The virtues of the Rājput lie on the surface—their loyalty, devotion, and gallantry; their chivalry towards women; their regard for their national customs. Their weaknesses—though Tod does not enumerate them in detail—are obvious from a study of their history—their instability of character, their liability to sudden outbreaks of passion, their tendency to yield to panic on the battlefield, their inability, as a result of their tribal system, to form a permanent combination against a public enemy, their occasional faithlessness to their chiefs and allies, their excessive use of opium. These defects they share with most orientals, but, on the whole, they compare favourably with other races in the Indian Empire. There is much in their character and institutions which reminds us of the Gauls as pictured by Mommsen in a striking passage.[i.19] Rājput women are described as virtuous, affectionate, and devoted, taking part in the control of the family, sharing with their husbands the dangers of war and sport, contemptuous of the coward, and exercising a salutary influence in public and domestic affairs. Strangely enough, Tod omits to give us a detailed account of their marriage regulations and ceremonies. According to Mr. E. H. Kealy,[i.20] while male children under one year old exceed the females, “the excess is not sufficiently great to justify the conclusion that female babies are murdered, nor is the theory that female infants lost their lives by neglect supported by the statistics. Unhappily the returns show that a high proportion of married women is combined with a very low percentage of females as compared with males between the ages of ten and fourteen, the early stage of married life, and this defect is largely due to premature cohabitation, lack of medical attendance, and of sanitary precautions.” No one can read without horror the many narratives of the Johar, the final sacrifice by which women in the hour of defeat gave their lives to save their honour, and of the numerous cases of Sati. Both these customs are now only a matter of history, but so late as 1879 General Hervey was able to count at the Bikaner palace the handmarks of at least thirty-seven widows who ascended the pyre with their lords.[i.21]