devoured by the white ants, by some mother too poor to go on
pilgrimage to a sacred river-spot, Carey had known this unnatural
horror. He and his brethren had planned a preaching tour to Sagar,
where not only mothers drowned their first born in payment of a vow,
with the encouragement of the Brahmans, but widows and even men
walked into the deep sea and drowned themselves at the spot where
Ganga and Sagar kiss each other, "as the highest degree of holiness,
and as securing immediate heaven." The result of Carey's memorial
was the publication of the Regulation for preventing the sacrifice
of children at Sagar and other places on the Ganges:--"It has been
represented to the Governor-General in Council that a criminal and
inhuman practice of sacrificing children, by exposing them to be
drowned or devoured by sharks, prevails...Children thrown into the
sea at Sagar have not been generally rescued...but the sacrifice has
been effected with circumstances of peculiar atrocity in some
instances. This practice is not sanctioned by the Hindoo law, nor
countenanced by the religious orders." It was accordingly declared
to be murder, punishable with death. At each pilgrim gathering
sepoys were stationed to check the priests and the police, greedy of
bribes, and to prevent fanatical suicides as well as superstitious
murders.

The practice of infanticide was really based on the recommendation
of Sati, literally the "method of purity" which the Hindoo shastras
require when they recommend the bereaved wife to burn with her
husband. Surely, reasoned the Rajpoots, we may destroy a daughter
by abortion, starvation, suffocation, strangulation, or neglect, of
whose marriage in the line of caste and dignity of family there is
little prospect, if a widow may be burned to preserve her chastity!