The government has
modified the lot of woman to some extent, as you have learned. The Hindu
law weighed terribly upon her. When a woman lost her husband, custom
required that she should be sent back to her own family. Her relatives
shaved off her hair, dressed her in the coarsest clothing, and compelled
her to do the severest drudgery of the household. She is forbidden to marry
again, and is treated as though she was responsible for becoming a widow.
The reforming of this evil is in progress; but the people are baked into
their prejudices and superstitions of forty centuries, and it is worse than
pulling their teeth to interfere with them.
"One of the favorite divinities of the natives here is Kali, the wife of
Siva, the goddess of murder. Her worship is odious and disgusting; for her
altars were formerly sprinkled with human blood, and the idols were
surrounded with dead bodies and skulls. Their great festival is the
Churuk-Pooja, which is still celebrated, though the government has
forbidden all its brutal features. You have all seen a 'merry-go-round'
machine in which children ride in a circle on wooden horses.
"An apparatus like this, but without the wooden steeds, was used by these
fanatics. At the end of the four arms hung ropes with sharp hooks at the
end, on which were hung up the devotees, as the butcher does his meats in
his shop; and the machine was revolved rapidly till the hooks pulled out,
and the victim dropped upon the ground, fainting or dead.
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