THE PEOPLE OF INDIA 205

family, nor can he marry one of his own class; so that
the field of matrimony is most inconveniently narrow. A
poor man frequently cannot marry at all, and a rich man
is « besieged with applications for his hand in order that
the stigma of an unmarried daughter may at least be
formally removed.” Thus large dowries are usually
necessary to enable a girl to marry, and suitable alliances
may mean the ruin of a family. In order to avoid such
catastrophes the crime of female infanticide became a fixed
custom amongst Rajputs. Sir John Strachey says that
«“ these people have gone on killing their children generation
 after generation, because their forefathers did so
before them, not only without a thought that there was
anything criminal in the practice, but with a conviction
that it is right.” Happily Government has been able to
deal with this subject by a system of registration, and
Rajput girls are to be found now where formerly no girl
was ever known to exist; but “there can be no doubt
that if vigilance were relaxed the custom would before long
become as prevalent as ever.”
The hereditary and central habitat of the Rajput is in
Rajputana, one-half of which consists of waste sandy
spaces, which, if not absolutely desert, are very closely
allied to it. In the south-eastern half of Rajputana, where
the desert merges into bands of rugged hills and of open
cultivable flats ; where sands and occasional oasis gradually
 gives place to plains watered by clear streams and
rivers ; where the desert well (often hundreds of feet deep),
from which water is extracted by the bucketful with the
assistance of a pair of oxen and a long rope, ceases to be
the most prominent feature in the sandy landscape ; there
are the great cities of Rajputana. Jaipur, Jodhpur, Ajmir
(a British possession), Chitor, and Udaipur still attest, with
their lofty battlemented walls and scarped defences, the
strength of those ancient strongholds which have witnessed
centuries of stirring action and many a bold defence ;
whilst the magnificence of the relics of ancient architectural
 structure and art designs with which they abound
attest equally to the high development of early Rajput