At the time I was asked to revise this book for a second edition I read a well written article on the subject treated in it in the Bombay Gazette of 24th April 1873. Believing that an appeal, through the English language to such of my enlightened countrymen as can understand it, on the crying social evils exposed in this book, will be more effective for their removal, and for rousing the sympathy of the educators and civilizers of this country. I quote the whole of it and another that appeared in the same journal dated 27th May last. Nothing I thought, could be better for my purpose than citing these two ably and truthfully written articles. I thank their writer for their kind endeavours in behalf of our helpless women.
"ONE of the most remarkable and characteristic features of Indian female domestic life that we know of is the relationship of daughter-in-law and mother-in-law. With the rarest exception every female in India is either a daughter-in-law or a mother-in-law through the period of life from childhood to old age. There is nothing in the relationship itself that can excite surprise, but, when viewed in connection with the state of native society and the marriage institution in this country, it will be found that it is the relationship which more than any other debases the female mind and prevents the women of India rising to their proper level in the social scale. It is generally considered by writers on Indian habits and customs that it is the men who keep down the women and who refuse to accord to them their proper position as head of the household, and it is the men to whom appeals are made to release the women from their bondage. That men have something to do with placing the women in an inferior position is no doubt true; the custom of the wife waiting on the husband while he dines; of keeping aloof when male visitors are in the house; and of going out alone, are all quite in accordance with the wishes of the men, and it is the men who would not allow these customs to be infringed. But these indefensible customs and prejudices are as nothing to the customs and prejudices which the women allow to operate injuriously upon themselves, and which are established principally by the mothers-in-law. It is seldom that the European has an opportunity of ascertaining anything of the true character of native social life; he can only judge from those evidences which are permitted to appear outwardly. "The relationship of mother-in-law and dauther-in-law is not one of those of which any just
