Hindoo mothers throw their babies into the Ganges to be devoured by the alligators! Horrible!! Hindoo mothers do such things!! The same mothers that sit with malshas (earthen pans) with fire burning upon them, on their heads, shoulders, hands, laps, before the goddess Doorga, and solicit the health and life of their children! The same that lie down (hothea) without food and drink before the temple, in case of the severe illness of their children, and who vow to appear before the goddess with an axe tied round their necks, or to shed blood by voluntarily tearing the flesh from their own breasts as an expression of gratitude for the recovery of their children!” The Hindoo parents love their children as well as do any parents in Christendom; or perhaps I should say more, for some reasons of which Christians are ignorant. The redemption of the Hindoo parents depends in a great measure upon the lives of the children who send their spirits to their destination by a peculiar ceremony.[28] They believe the childless person has no heaven to inherit, no celestial pleasures to enjoy. The Hindoo religion commands a man to marry several wives, in order to raise up seed needed for his spiritual welfare, to say nothing of his temporal. In case of failure, he secures the birthright of a male child by adoption. Now the question comes, Did these honest travellers and the reverend missionaries report a falsehood? In reply, I would say, I have no right to answer for them. They know themselves the grounds of their assertion, whether it is based upon their personal knowledge of the case, or upon the story of some tale-teller, who often takes advantage of our ignorance and deceives us accordingly. To speak for myself, I will confess that, although a Brahmun, a native of India, I never saw a child thrown alive into the Ganges, nor heard of such stories until I came to America. I have shown, by reasons drawn from the Hindoo scripture, as well as from custom, that the sacrifice of an infant is as monstrous in the sight of a woman in India as in America. I will allege further, that the maternal affection is everywhere the same, implanted in the human breast by the Creator. I thought perhaps some traveller might have seen the deed done in certain wild portions of India, away from the civilized and learned communities. In fact, several of my friends here said, perhaps I do not know this. I was in Bengal; it might have taken place among the ignorant people in the wild regions. To my great surprise I met the following in a large pictorial work on India, published in Boston. “Here (from the Saugor island) thousands of mothers have thrown their children into the Ganges to be devoured by alligators; not because they were destitute of maternal affection, but because a mother’s love was overpowered by her fears of the wrath of some offended deity.” Those who have ever visited Calcutta, know that the Saugor island is at the mouth of