Page:Viscount Hardinge and the Advance of the British Dominions into the Punjab.djvu/169

Rh To Lord William Bentinck belongs the credit of being the first Governor-General who prohibited satí, or the burning of widows on the funeral-pile of their husbands. The prohibition was necessarily confined to British territory, and the practice still continued in Native States. Two notable instances occurred at this time. On the occasion of the murder of Hira Singh at Lahore, twenty-four women sacrificed themselves, of whom four were his wives; and when the Rájá of Mandi, near Simla, died, twelve widows were burned alive with his body.

So also with female infanticide. It cannot be maintained that the crime is yet extinct among certain classes, and in certain parts of the country; but in those days it was rampant and scarcely concealed. I have myself heard the Mahárájá Dhulíp Singh describe how, when a child at Lahore, he had seen his sisters put into a sack and thrown into the river. The Governor-General did all in his power to put an end to these two kinds of crime in Native States. His procedure was first to persuade the princes to declare them illegal, and then to instruct the British Resident to see that their edicts were carried out, under pain of his extreme displeasure. At the present day, it may be said that satí is unknown throughout India, except perhaps in the independent State of Nepál; and that infanticide is dying out in Native States as it has died out in British territory.

The following may be cited as some of the principal improvements made during the years 1846-47: — The