pling with the evil. "The finest houses in Japan belong to the woman in scarlet. The licensed government brothel, covering acres of land, is the most beautiful part of the capital. Oriental splendor—a myth in the streets-becomes reality when the portals of the Yoshiwara are crossed."

In Korea a severe code of reserve surrounds woman; yet concubinage, amounting, in fact, to practical polygamy, is legal and common, while harlotry flaunts itself with exceptional boldness.2 Vices of the deepest dye, "suggestive of the society of Gomorrah," are known to be practised even in the highest social circles.3 Dancing-girls of immoral character are employed and paid by the Government, and are subject to the call of the magistrate at any time.

In China female chastity is severely guarded, and there is no licensed immorality; yet a state of things which is frankly acknowledged in Japan is simply an open secret among the Chinese.4 Society regards it with a sly frown, the Government prohibits and professes to discipline it; yet vice festers in every city of China and presents some shamefully loathsome aspects. The traffic in young girls, especially those who may be afflicted with blindness, is the usual method of supplying brothels with their inmates. The infamous trade of the "pocket-mother" and her colonies of native slave-girls, and its relation to the opium habit in the Straits Settlements and China, have been recently brought vividly to the attention of the British public by Mrs. Andrew and Dr. Kate Bushnell. In the every-day conversation of the Chinese, especially of the poorer classes, expressions so exceptionally vile that they cannot be hinted at are only too well known. "An English oath is a winged bullet; Chinese abuse is a ball of filth," says the author of "Chinese Characteristics." The notorious books and placards of Hunan are an indication of the interior furnishing of the Chinese imagination.

In Siam adultery is lightly condemned, and unclean vices are practised. In Thibet the moral status is low. Marriage is often a convenient fiction, and may be adjusted as a temporary bargain wherever a man may happen to be. Not only is polygamy common, but polyandry is recognized and practised among the peasantry.

6

1 Griffis, "The Mikado's Empire," seventh edition, pp. 362, 368.

2 Griffis, "Corea," p. 251; Gilmore, "Korea," p. 109.

3 Norman, "The Peoples and Politics of the Far East," p. 352.

▲ Smith, "Chinese Characteristics," p. 179; Douglas, "Society in China,”

p. 205.

5 Cf. The Christian (London), March 28, 1895, article entitled "Social Morals in the Orient."

6 Marston, "The Great Closed Land," pp. 47, 49.

India occupies an unenviable prominence as a land where immoral tendencies have flourished and brought forth their fruit with tropical luxuriance. There is a panoramic variety in the

India.

phases of its social vice, the ill-concealed obscenity The moral condition of of much of its sacred literature, and the immoral aspects of some of its religious rites and festivals.

The social demoralization which attends vice is revealed there to an unusual extent-the tell-tale stringency in the seclusion of woman, child marriage, low views of woman's place and function in society, a contemptuous estimate of her character and capacity, tainted family life, unseemly marriage customs, obscenity in talk and song, prostitution, concubinage, lax views of adultery, and the contamination of so-called religious rites and services with uncleanness. The spirit of that now happily obscure phase of nature-worship which is known as phallicism is distinctly traceable in India.1 Its symbols and signs are still visible at many of the shrines of Hinduism. Its grosser and more intolerable features have been permitted to lapse in recent times, but that unhallowed association of fancied religious fervor with lustful abandon is still hardly masked in some of the religious festivals and customs of Hindu society. It could hardly be otherwise when even the sacred literature is not free from gross impurity, and many of the gods worshipped are examples in vice;2 when continence is not inculcated; when widows, often young and helpless, are condemned by necessity either to a life of social misery or shame; when the zenana system involves the frequent separation of husbands and wives, the former compelled to be absent, and the latter hidden in unnatural seclusion;3 and when social customs and even religious observances encourage and minister to lewd license. The nautch dancing, so common, gives to immoral women social éclat, which is too often stimulated and enhanced by European patronage; 5 harlotry is notoriously common in the towns and cities, although village life is comparatively free from it, and village women are as a class morally well behaved." Hindu temples are in many instances disgraced by indecent symbols and sculptures; while the old Greek custom of having female attendants attached to 1 Sir Monier-Williams, "Brahmanism and Hinduism," Index, sub Linga and Yoni.

2 J. Murray Mitchell, "The Hindu Religion,” pp. 32, 33.

3 Wilkins, "Modern Hinduism," pp. 412, 413.

4 " Purity Reform in India," pp. 16, 25-28, Papers on Indian Social Reform, Madras, 1892.

5 Ibid., p. 16.

6 Wilkins, p. 412.

the temples is a well-known fact in many of the Hindu shrines of India. These dancing-girls call themselves deva-dasi (“slaves of the gods"), and in the sense of being at the service of every comer, of whatever caste, are also the slaves of men.1 Young girls are frequently dedicated in infancy to some popular Hindu god, and the simple meaning of this is that they are devoted to a life of shame-branded and married to the god, to be forever known as consecrated to depravity in the name of religion. In fact, immorality is more distinctively a feature of Hinduism than morality. It is not to be supposed that Indian society without exception is wholly given over to this state of things. There are multitudes of worthy natives who regard these features of Hinduism with contempt and loathing, but they are exceptions, and they have broken with Hinduism, or at least with its moral laxity. English army life in India, and to a deplorable extent the habits of foreign residents, present a sadly compromising feature of social vice. The repeal of the Contagious Disease Act, although a moral victory, has been too inoperative to remedy entirely official complicity in the supervision and regulation of vice, as the evidence before the Committee recently appointed by the Indian Government on this subject clearly shows. This fact was brought to light chiefly by the testimony of Mrs. Elizabeth W. Andrew and Dr. Kate Bushnell, two American ladies connected with the W. C. T. U., who in the service of the cause of purity in India gave themselves to the heroic investigation of the true status of this question.

The English Government is not unmindful, however, of its moral responsibility and its evident duty to deal vigorously with this burning subject of immorality in India. Penal codes and official regulations. seem to open the way for the suppression or restriction of many forms of vice, but the evil is so gigantic that it can elude and defy the law, while in deference to the fanatical religious temper of India a significant exception has been made by the Government. In the clause of the penal code against obscenity in literature and art is the following caveat: "This Section does not extend to any representation sculptured, engraved, painted, or otherwise represented on or in any temple, or on any car used for the conveyance of idols, or kept or used for any religious purpose." The various governments of India, British and native, united in expressing their judgment, with reference to the above exception, that "native public opinion is not yet sufficiently advanced to

1 "Purity Reform in India," p. 26, Papers on Indian Social Reform, Madras, 1892. 2 Ibid., pp. 27, 28.

3 "Report of Committee to Inquire into Prostitution in India," London, 1893.