210 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
of a human creature so situated. Not only an outcast 
from general society, but shunned even by the most 
degraded of his tribe,, he has no home hut such as he 
makes for himself apart from the haunts of men, who 
frequently drive him into the jungles, where he becomes 
the prey of wild beasts ; or when he refuses to with- 
draw himself beyond the remotest neighbourhood of 
human habitation, in violation of every law both hu- 
man and divine, the members of his own family will 
frequently put the wretched creature to a cruel death. 
So attached are the Hindoos to life generally, which 
they consider upon any terms the greatest boon of Hea- 
ven, that they seldom relinquish it by a voluntary 
death, except when fanaticism, which with them is a 
positive frenzy, urges them to some deed of self-im- 
molation, in order to obtain the immediate posses- 
sion of an immortality of bliss. But although these 
acts of frantic devotion are not uncommon, yet the 
circumstance of Hindoos putting themselves to death 
merely to get rid of the burthen of a sorrowful exist- 
ence, is comparatively rare. The leper will bear 
about with him the curse of his leprosy, with all its 
attendant miseries, and pour forth his complaints to 
the unconscious winds ; yet, even in the midst of pri- 
vations and bodily sufferings which it is appalling 
to contemplate, he will endure his load of misery, and 
cling to life with a pertinacity scarcely to he conceived. 
In order to show the summary mode of proceeding 
against these poor afflicted creatures, a quotation from 
Ward’s Preface to his View of the History, Litera- 
ture, and Mythology of the Hindoos, may suffice : — 
“ Mr. W. Cary, of Cutwa, in Bengal, was once pre- 
