ve to be one great error in the economy of the
Mussulmaun people,--unnecessary expense incurred in their marriage
ceremonies, which hampers them through life in their circumstances.
Parents, however poor, will not allow their daughter to be conveyed from
their home, where the projected union is with an equal, without a
seemingly needless parade of music, and a marriage-portion in goods and
chattels, if they have no fortune to give beside; then the expense of
providing dinners for friends to make the event conspicuous, and the
useless articles of finery for the girl's person, with many other ways of
expending money, to the detriment of the parents' finances, without any
very substantial benefit to the young couple. But this dearly-loved custom
cannot be passed over; and if the parents find it impossible to meet the
pecuniary demands of these ceremonies, the girl has no alternative but to
live out her days singly, unless by an agent's influence she is accepted
as a dhollie wife to some man of wealth.

Girls are considered to have passed their prime when they number from
sixteen to eighteen years; even the poorest peasant would object to a wife
of eighteen.

There has been the same difficulty to encounter in every age of Mussulmaun
history in Hindoostaun; and in the darker periods of civilization, the
obstacles to settling their daughters to advantage induced the villagers
and the uneducated to follow the example of the Rajpoots, viz., to destroy
the greater proportion of females at their birth. In the present age, this
horrid custom is never heard of amongst any classes of the Mussulmaun
population[5]; but by the Rajpoot Hindoos it is still practised, as one of
their chiefs very lately acknowledged in the presence of a friend of mine.
I have often heard Meer Hadjee Shaah declare that it was a common
occurrence within his recollection, among the lower classes of the people
in the immediate vicinity of Loodeeanah,[6] where he lived when a boy; and
that the same practice existed in the Oude territory, amongst the
peasantry even at a much later date. One of the Nuwaubs of Oude,--I think
Asoof ood Dowlah,--hearing with horror of the frequent recurrence of this
atrocity in the remote parts of his province, issued a proclamation to his
subjects, commanding them to desist from the barbarous custom[7]; and, as
an inducement to the wicked parents to preserve their female offspring
alive, grants of land were to be awarded to every f