Page:Ramtanu Lahiri, Brahman and Reformer - A History of the Renaissance in Bengal.djvu/127

 in the name of religion; while others, more wary, recommended that the experiment be first made in the non-regulation provinces. At length, in the early part of 1828, Lord Amherst, fearing to interfere with this custom of the Hindus, enjoined, as he saw, by the Shastras, left the custom to die a natural death, as the following extract from his writings will show:—

“I think there is reason to believe and expect that, except on the occurrence of some general sickness, such as that which prevailed in the lower parts of Bengal in 1825, the progress of general instruction, and the unostentatious exertions of our local officers, will produce the happy effect of a gradual diminution, and at no distant period the final extinction, of the barbarous rite of sati.”

When the Governor-General thus shelved this important question the dissatisfaction of Rammohan Roy and his party knew no bounds. They bound themselves by solemn pledges to trace, whenever the cruel rite was performed, all the monstrous circumstances attending it, and then to lay these before Government.

In the month of Bhadra, 1828, Rammohan Roy established the Brahmo Samaj in Chitpore Road. Hitherto he had attended for worship the Unitarian prayer meeting where his friend Mr officiated as minister. One Sunday evening, as he was returning home from prayers with his friends, Tarachand Chakravartti and Chandra Sikhar Deb, the latter, in course of conversation, said to him, “Dewanjee, we now go to a house of worship where a foreigner officiates. Should we not have a place where we might meet and worship God in our own way?” This appeal touched the heart of Rammohan, and he hired the parlour of one Kamal Bose, in the Chitpore Road, that he and his friends might assemble there for worship.

They first met in this place on the 6th of Bhadra,