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Updated: May 15, 2025
"First of all, we want to go on board and look at her," I replied. This time, rather to my surprise, he made no objections. A dark pall of resignation had fallen upon him. In such a mood as his, an Indian woman would go to Suttee without a qualm. He pulled the boat to shore, placed a plank, and with a thrilling pride of possession we walked on board.
Walker had done Wellesley's regulation to prevent the sacrifice of children Beginning of the agitation against the Suttee crime Carey's pundits more enlightened than the Company's judges Humanity triumphs in 1832 Carey's share in Ward's book on the Hindoos The lawless supernaturalism of Rome and of India Worship of Jaganath Regulation identifying Government with Hindooism The swinging festival Ghat murders Burning of lepers Carey establishes the Leper Hospital in Calcutta Slavery in India loses its legal status Cowper, Clarkson, and Carey.
To his mind it was the vilest treason, the grossest selfishness, to conspire or to wink at the sacrifice of a voice like Vittoria's to such a temporal matter as this, which they called patriotism. He looked on it as one might look on the Hindoo drama of a Suttee. He saw in it just that stupid action of a whole body of fanatics combined to precipitate the devotion of a precious thing to extinction.
When one thinks of the atrocious crimes, upheld by religious sanctions, such as suttee and infanticide, which we have put down in the face of determined opposition and even threats of rebellion from the most honoured classes of the community, it is strange to be told that "before we went the people were religious, chaste, sober, compassionate towards the helpless, and patient under suffering," and that we have corrupted them.
As already mentioned on a preceding page, the cruel manner in which the widow is treated seems to be a modification of the Hindoo suttee, but if the account be true, it would appear that death might be preferable to such torments. It is interesting to note that in Corsica, as late as 1743, if a husband died women threw themselves upon the widow and beat her severely.
Missionary and orientalist, b. at Lauder, Berwickshire, and ed. at Edin. for the ministry of the Church of Scotland, went in 1828 to India as a missionary, where, besides his immediate duties, he became a leader in all social reform, such as the abolition of the slave-trade and suttee, and also one of the greatest authorities on the subject of caste, and a trusted adviser of successive Governors-General in regard to all questions affecting the natives.
'The master objection against the bill, of which the rest are but shadows, and which unites in opposition to it men who mutually denounce each other's creeds, and men who despise those who care enough about religion to be unwilling to call that sacred which they hold to be a lie, is that it will encourage unbelief. That may be a fair argument from Hindoos and Mohammedans; but it is strange in the mouths of those who maintain missionary societies and support schools and colleges English education 'leads straight away from all points of native orthodoxy. 'How can we sow the seed and refuse to recognise the crop? When we have shut up our schools, renounced our famous legislation, permitted infanticide and suttee, we may get credit for sincerity in the objection; 'till then people will say that what we really fear is not the spread of unbelief, but the hostility of believers. For such hypocrisy Fitzjames could never feel anything but a righteous contempt.
Except in the case of abolishing Suttee, we have scarcely weaned them from one of their observances; and even now, in spite of our efforts, widows occasionally immolate themselves, and that with the general approval.
There were a number of questions relative to domestic economy and household administration which I should have liked to have asked him. Until very recent years, the young Balinese girl who married an old husband incurred the risk of meeting an untimely and extremely unpleasant end, for the island was the last stronghold of that strange and dreadful Hindu custom, suttee the burning of widows.
In my "Sermon to Children, on the Condition of the Heathen," I mentioned, that the sacred books of the heathen encourage the suttee. I also mentioned several instances, in which widows had been burned to death with the corpses of their husbands.
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