APPENDIX.
Ever since my arrival in America I have heard with great surprise the statement, received on the authority of missionaries, that the Hindoo mothers throw their infants into the river Ganges. Almost every man, woman, boy, or girl in these United States knows it, and has seen the illustration of it in various books. During my tour over some sixteen States and the Canadas, I noticed that the Hindoo mother, her baby, and the alligator, were the subjects of constant inquiry. The story of the infants being thrown into the Ganges by their heartless mistaken mothers, is believed by the people of this country to be either a custom or a religious institution of the Hindoos.
I am aware that to speak against this prevalent belief is to falsify the reports of travellers and to criticise the statements of foreign writers who have disseminated this report throughout the whole length and breadth of the land. On the other hand, I cannot suffer a groundless and strange story to run so freely through the Christian community, and bring upon the poor innocent women of India such undeserved reproach. I do not wish to cover the really defective institutions of my country. Her religion, rather than custom, sanctions suicide in different ways, as manifested in the voluntary offering of the widows upon the funeral fire of their husbands. The throwing of babies into the Ganges or to the alligators, then, I would say never wasin the customs or religious ordinances of India. I never heard of it even as a grandmother’s story; while, on the other hand, my mother and other friends often spoke of the widows who burned themselves alive with their dead husbands, of their preparation, their bidding farewell to their children, committing them to the care of some kind relative, etc. It seems strange to me, that, being a native of India, a Hindoo, yea, a Brahmun, by birth, I did not know nor hear of this custom of my own country, which is known to the people who live nearly eighteen thousand miles from the same. What did not come to my knowledge during my twenty-one years of life in India, came to my ear on the day I reached America. “What is this?” they ask me. “What do they mean? Hindoo mothers throw their babies into the Ganges to be devoured by the alligators! Horrible!! Hindoo mothers do such things!! The same mothers that sit with malshas (earthen pans) with fire burning upon them, on their heads, shoulders, hands, laps, before the goddess Doorga, and solicit the health and life of their children! The same that lie down (hothea) without food and drink before the temple, in case of the severe illness of their children, and who vow to appear before the goddess with an axe tied round their necks, or to shed blood by voluntarily tearing the flesh from their own breasts as an expression of gratitude for the recovery of their children!”
The Hindoo parents love their children as well as do any parents in Christendom; or perhaps I should say more, for some reasons of which Christians are ignorant. The redemption of the Hindoo parents depends in a great measure upon the lives of the children who send their spirits to their destination by a peculiar ceremony.[28]They believe thechildless person has no heaven to inherit, no celestial pleasures to enjoy. The Hindoo religion commands a man to marry several wives, in order to raise up seed needed for his spiritual welfare, to say nothing of his temporal. In case of failure, he secures the birthright of a male child by adoption.
Now the question comes, Did these honest travellers and the reverend missionaries report a falsehood? In reply, I would say, I have no right to answer for them. They know themselves the grounds of their assertion, whether it is based upon their personal knowledge of the case, or upon the story of some tale-teller, who often takes advantage of our ignorance and deceives us accordingly. To speak for myself, I will confess that, although a Brahmun, a native of India, I never saw a child thrown alive into the Ganges, nor heard of such stories until I came to America. I have shown, by reasons drawn from the Hindoo scripture, as well as from custom, that the sacrifice of an infant is as monstrous in the sight of a woman in India as in America. I will allege further, that the maternal affection is everywhere the same, implanted in the human breast by the Creator. I thought perhaps some traveller might have seen the deed done in certain wild portions of India, away from the civilized and learned communities. In fact, several of my friends here said, perhaps I do not know this. I was in Bengal; it might have taken place among the ignorant people in the wild regions. To my great surprise I met the following in a large pictorial work on India, publishedin Boston. “Here (from the Saugor island) thousands of mothers have thrown their children into the Ganges to be devoured by alligators; not because they were destitute of maternal affection, but because a mother’s love was overpowered by her fears of the wrath of some offended deity.” Those who have ever visited Calcutta, know that the Saugor island is at the mouth of the Ganges, and only a few hundred miles from the city, the seat of wealth, learning, and refinement. To present this matter in its true light, I will describe this island and the sanctity attached to it. It is less settled by men than by wild beasts. It has a population of tigers, monkeys, and wolves. Very few children of Adam dare to dwell among these disagreeable inmates of the isle. There is a light-house, however, built by the British. The men who take care of the light, and a few solitary monks who live there, are considered the destined prey of the tigers, who are ready, whenever an opportunity occurs, to make their meal of them, or, to use a Hindoo expression, “if not a breakfast, a dinner, or a supper.” This place being near the confluence of the river Ganges with the sea, is regarded as sacred by the Hindoos, who resort there in the month of January to bathe, and spend three days in tents pitched on the sandy banks of the river. Its sanctity draws immense crowds only once a year, when hardly any mother carries her child with her, for the place, as well as the river, is very dreadful. The efficacy consists in the bathing in this place, not in throwing children into the river. Those who go there go for the purpose of purifying themselves with the sacred water, and not to commit so cruel a murder as throwing children into the river.
So much for the Saugor island. I have sometimes looked at this matter in a different way; that a traveller had seenperhaps an insane woman throw her child into the water, which he interpreted as the institution of the “heathen.” But it seems to me an unjust inference, to name the fruit of insanity as the custom of a people, to stigmatize a whole people for the folly of one, or a few even. I read in a Boston paper, that the average number of suicides in the United States is nine per week. Will it be proper for me to report in India that suicide is the custom of the American people? No, I cannot tell such a story. When I am asked about it, I will ascribe it to insanity or drunkenness. Once more, I will say, then, as a Brahmun I never knew nor heard of the story of children thrown by their mothers into the Ganges. If a Hindoo mother hears this story she will press her babe close to her heart and say, “Sweet treasure, I have drained the ocean for you. My tender kiss is more genial to you than the sharp lips of the alligator. My loving lap is a better place for you than the unconscious bed of the Ganges!”