behind in the march of improvement on which their country has entered. But there they stand, scowling and twirling their Brahminical string; while the Sudras and the very “Chandalas,” whom they tried so hard to doom to eternal degradation, are obtaining in Government and Missionary schools a sanctified scholarship, which is soon to consign the claims and pretensions of this venerable, haughty, and heartless aristocracy to the everlasting contempt which they deserve! One by one, in their ridiculous helplessness, they behold their strong places taken and wrested from their grasp. The very Veda in which they gloried, and behind which they falsely defended the vileness and cruelty of their system, has been magnificently collated and published in eight volumes by the scholarship of Max Müller, and then rendered, with equal ability, (the last volume having been published within the past five years,) into English by Wilson & Cowell. So that all the world may now know what the Veda is, and what it teaches, and thus hold these unworthy guardians of it to the fearful responsibility which they have incurred, in pretending to quote its authority for the abominations which characterize their modern Hindooism, with all its grievous wrongs against woman in particular, and against the interests of their own nation, as well as its violation of the common sense and judgment of mankind, for whose opinions, however, the Brahmins of India never showed the least respect
We now turn from them to introduce the reader to one of the ladies of the land.
The opposite picture is from a photograph for which this lady, Zahore Begum, of Seereenugger, consented to sit. As her face had to be seen by the artist, the concession was a very singular one for any lady of her race. It was done to gratify the Queen of England, who, on the assumption of the direct sovereignty of India—on the abolition of the East India Company in 1859—requested that photographs of the people, and their various races, trades, and professions, might be taken and sent to her. Her Majesty graciously consented to have her valuable collection copied, and by the courtesy of Captain Meadows Taylor, the Oriental author, the
