Page:Lord Amherst and the British Advance Eastwards to Burma.djvu/56

 Satí was the great moral question of Lord Amherst's time. How familiar the practice was may be judged from the fact that in the year 1819 there were 421 cases in the Calcutta division alone. A satí was a popular form of public entertainment, combining a spectacle of devotion in the victim with excitement to the crowd; nor can it be said that in most cases there was any greater compulsion than that of public opinion and the apprehension of social disgrace in case of refusal. There was, however, a very strong body of high official authority in favour of absolute abolition. Opinions had been obtained from pundits which negatived the idea that the burning of a widow on the husband's pyre was an act of imperative religious obligation. We had already ventured to declare the practice of Dhurna criminal, and it was argued that though the prohibition of satí might at first cause local trouble, it would in the end be acquiesced in. But Lord Amherst, in opposition probably to the preponderant judgement of his advisers, and certainly to tho suggestions of the Directors, refused to incur the political risks of a veto. He trusted rather to the effects of time and growing enlightenment.

The State-system of education may be said to have originated in Lord Amherst's day, but we must dismiss from our minds the notion that either then or for a generation afterwards there was any settled official policy of popular education. Colleges and the higher class of schools were alone thought of. The Hindu