of this movement; but it was not so. Mr Derozio’s pupils, in The Bengal Spectator, which they edited, had taken up the cause of Hindu widows, and ventilated the question of their taking, of course under particular circumstances, a second husband after the death of the first, and Pandit Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagara took his cue from them. The references to the sayings of the sage Purrashur, quoted by the latter as sanctioning widow remarriage, had first appeared in The Bengal Spectator. From its pages this important social question caught the attention of the public. Raja Siris Chandra entered into a discussion on it with the pandits of Nadia; and it was expected that he might do something in the noble cause. But the following unforeseen occurrences damped the Raja’s enthusiasm, and he had to give it up.
Raja Siris Chandra was about to have the remarriage of widows sanctioned by the pandits, when the young reformers in the city held a meeting on the subject, on the premises of the college, and, after talking themselves hoarse on the pernicious customs of Hindu society, bound themselves by a solemn oath to fight on behalf of the widows of their country. They did not know the weapons their enemies were preparing to use against them. The latter spread a rumour that the college students had in the meeting butchered a cow, feasted on its meat, and made themselves drunk with wine. The rumour seriously compromised the young men themselves, the cause of widow marriage, and the college too. Many, regarding the college as a hot-bed of heterodoxy, withdrew their sons from it, and it would have suffered much but for the protecting hand of the Raja. The young men also got off unharmed, for the same hand was stretched out to screen them; but the question of widow marriage, being associated with their late alleged revelries, was looked at with
