CHILDREN IN INDIA—STORY OF THE MAHABHARATA—FEMALE CHILD
DESPISED—A HUNDRED COWS THE PRICE OF A SON—RECORDS LEFT
BY HISTORIANS OF ALEXANDER’S CONQUEST—ATTEMPTS BY BRITISH
GOVERNMENT TO CHECK INFANTICIDE—WORK OF JONATHAN DUNCAN
AND COL. ALEXANDER WALKER.
In an examination of the attitude of early man toward the child, there
could be no more illuminating study than that of the habits of our own
ancestry, the so-called Aryan primitives.
Whether the cradle of the race was in India and spread from there
throughout Europe, or whether the original habitat was Central Europe,
the fact remains that the earliest records of the civilization of all
of the races from the Indians and Aryans in Asia to the Celts, Teutons,
Hellenes, Goths, and Italians indicate that they were a pastoral rather
than an agricultural people and that while the family was the unit, the
father was undoubtedly the supreme power that later marked the _pater
familias_ in Rome.
The mere absence of fish-hooks in the archæological remains and the
fact that the Aryans were for a long time a fish-hating race (the word
fish-eater used as a term of opprobrium by Herodotus, there being no
mention of eating fish in the Vedas and only occasionally in Homer)
go to show how limited was the food of that race. It is only as the
various branches of the race developed that they came to know the art
of fishing and the value of fish, a fact that is shown in the lack
of a common name for fish in the Aryan tongues. The age of Homer was
really the beginning of the Iron Age of the Aryan people, the culture
of Italy and Hellas resulting from a “lengthened process of historical
evolution” stimulated and developed by contact with the high culture
of the Semites, which again was derived from the proto-Babylonian
people.[165]
Up to this time in the struggle for existence of these semi-savages
everything was sacrificed for war, and infanticide and human sacrifice
were practised, there being reason to believe that even cannibalism was
practised in Britain, if not by the Celts certainly by the Iberians.
Early Greek myths reveal a condition of society little different from
that which the missionaries in recent years have found at Dahomey.
Children were killed when they were not wanted; wives were bought and
sold. The practice of breaking a bottle over the bow of a vessel is a
survival of a savage practice of the vikings of binding a human being
to the prow when the war galley was launched in order that the keel
might be sprinkled with sacrificial blood.
Recent philological research corrected by archæological discovery has
established the fact that the members of the Aryan race up to the time
of the Homeric legends were nomad herdsmen who had domesticated the
dog and wandered over the plains of Europe in wagons drawn by oxen.
They knew how to fashion canoes out of the trunks of trees but with
the exception of native copper they were ignorant of metals. It is
extremely doubtful if they practised any agriculture. They collected
and pounded in stone mortars the seed of some wild cereal, either spelt
or barley. They recognized the association of marriage but they were
polygamous. They practised human sacrifice and they retained after
birth only those children that they could conveniently rear, or those
male children who were regarded as necessary for the increase of the
fighting forces of the tribe.
Upon the Dasyas, the dark-skinned, flat-nosed people who originally
inhabited India, the Aryans triumphantly descended, eventually driving
the Dasyas out of their lands. From the Rig Vedas we learn the nature
of the Aryan conqueror. He was a warrior, but he was a prayerful
warrior who prayed for health, a defensive armour, and a comfortable
dwelling. There were frequent sacrifices to the gods and at all of the
sacrifices interesting philosophical and sphagiological discussions
took place. In his prayers he prayed for racy and healthy children,
but he always prayed for boys and never for girls. His children were
part of his scheme of wealth; they were his body and soul.[166]
[Illustration: FLORIDA WOMEN SACRIFICING THEIR FIRST-BORN CHILDREN
(FROM AN OLD PRINT)]
The two great epics, the _Mahabharata_ and the _Ramayana_, are the two
sources of information on this period. Written down when the art of
writing became known about the year 800 B. C., these books mirror the
life of the people for centuries further back. The attitude toward
children can only be gleaned from such statements as that Bhishma, one
of the heroes of the _Mahabharata_, was the eighth son of his father,
and the first to be allowed to live. The deaths of the previous seven
are explained on the ground that his father Shantanu, the King of
Hastinapur, was married to Ganga, the river goddess, who had consented
to be the wife of the King on condition that, no matter what he might
see her do, he would ask no questions. When she, however, having
drowned the seven, attempted to drown the eighth son, he was obliged to
cry “enough,” thereby saving the son but losing his wife, who departed
declaring that the previous seven sons had been seven of the deities,
condemned to a fresh life for some venial sin, and had been released by
her from their punishment by an early death.
With such a story recited as semi-religious doctrine it can easily be
seen why there grew up early the feeling that there was no crime in
taking the lives of those children who were regarded as unnecessary.
Bhishma takes a vow not to marry, in accordance with which he refuses
the offer of Amva who revenges herself when she is born a second time,
as Chikandini, the daughter of a great king. The epic opens up another
view of the early Aryan attitude when it is stated that Chikandini,
although a daughter, is allowed to live; but in order to accomplish
this her mother hides her sex for twenty-one years.[167]
In the Sankhayana-Grihya-Sutra there is a long description of the
ceremony of the Pumsavana (the ceremony to secure the birth of a male
child) which with its earnest prayer for a male child, not only at
the time of coition but again with much ceremony in the third month,
shows that the female child was doomed to a most unwelcome reception at
the very best. As we shall see later, these ceremonies were bound to
produce, in the course of time, not only the practice of killing female
infants without remorse but even the disgusting ceremonies that marked
female infanticide in some places.[168]
The feeling of these people at all times about women is best expressed
in the words of the ordinance of Manu: “Women are born to bear
children.”[169] The female child that escaped death had therefore
a sharply defined life before it. It is a question, as Professor
Gottheil suggests, as to whether it is a degeneracy that brings about
the death of these infants in view of the life they would be obliged
to lead. Girls were betrothed at three or four years of age and at
seven had gone through the ceremony of marriage to boys of whom they
knew nothing, and when those boys died they remained virgin widows. At
one time it was possible for them to be taken to their boy husbands’
homes and in some instances they became mothers before they were
eleven. Not until March 19, 1891, was a law passed in India prohibiting
cohabitation before twelve.[170]
Vatsyayana, an ancient Hindu sage, author of the Kama-sutra, in which
are given rules for the domestic life of the Hindus, mirrors the
point of view of his time, about the first century, A.D. According to
Vatsyayana parents were to show to their children all indulgence and
freedom—until they were five. From five to sixteen they were to be
instructed in the fourteen sciences and sixty-four arts, after which
time the lord of creation was enjoined to become a householder.[171]
Of this early period there is plenty of evidence of human sacrifice
which, even when it did not consist entirely of children, led to the
slaughter of children. “There is no evidence,” as Professor Wilson
says, “that the practice ever prevailed to the extent to which it
spread through most of the ancient nations, or partook in general of
the same character. They were in the main sacrifices of an expiatory
nature performed in fear and intended to deprecate the anger of the
gods.”[172]
Monier-Williams suggests that it is possible that human sacrifice was
at one time part of the Brahmanical system and adduces the story of
Hariskandra and Sunahsepa as an evidence of that practice.[173] In this
legend, Hariskandra, being childless, prays to Varuna to grant him a
son, vowing to sacrifice him to the god. A son is born but the father
does not keep his word, and when the son reaches the age of discretion
he refuses to become a victim. From a starving Brahman he purchases a
son for one hundred cows, but this victim escapes by being adopted by
the priest Visvamitra who is a royal sage.[174]
In the Purushamedha, or the section of the Satapatha-Brahmana dealing
with the human sacrifice, a large number of men and women are bound
to eleven sacrificial posts, and after the necessary rites have been
performed on them, they are set free and eleven animals are killed
instead. That in times previous to this adoption human beings had been
sacrificed, there is no doubt.
Despite all that can be said in favour of the Buddhistic religion and
the reforms that it wrought, it is not possible to find that it made
any change in the attitude of the Hindus toward their children or
the practices of the day as did the religion of Christ and later the
religion of Mohammed, one of which sanctified the child, while the
other expressly forbade infanticide. Laying down the law that life
was a period of suffering and humility, the Buddhistic religion still
declared that Nirwana was not obtainable by those under seven, so that
the life of the child did not take on any increased value under the new
religion of Gautama.
It was natural that with no forceful check on infanticide contained in
the new religion, the primitive idea so well planted should spread and
become stronger rather than diminish. It is therefore not surprising
that in the Manava-dharma-castra ascribed by Burnell[175] to the period
between the year 1 A.D. to the year 500, the daughter is placed very
low in the scale of things human:
“184—Children, old people, the poor and sick, are to be known [to be]
lords of the sky; an elder brother is equal to a father; a wife and son
are one’s own body.
“185—And one’s own servants are one’s own shadow; a daughter is the
chief miserable object. Therefore offended by these, one should always
bear it without heat.”[176]
That infanticide was so common in the time of Alexander that it
attracted the attention even of that Greek in his march of conquest
through the country, is evident in the records that he brought back.
Q. Curtius Rufus relates,[177] that on entering the kingdom of
Sophytes, Alexander was astonished at the wisdom of the laws of this
barbarian. According to Curtius and Diodorus, Sophytes was governor of
a territory west of the Hyphasis while according to Arrian it lay along
the banks of the Hydaspes.
“Here,” says Curtius, “they do not acknowledge and rear children
according to the will of the parents, but as the officers entrusted
with the medical inspection of infants may direct, for if they have
remarked anything deformed or defective in the limbs of a child they
order it to be killed. In contracting marriages they do not seek an
alliance with high birth, but make their choice by the looks, for
beauty in the children is a quality highly appreciated.”[178]
“These,” said Diodorus Siculus, “were governed by laws in the highest
degree salutary, for while in other respects their political system was
one to admire, beauty was held among them in the highest estimation.
For this reason a discrimination between the children born to them is
made at the stage of infancy, when those that are perfect in their
limbs and features, and have constitutions which promise a combination
of strength and beauty, are allowed to be reared, while those that
have any bodily defect are condemned to be destroyed as not worth
rearing. They make their marriages also in accordance with this
principle, for in selecting a bride they care nothing whether she has a
dowry and a handsome fortune besides, but look only to her beauty and
other advantages of the outward person.”[179]
“A very singular usage,” says Strabo, “is related of the high
estimation in which the inhabitants of Cathaie hold the quality of
beauty, which they extend to horses and dogs. According to Onesicritus,
they elect the handsomest person as king. The child [selected], two
months after birth, undergoes a public inspection, and is examined.
They determine whether it has the amount of beauty required by law, and
whether it is worthy to be permitted to live. The presiding magistrate
then pronounces whether it is to be allowed to live, or whether it is
to be put to death.”[180]
As far as I have been able to discover, the first attempt made by
the British Government and perhaps the first organized effort in the
Eastern world to put an end to the murder of female children was in
1789 when the British resident officer of Benares, Jonathan Duncan,
afterwards Governor of Bombay, authenticated from the confessions of
a race called the Rajekoomars the existence of the custom. Sir John
Shore, afterwards a witness in the trial of Warren Hastings, and later
Lord Teignmouth, in an address to the Royal Society of Bengal in 1794
described how, after many suggestions, it was decided that the only
way that the Rajekoomars could be moved was by getting them to sign
an “engagement” binding them to desist “in future from the barbarous
practice of causing the death of their female children.”
Inasmuch as that engagement was the beginning of the work in India and
was afterwards used as a model for other engagements and reveals a
curious attitude of mind on both sides, I reprint it in full:
“Whereas it hath become known to the Government of the Honourable
English East India Company, that we, the tribe of _Rajekoomars_, do
not suffer our female children to live; and whereas this is a great
crime, as mentioned in the _Brehma Bywant Pooran_, where it is said
that killing even a _Fetus_ is as criminal as killing a _Brahman_, and
that for killing a female, or woman, the punishment is to suffer in the
_nerk_, or hell, called _Kat Shootul_, for as many years as there are
hairs on that female’s body, and that afterwards that person shall be
born again, and successively become a leper and be afflicted with the
_Jukhima_; and whereas the British Government in India, whose subjects
we are, have an utter detestation of such murderous practices, and we
do ourselves acknowledge, that although customary among us they are
highly sinful, we do therefore hereby agree not to commit any longer
such detestable acts; and any among us (which God forbid) who shall be
hereafter guilty thereof, or shall not bring up and get our daughters
married to the best of our abilities among those of our caste, shall be
expelled from our tribe, and shall neither eat, nor keep society, with
us, besides suffering hereafter the punishments denounced in the above
_Pooran_ and _Shafter_. We have therefore entered into this agreement.
“Dated the 17th of December, 1789.”[181]
On May 27, 1805, Colonel Alexander Walker, the resident at Baroda,
called the attention of the government at Bombay to the conditions in
Guzerat, and the government authorized him to go ahead and use such
measures as he deemed wise to suppress infanticide, sending him a copy
of the engagement of Duncan as a suggestion of lines that might be
profitably employed.[182]
It was while in the course of his investigations and work in
suppressing the practice that Colonel Walker heard first from the
Hindus the supposedly divine origin of the practice of putting female
children to death. It was the supposedly divine origin and the fact
that they acted within the observance of their religious duties that
gave protection against interference from civil authorities. The
Jharejas, a tribe among whom Walker made his investigations, informed
him that the origin of the practice of infanticide came about through
the fact that a powerful Raja of their caste, who had a daughter of
singular beauty and accomplishments, desired his Rajgor or family
Brahmin to affiance her to a prince of desert and rank equal to her
own.[183]
The Rajgor, after much travelling, returned to the Raja and informed
him that he was not able to find any one to meet the proper
requirements. The Raja was so dejected over this that, according to the
story, he finally consented to the Rajgor’s putting his daughter to
death as the only means out of the difficulty; and from that time on,
according to the Jharejas, female infanticide was practised throughout
the land.[184]
There is much frankness in this explanation inasmuch as it was the
difficulty of marrying their daughters in a way they considered
properly that encouraged the practice. There is no doubt there had
been a persistent warfare in the formative periods of the tribes, and
when the warlike conditions made it impossible to marry the daughters
advantageously, the daughters become a burden with the result that the
practice of infanticide sprang up.
“The practice which prevailed in Europe,” says Colonel Walker, “and
chiefly amongst the principal families, of placing their daughters in
nunneries, might be traced to the same motives that led the Jharejas
to put theirs to death; and both have originated in the desire of
diminishing the cares and expense attending a numerous family.”[185]
That the practice, no matter how deeply rooted in the tribe, still
leaves the decision with the father, is shown from the following
explanation of putting the child to death:
“When the wives of the Jhareja are delivered of daughters, the women
who may be with the mother repair to the oldest man in the house; this
person desires them to go to him who is the father of the infant, and
do as he directs. On this the women go to the father, who desires
them to do as is customary, and so to inform the mother. The women
then repair to the mother, and tell her to act in conformity to their
usages. The mother next puts opium on the nipple of her breast, which
the child, inhaling with its milk, dies. The above is one custom, and
the following is another: when the child is born, they place the navel
string on its mouth, when it expires.”[186]
We are further informed that “if a father wishes to preserve a
daughter, he previously apprises his wife and family, and his commands
are obeyed; if a mother entertains the wish of preserving a daughter,
and her husband is averse to it, the infant must be put to death.”[187]
The heads of the tribes were consulted. Many of them declared that the
women and children were well treated and pointed out the fact that
the Hindu religion has always protected the female sex from violence
and that it was unlawful to put a woman to death for any offence
whatsoever. In support of this they quote the following Sloke verse,
which is extracted from the Dhurma Shastra:
“Shut Gao Vudhet Veepra;
Shut Veepra Vudhet Streeya;
Shut Streeya Vudhet Bala;
Shut Bala Vudhet Mroosha.”
“To kill 100 cows is equal to killing a Brahmin;
To kill 100 Brahmins is equal to killing a woman;
To kill 100 women is equal to killing a child;
To kill 100 children is equal to telling an untruth.”[188]
Walker also came across a tribe of Brahmins called Kurada. Their object
of worship was a goddess known as Makalukshmee to whom human sacrifice
was acceptable. Another name for their deity was Vishara Bhoot, a
spirit of poison, a very amiable ghost inasmuch as it led to the
poisoning of guests as sacrifices for this queen of another world.
Among these people the following story was told as giving the origin of
the sacrifices of human beings:
“A certain Raja, having built a spacious and beautiful tank, found
every effort to fill it with water impracticable.
“This greatly distressed the Raja, and having in vain exerted every
expedient of devotion and labour the Raja at last vowed to his
particular deity the sacrifice of his own child, provided this precious
offering was accepted by the grant of his prayer.
“Accordingly the Raja directed one of his children to be placed in the
centre of the tank, on which the deity instantly gave an undeniable
testimony of his assent and gratification; the tank immediately filled
with fine water, and the child was sacrificed in being drowned.”[189]
The records of the correspondence and the engagements for the next
eighty years make interesting reading, especially the communications
from the various princes protesting that inasmuch as they had killed
their daughters for 4900 years it was an unfriendly act for the British
Government to interfere with the practice or insist on discussing
it. Showing their humanity and their _right_ to be protected from
interference in the matter of female infanticide, the Futteh Mahommed
Jemadar, writing to Colonel Walker, protests that already “in this
country, neither birds nor animals are killed, goats excepted, and but
few even eat them; and charitable places for fakirs going and coming
from Mecca, and Hindus performing pilgrimages, are so strongly planted
that they suffer no annoyance.”[190]
In an interesting batch of correspondence, 1835, between the British
political agent, J. P. Willoughby, at Kattywar and various Jhallas,
Rawuls, Gohuls, and Surwyejas of this section of India, these
sub-chiefs reply to the half-cajoling, half-commanding communications
of the political agent that they will do their best to see that
infanticide is stopped, plaintively informing the representatives of
the British Government that in addition they will promise to bring up
their own daughters. “Five months since,” says the Jhareja Dosajee,
Chief of Paal, appealingly, “my brother, Jhareja Hurreebhyee, got a
daughter, which he preserved. This I wrote for your information.”
In the brief time since 1835 there is evident the great change that has
come over the spirit of the once proud sons of the East. The iron of
the West has left its mark.
The Infanticide Act, No. 366 A, 14th of March 1871, organized and
equalized the work and showed that the government was indeed resolved
“to use every means in its power to eradicate the inhuman practice
that any relaxation of the repressive measures now to be enforced will
depend on the evidence that may be given of a disposition to reform.”
Copies of the proclamation were affixed in conspicuous places at each
_tehseelee_, police station, and village _chopal_ in the proclaimed
localities and with the employment of the registrar of midwives, the
imposition of extra police under certain circumstances, and the fact
that midwife and Chowkidar were both obliged to report where the
proportion of the girls to the child population falls below twenty-five
per cent.,[191] an effectual check was put on the practice of several
thousand years.