Forty Years in the World; Or, Sketches and Tales of a Soldier's Life, by the Author of Fifteen Years in India. Or, Sketches and Tales of a Soldier's Life, by the Author of Fifteen Years in India (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: N. III. MOOTEE MOOTA AND HATTIMA. There's a bliss beyond all that the minstrel has told, When two that are link'd in one heavenly tie, With heart never changing and brow never cold, Love on through all ills, and love on till they die ! One hour of a passion, so sacred, is worth Whole ages of heartless and wandering bliss; And oh! if there be an Elysium on earth, It is this, it is this. MOORE. Infanticide is now but little known in India. By the exertions of Governor Duncan and Colonel Walker, its progress was arrested in Katty- war and Cutch; and so salutary has been the effect of exposing the atrocious barbarity of putting innocent creatures to death, merely to gratify the false pride of foolish men, and to perpetuate a horrible custom, that, amongst the Rajpools, we now scarcely ever hear of this abominable practice. No Rajpoot ever chooses a wife in his own tribe: these people consider one another in the same light as family relations, too near a-kin to marry. This usage, which, hi its practical effect, renders it difficult for parents to provide well for their daughters, induced some tribes to put them all to death; for it is considered a great disgrace, either to have an unmarried daughter in a family, or to permit one to make an unequal match. Another most deplorable consequence of this custom was, the purchase and sale of females. Men who could not obtain wives in their own tribe, and sometimes found it difficult to form proper connexions in another, preferred the easy mode of gratifying their desires by expending sums of money for female slaves; who were generally, indeed always, chosen for their beauty. This branch of trade has long been carried on by men called Brinjarries, who are privileged grain- carriers, found in all parts of the country. T...