Their whole costume consists of two articles—a simple bodice fitting close to the chest, and one long cloth wound gracefully round the person, and often brought over the head. In the case of women of the higher classes, who are rarely seen in public except in the Maratha country, this long robe, which is called a sārī, is at least ten yards long and often of very costly material. Nevertheless what the husband gains by the simplicity of his wife's taste in the matter of her two garments, is more than counterbalanced by her penchant for expensive jewelry.

And here I may observe that notwithstanding the apparent poverty of the common people of India, they are rarely poor to the point of discomfort. Thanks to the climate they have few wants, and are very thrifty. However small the weekly earnings, a little money is sure to be saved, and that little is never wasted on strong drinks. Instead, however, of being laid by as it ought to be, in the Post-office Savings Bank, it is generally invested in jewelry for the adornment of the women and children of the family. Certainly, after looking at Indian females, whether old or young their arms, legs, fingers, and toes covered with bangles and rings, generally made of silver and not seldom of gold-it is difficult to believe in the poverty, much less in the alleged bankruptcy of India. Scarcely a woman of the poorest families is without a nose-ring in one nostril, and many of the better classes have also necklaces and earrings. Sometimes the nasal organ is decorated with a small circlet of five or six pearls set in gold, with an emerald in the centre. I once saw a woman who lived in a mud cottage, and earned 20 rupees a month as nurse. She had a double row of chased gold beads round her neck. Her nose-ring had six fine pearls, but she had not yet saved enough money for the central emerald, which is sure to be procured and duly inserted a few years hence.

Again when I was at Ahmedabad, I was invited into the house of a man who has a large family, and who has been earning about £100 a year as a Government servant for

many years. He took me into a private room, opened a deal box in the corner and displayed the jewels worn by his wife and children on festive occasions. I believe I am under the mark when I say that they might have been sold in England for at least £1500.

So also one has only to go to a railway station when a local train comes in to see an almost incredible amount of jewelry in the third class carriages. Men and women are packed like sheep, the sexes being kept separate, but scarcely a woman, except the very poorest, is without a nose-ring in one nostril, or an earring in one ear, or gold or silver ornaments of some kind.

Again we were one day taken by the Collector of Kaira's wife to a girls' school. My companions were ladies who inspected it closely. They informed me that 35 girls were assembled in the class-room awaiting their arrival with six women superintendants. All the girls, however poor, wore ornaments of some sort or other, and two or three tiny children of three or four years of age, though wholly unencumbered with clothing, were literally bowed down by the weight of thick bracelets, necklaces, and ankle-rings. A few, only of the poorest, had necklaces and ornaments made of straw. The teachers, too, were profusely decorated, only one poor widow in sombre attire, and undecorated by a single ornament, stood aloof as if apologizing for being present in the room, or indeed for being present in the world at all.

The children sang a song in melancholy tones, moving round and clapping their hands. Some read and answered questions in Gujarātī. Others showed their needlework and coarse embroidery.

As to the boys' schools in towns like Mehmoodabad and Kaira, they are often conducted by native schoolmasters in the open air. We passed one consisting of about forty children. The boys were repeating or rather screaming out the multiplication table up to a hundred times a hundred with wonderful energy, and kept time together with

such accuracy, that their combined voices made a piercing roar. I found that most of the bigger boys could read books in the Gujarāti character with ease and fluency.

Of course the teaching of girls, whenever any teaching is given at all either at school or at home, cannot be carried on beyond the age of eleven. At that age they all begin domestic duties in their husband's homes. Most of the evils, religious, moral, and physical, under which India is still suffering, are due to early marriages and the ignorance of its female population. In 1872-73 British India had only 5700 girls receiving public education.

SAMADH, SACRIFICE, SELF-IMMOLATION,

AND SELF-TORTURE.

KAIRA DISTRICTS, 1876.

A REMARKABLE attempt at achieving a kind of canonization or saintship, by the accomplishment of an apparent Samadh, occurred in the district of Kaira in Gujarāt, presided over by Mr. Frederick Sheppard, the energetic Collector in whose camp I stayed on my first arrival in India. A brief account of the circumstances attending the discovery and interruption of the attempt may be acceptable to an increasing class of readers who take an interest in the various phases and peculiarities of Indian religious life. I propose, therefore, to introduce the narrative by a few remarks about sacrifice, immolation, and self-torture, all of which were once common in India.

In what may be called the Brahmanical period, which succeeded the Vedic period of Hinduism, human sacrifice must have prevailed among the Brahmanical races. This is sufficiently evident from the story of Śunahsepha in the Aitareya-brāhmaṇa. It is even believed by many that the sects called Śāktas (or Tantrikas) formerly ate portions of the flesh and drank the blood of the victims sacrificed at their secret orgies. Among the wild Hill tribes and primitive races of India, the chief idea of religion has been the necessity of appeasing the malice of malignant beings by oblations of blood, and on occasions of great emergency by the outpouring of human blood. Their gods thirsted for blood and preferred that of men, while that of children

was an irresistible delicacy certain to put them in the best of humours.

Very little more than thirty years has elapsed since the suppression of human sacrifices among the Kandhs (often written Kondhs or Khonds), an aboriginal tribe of Orissa. Their terrible Earth-god was supposed to send famines and pestilenees unless propitiated by blood. According to Dr. Hunter (Statistics of Bengal, xix. 235) ‘the victims were of either sex, and generally of tender age. The detestable office of providing them formed a hereditary privilege of the Pans, one of the alien low castes attached to the Kandh villages. Procurers of this class yearly sallied forth into the plains, and bought up a herd of promising boys and girls from the poorer Hindus. Sometimes they kidnapped their prey; and each Kandh district kept a stock of victims in reserve, "to meet sudden de

mands for atonement." Brahmans and Kandhs were the only races whose purity exempted them from sacrifice, and a rule came down from remote antiquity that the victim must be bought with a price.

'After a village had purchased a victim, it treated him. with much kindness, regarding him as a consecrated being, eagerly welcomed at every threshold. If a child, he enjoyed perfect liberty; but if an adult, the chief of the village kept him in his own house, and fed him well, but fettered him so that he could not escape1. When the time of atonement had come, the Kandhs spent two days in feasting and riot; on the third they offered up the victim, shouting as the first blood fell to the ground, "We bought you with a price; no sin rests with us.""

Our Government, by Act XXI of 1845, entirely suppressed these horrible sacrifices, and established a special agency for enforcing obedience to the order for their abolition. Human sacrifices were offered in the city of Saugor during the whole of the Maratha Government

1 A similar practice of feeding, fattening, and petting consecrated human victims prevailed, I believe, in Mexico.

F