home, and gave her into the charge of his
mother. The stranger was the learned Ananta Shastri, a Brahman pundit,
who had very advanced views on the subject of woman's education, and he
determined that he would teach his girl-wife Sanskrit, and give her the
intellectual culture that had been always denied to women in India. Their
daughter was the Pundita Ramabai, who, after the death of her parents,
travelled all over India advocating the cause of female education, and to
whom seems to be due the first suggestion for the establishment of the
profession of women doctors. In 1866, Miss Mary Carpenter made a short
tour in India for the purpose of finding out some way by which women's
condition in that country might be improved. She at once discovered that
the chief means by which the desired end could be accomplished was by
furnishing women teachers for the Hindu Zenanas. She suggested that the
British Government should establish normal schools for training women
teachers, and that scholarships should be awarded to girls in order to
prolong their school-going period, and to assist indigent women who would
otherwise be unable to pursue their studies.

In response to Miss Carpenter's appeal, upon her return to England, the
English Government founded several schools for women in India, and a few
'Mary Carpenter Scholarships' were endowed by benevolent persons. These
schools were open to women of every caste; but while they have
undoubtedly been of use, they have not realised the hopes of their
founders, chiefly through the impossibility of keeping caste rules in
them. Ramabai, in a very eloquent chapter, proposes to solve the problem
in a different way. Her suggestion is that houses should be opened for
the young and high-caste child-widows, where they can take shelter
without the fear of losing their caste, or of being disturbed in their
religious belief, and where they may have entire freedom of action as
regards caste rules. The whole account given by the Pundita of the life
of the high-caste Hindu lady is full of suggestion for the social
reformer and the student of progress, and her book, which is wonderfully
well written, is likely to produce a radical change in the educational
schemes that at present prevail in India.

(1) Venetia Victrix. By Caroline Fitz Gerald. (Macmillan and Co.)

(2) Darwinism and Politics. By David Ritchie, Jesus College, Oxford.
(Swan Sonnenschein and Co.)

(3) The High-Caste Hind