Selections from the Records of the Government of India, (Home Department.) Published by Authority. No. V (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1854 edition. Excerpt: ...arise from the contests attendant on the capricious dissolution of their marriages, I have held it to be obvious, that the practice of infanticide, and the cause of those contests, re-act upon each other, alternately, as cause and effect Infanticide produces a scarcity of women, which raises marriage payments so high, that tribes are easily induced to contest their adjustment when dissolutions of the tie occur; while these dissolutions are plainly promoted by that scarcity, which prevents every man from having a wife. On the cessation of infanticide, women would become abundant, and the marriage payment would become small. Every man would have a wife in these districts, as elsewhere; women would have less power to change, and when they did, there would be no difficulty in making the requisite adjustment of property. " But lastly, the Government is now about to remove entirely this ground for the practice, by preventing contests about property involved in marriage contracts, by adjudicating all questions respecting it in these districts, as it does in Gopmsur. Thus the evil which infanticide is held to avert will finally cease; and with it, all pretence of justification founded on the permissive sanction of the deity.. " The measure of which I have next to speak, has produced effects of great importance. I conceived, that between a people organized on the principle of family, and patriarchally governed; amongst whom contracts between individuals are also engagements between tribes; and the important class of marriage contracts gives rise to the strongest feelings, next to those of religion, which connect society; I conceived, that between this people and the Government, a new bond of connection, involving influence of the highest value to this...