BRITISH CONNEXION WITH IDOLATRY, GHAUT MURDERS,
AND SLAVERY IN INDIA ;

WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE PRESENT STATE OF INFANTICIDE
AND OF SLAVERY IN INDIA.

"In childhood, must a female be dependent on her father; in youth, on her husband; her lord
being dead, on her sons; if she have no sons, on the near kinsmen of her husband; if he left no kins-
men, on those of her father; if he have no paternal kinsmen, on the sovereign." Menu.

"I imagine that the ceremony (the Car Festival of Juggernaut) would soon cease to be conducted
on its present scale, if the institution were left entirely to its own fate, and to its own resources, by
the officers of the British Government." Stirling.

"When we reflect on those evils that are inseparable from even the mildest state of Slavery, and con-
sider how large a portion of our most industrious subjects are at present totally deprived of a free
market for their labour, restricted by inheritance to a mere subsistence, and sold and transferred
with the land which they till,---policy no less than humanity would appear to dictate the propriety of
gradually relieving them from those restrictions, which have reduced them, and must otherwise con-
tinue to confine them, to a condition scarcely superior to that of the cattle, which they follow at the
plough." Madras Board of Revenue, 1819.

LONDON:

PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR,

BY SEELY AND SON, FLEET STREET,

SOLD ALSO BY WIGHTMAN, PATERNOSTER ROW: WAUGH AND INNES,
EDINBURGH : AND KEENE, DUBLIN.

J. Haddon, Printer,

Castie Street, Finsbury.

PREFACE

TO THE SECOND EDITION.

THE Author, during his residence in India, having witnessed the horrid rite of burning a widow with the body of her deceased husband,—the miseries of pilgrimage to the great Temple of Juggernaut in Orissa (the celebrity of which is increased by British regulation and support),-the exposure of the sick and the dead on the banks of the Ganges, and other cruelties of Hindoism, has, since his return to his native country in 1826, laboured to diffuse information respecting these things and to urge the propriety and facility of their suppression. In prosecution of this object the Author has published two editions of a Pamphlet entitled "The Suttees' Cry to Britain ;"* two editions of "Pilgrim Tax in India ;" an edition of “ Ghaut Murders in India ;" and a small edition of "Infanticide in India." The principal part of these Pamphlets have been put in circulation. Through the liberal exertions of numerous friends, a considerable number have been circulated gratuitously in this country, and also in the different Presidencies of India, among the various Functionaries of Government. To show the propriety of these exertions, and to encourage similar and extended efforts, the Author (though with much hesitation) is induced to refer to an extract of a letter from the private Secretary of the present

* The Coventry Society for the abolition of Human Sacrifices in India has published an abridgment of this Pamphlet, entitled "A Voice from India."