infant after it is destroyed, is placed naked in a small basket, and carried out and interred. In Katty war, any of the female attendants of the family perform this office; but in Kutch it is done by the domestic Raj Gur. The Raj-Gurs, who bury the infants that perish, receive a fee of one kori, which is a coin equivalent in value to one-third of a rupee, or about ten-pence sterling; and a meal.' In Kutch the female Raj-Gurs, are sometimes the executioners of the infant instead of the mother.'

A number of observations relative to the origin of the detestable custom are dispersed here and there in this Report. A current tradition among the Jarejahs is, that in some ancient time, a powerful Rajah of their caste,' having a daughter of eminent beauty and accomplishments, to whom, after a most anxious search far and near, he could find no man of sufficient rank and merit to be a husband,-while yet it would be a grievous calamity and disgrace for her to remain in celibacy, consulted, in this distress, his Raj-Gur, who advised him to put her to death: He was long averse to this savage expedient, both on the ground of affection and religion; and he cited those denunciations in the Sastras, or sacred books, which affix enormous guilt to the murder of a woman. The Rajah's repugnance and fear, however, were, in the end, overcome by a general offer of the priest to load himself with the guilt, and become in his own person responsible for all the consequences of the sin.' Ever since that time the daughters have been destroyed. This legend is of no authority with Colonel Walker; but he says something that seems to imply, that this story of the transfer of the guilt has had an effect, even down to the present time, as a salvo, if such a thing were wanted, for any small remainder of conscience that could serve amidst a general and inveterate custom; and that it has had this effect through a notion that the transfer was representative and virtually perpetual,-removing the guilt from the infanticide parents to the Raj-Gurs through all generations downward. He ascribes to the Jarejahs a sufficient degree of credulity to be entirely confident of the efficacy of such an adjustment.

Having dismissed this story, he suggests that the abominable custom may have originated at the time when these Hindoos are recorded to have inhabited the country of Sinde, a

*The Raj-Gur, otherwise called Raj-Gurn, is literally the priest, tutor, or preceptor of a Rajah; but the term is applied to the domestic Brahman of any family in this country.

tract lying on the Indus, between the country they now in habit and Persia. The Mahometans, in the early period of the progress of their religion and empire, conquered this territory, and converted, after their manner, a large propor-tion of its Raj-put inhabitants. Col. W. conjectures that the Jarejahs, resisting this conversion, and at the same time becoming surrounded by tribes who had embraced a new faith, (and so rendered themselves unworthy to obtain, as they had been accustomed, the daughters of the Jarejahs for wives,) determined rather to destroy their female offspring than either, on the one hand, submit to the debasement of such affiances, or, on the other, incur the disgrace, and perhaps guilt, of bringing them up to remain unmarried. The Colonel omits to notice, however, that on this plan, they must very soon have resolved to quit the country; since they would be as much deprived of all resource for wives for their sons, as for husbands for their daughters. In an Appendix to this Report, he mentions that at a still more advanced period of his inquiries, he has been told another tradition, to which he is inclined to attribute much probability; namely, that

"Some of the early Mussulman invaders of the Jazejahs' country, experiencing the determination with which they defended their liberties, united policy to their arms, and sought to consolidate their interests in the country, by demanding the daughters of the Rajahs in marriage. The high spirited Jurejahs would not brook the disgrace, and pretended they did not preserve their daughters; but fearful of consequences, and apprehensive that force would be resorted to, in order to obtain what was refused to entreaty, they in their extremity listened to the advice of their Raj-Gurs ; and, deluded by the fictitious responsibility which they accepted, the prac. tice of infanticide originated, and has since been confirmed.'

Whatever was the period or the immediate cause of the commencement of the practice, it had attained such inveteracy and general sanction as to effect, throughout a whole people, a clear positive reversal of that system of moral sentiments which has often been pronounced, by the admirers of human nature, to be substantially inseparable from the human mind, in its sane state. We say reversal, rather than merely suspension or abolition. For several passages in these multifarious documents assert, and others clearly imply, that the Jarejahs have somewhat piqued themselves on this custom, as an honourable distinction of their tribe. They felt it as a mode of proclaiming to the neighbouring nations that they were too dignified a race to set any value on so trivial a produce as human females, and yet also that their very daughters would be beings too respectable to be put in subjection to even the best of the superior sex of any other tribe.

The more ordinarily influential motives, however, combined