[6]
When I assumed charge of the district of Sagar in 1831 the opinion
among the farmers and landholders generally was that the calamities
of season under which we had been suffering were attributable to the
increase of _adultery_, arising, as they thought, from our
indifference, as we seemed to treat it as a matter of little
importance; whereas it had always been considered under former
Governments as a case of _life and death_. The husband or his friends
waited till they caught the offending parties together in criminal
correspondence, and then put them both to death; and the death of one
pair generally acted, they thought, as a sedative upon the evil
passions of a whole district for a year or two. Nothing can be more
unsatisfactory than our laws for the punishment of adultery in India,
where the Muhammadan criminal code has been followed, though the
people subjected to it are not one-tenth Muhammadans. This law was
enacted by Muhammad on the occasion of his favourite wife Ayesha
being found under very suspicious circumstances with another man. A
special direction from heaven required that four witnesses should
swear positively to the _fact_.
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