Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 2.djvu/419

 has come to be known and, at least partly, revered wherever the hard lot of India's ill-starred daughters has been evoking in- terest and sympathy. So early as 1854 Vidyasagar, then at the head of the Sanskrit College, issued his famous pamphlet in defence of Widow-marriage on Sastric grounds. This brochure was a veritable sling and stone for the Goliaths of orthodoxy. It created an immense sensation. Violent replies poured in from the guardians of our dear old institutions. After much deliberation, Vidyasagar sent out a masterly rejoinder, which has ever since remained practically unanswered. Those who lack some personal experience of the dreadful difficulties of social reform in our own day, after a generation of wide-spread liberal education, can form no idea of the appalling dangers Vidyasagar had to brave in his heroic attack on the strongholds of bigoted conservatism. Verily he was an ocean of sound and fruitful learning. Two years later, while the shade of the coming gloom of the Indian Mutiny was scarcely