A HINDOO BLUE STOCKING.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 3108, 19 March 1883, Page 3

A HINDOO BLUE STOCKING.

The “ Times ’’ correspondent at Calcutta elates that Pundita Romabai, a learned Hindoo lady,who hasconsecrated her life to the work of promoting female education in India, lias aroused profound interest hy a couse of lectures which she is delivering in Bombay. She is a widow, aged barely 25, and renowned among the natives for her knowledge of Sanskrit and for her complete emancipation from all narrow and debasing superstitions. There was a very large attendance of Hindoo and Parsee ladies at her first lecture, and the ball was crowded to excess. The lecturee, who, it is stated, woe attired in a simple white dress,spoke with perfect fluency and complete selfpossession. She dwelt at great length upon the benefits arising from education, and impressed upon the members of her aex the importance of cultivating and embellishing their minds if they wished to advance with the progress of the times. A native, commenting on the results of her lecture, states that her example “ has had something of an electric effect on the large number .of native ladies that have attended her lectures.” Although Native ladies are unusually bashful, yet when, after, the Pundita had finished, the ladies were asked to express their thoughts on the subject which she had dwelt upon, one of the ladies present, after a slight pause, gathered courage and stood up and spoke, and nearly half a dozen other ladies followed, vieing “eagerly with one another for the privilege of gracefully speaking to the audience in praise of their able -and learned sister.” Even the most hopeful of women’s advocates among us (the native paper adds) were hardly prepared for this singular, but most delightful spectacle.