Page:Vidyasagar, the Great Indian Educationist and Philanthropist.djvu/55

 declares that the inspiration came form his mother who once told him to see if a virgin widow could take a new husband under the Shastras. What is really certain is that coming to manhood he bent his mind to that subject and deeply pondered over it for years. He was not, however, the first to move in that direction. Some three or four hundred years before his agitation began, Raghunandana, the jurisconsult of Bengal, had tried to give his widowed daughter in marriage but had utterly failed. Again, a century back Raja Raj Ballav of Vikrampur in the district of Dacca wishing to remarry his widowed daughter had consulted the Pundits of Nadia. When they expressed their strong disapproval, he desisted. Maharaja Krishna Chandra Roy of Nadia, it may be noticed parenthetically, was of the same opinion as the Pundits. A Mahratta Brahmin of Nagpur and a Madrassi Brahmin had separately made like attempts twenty years before without success. Some of Vidyasagar's contem-