and Bulgaria, the females actually outnumber the males.  Why are the Indian figures so different?  Pro-Hindu enthusiasts may glorify the Hindu social system, and wish to deny the social inferiority of the female sex; average Anglo-Indians may be suspected of being unsympathetic in their statements; but the Census figures stand, and demand an explanation.  Where are these 37 girls and women out of every 1000—­over five million altogether?  Common humanity demands an answer of India, for we seem to hear a bitter cry of India’s womanhood.  As infants, less cared for; as girls, less educated; married too early; ignorantly tended in their hour; as married ladies, shut out of the world; always more victimised by ignorance and superstition—­in life’s race, India’s women carry a heavy handicap, and 37 out of every 1000 actually succumb.

In the matter of the social elevation of their sex, it appears to the writer that Anglo-Indian ladies fall far short of what they might do.  A fair number do interest themselves in their Indian sisters through the lady missionaries and lady doctors, but first-hand knowledge of the lives of Indian women is very rare indeed.  Our late revered Queen’s interest in India and in the womanhood of India is well known, but her feeling about the duty of Anglo-Indian ladies I have never seen recorded.  Speaking at Balmoral to an Indian Christian lady, a member of one of the royal families of India—­the only lady perhaps who ever conversed in Hindustani with Queen Victoria—­she expressed her regret that more Anglo-Indian ladies did not get up the native language, sufficiently at least to let them visit their Indian sisters.  Than Christian sisterly sympathy thus expressed, what better link also could there be between two communities which many things seem to be forcing apart?

[Sidenote:  Suttee and female infanticide.]

It would be unjust to depreciate the influence of mother and wife among Hindus, and we freely acknowledge that, after custom, the mainstay of the zenana system is concern for the purity of the female members of the household.  Saying that, we must now also note that modern ideas of the just rights of the female sex have made little progress in India.  Some progress there has been, judging by the standard already applied; for although in 1901 there were only 963 females to every 1000 males, in the year 1891 there were only 958, and in the year 1881 still fewer, namely, 954.  But it seems as if in India we had justification of the law of social progress that woman’s rights will not be recognised until man’s have been.  The brotherhood of man must be established before men recognise that sister women too have rights.  Translating into Indian terms, and without professing to have given positive proof—­caste feeling must still further decay before the position of women becomes much improved.  At all events, judging by the past, it almost seems to have been necessary for the Legislature to intervene to secure any progress for the sex and