but even he could not give a daughter to any other clan of
Rajpoots without being excluded for ever from caste; that it was a
misfortune no doubt, but it was one that had descended among them
from the remotest antiquity, and could not be got rid of; that
mothers wept and screamed a good deal when their first female
infants were torn from them, but after two or three times giving
birth to female infants, they become quiet and reconciled to the
usage, and said, "do as you like;" that some poor parents of their
clan did certainly give their daughters for large sums to wealthy
people of lower Clans, but lost their caste for ever by so doing;
that it was the dread of sinking, in substance from the loss of
property, and in grade from the loss of caste, that alone led to the
murder of female infants; that the dread prevailed more or less in
every Rajpoot clan, and led to the same thing, but most in the clan
that restricted the giving of daughters in marriage to the smallest
number of clans.

The infant is destroyed in the room where it is born, and there
buried. The floor is then plastered over with cow-dung, and on the
thirteenth day the village or family priest must cook and eat his
food in that room. He is provided with wood, ghee, barley, rice, and
tillee (sesamum). He boils the rice, barley, and sesamum in a brass
vessel, throws the ghee over them when they are dressed, and eats the
whole. This is considered as a _hom_, or burnt-offering, and by
eating it in that place the priest is supposed to take the whole
_hutteea_ or sin upon himself, and to cleanse the family from it. I
am told that they put the milk of the mudar shrub "asclepias
gigantea," into the mouth of the infant to destroy it, and cover the
mouth with the faeces that first pass from, the infant's bowels. It
soon dies; and after the expiation the parents again occupy the room,
and there receive the visits of their family and friends, and gossip
as usual!

Rajah Bukhtawar Sing tells me, that he has heard the whole process
frequently described in this way by the midwives who have attended
the birth. These midwives are however generally sent out of the room
with the mother when the infant is found to be a girl. In any law for
the effectual prevention of this crime, it would be necessary to
prescribe a severe punishment for the priest, as an accessary after
the fact. The only objection to this is, I think, that it might
deprive the Court of the advantage of an