tribes of India.  Westermarck (503) indeed fancied he had discovered the occurrence among them of “the absorbing passion for one.”  “Colonel Dalton,” he says, “represents the Paharia lads and lasses as forming very romantic attachments; ’if separated only for an hour,’ he says, ‘they are miserable.’” In reality Dalton does not “represent them” thus; he says “they are represented;” that is, he gives his information at second-hand, without naming his authority, who, to judge by some of his remarks, was apparently a facetious globe-trotter.  It is of course possible that these young folks are much attached to each other.  Even sheep are “miserable if separated only for an hour;” they bleat pathetically and are disconsolate, though there is no question of an “absorbing passion for one.”  What kind of love unites these Paharia lads and lasses may be inferred from the further information given in Dalton’s book that “they work together, go to market together, eat together, and sleep together;” while indiscretions are atoned for by shedding the blood of an animal, whereupon all is forgiven!  In other words, where Westermarck found “the absorbing passion for one,” a critical student can see nothing but a vulgar case of reprehensible free lust.

And yet, though we have found no indications of true love, I can see reasons for Dalton’s exclamation,

“It is singular that in matters of the affections the feelings of these semi-savages should be more in unison with the sentiments and customs of the highly organized western nations than with the methodical and unromantic heart-schooling of their Aryan fellow-countrymen.”

Whether these wild tribes are really more like ourselves in their amorous customs than the more or less civilized Hindoos to whom we now turn our attention, the reader will be able to decide for himself after finishing this chapter.

CHILD MURDER AND CHILD MARRIAGE

Twenty years ago there were in India five million more men than women, and there has been no change in that respect.  The chief cause of this disparity is the habitual slaughter of girl babies.  The unwelcome babes are killed with opium pills or exposed to wild beasts.  The Pundita Ramabai Sarasvati, in her agonizing book, The High Caste Hindu Woman, writes with bitter sarcasm, that

“even the wild animals are so intelligent and of such refined taste that they mock at British law and almost always steal girls to satisfy their hunger.”  “The census of 1870 revealed the curious fact that three hundred children were stolen in one year by wolves from within the city of Umritzar, all the children being girls.”

Hindoo females who escape the opium pills and the wolves seldom have occasion to congratulate themselves therefor.  Usually a fate worse than death awaits them.  Long before they are old enough, physically or mentally, to marry, they are either delivered bodily