# The Land of the Veda/Chapter 09

pages 468-505
CHAPTER IX.
THE CONDITION OF WOMAN UNDER HINDOO LAW.
AMONG the mercies resultant from recent events in India may be reckoned “the door of hope” which God has thus opened for the women of that land; but to appreciate the hopeful possibilities of the present it is needful that we consider the past, and what, up to this hour, has been the condition of women there, under the law of her religion and the customs of her country. If she is rising at last in any respect, it is in decided defiance of the system that has so long repressed and wronged her, and her elevation therefore involves its overthrow.
On page forty-two we have presented a picture of the class whose legal relations we now more fully represent.
What is this woman, thus “gorgeously appareled,” in her condition, character, and prospects? Even the Zenana has had to give up its secrets, and the rest of the world may now know how the women of India live and die.
Of course every lady of intelligence has heard more or less of the condition of her sex in India, and has had her sympathy called forth by the wrongs which they have so long suffered; yet few understand why these things are so, much less, what is the full measure of the disabilities to which this lady, or any of her sisters in India, is always exposed, without that appeal which other women possess to the divine rule of their religion, which forbids such treatment.
In other lands, and under the teachings and forms of a different civilization, the wrongs which women suffer at the hands of lordly and vicious men are the result of the current wickedness of those who oppress them; but in India the abject humility, subordination, ​and implicit obedience of woman to every whim and wish which her husband exacts from her, is extorted under the express teachings of her cruel faith, and she is well aware that he can quote the only “scriptures” she knows to justify every demand and wrong to which she tamely submits. Her poor judgment and conscience are held fast in the terrors of a system that contains not one ray of hope of any change for the better for her; while this has been the condition of the hundreds of millions of women in India since long before the incarnation of Christ. All that period of time she has been sunk and suffering in this manner.
If ever woman had an opportunity of showing what she might become under the teaching and influence of a civilization where Christianity or the Bible did not interfere with her state, the women of India have had that opportunity; and now, after forty centuries of such experiment, what is woman there to-day? These pages shall faithfully declare it to the women whom Christianity has redeemed, and then let them judge for themselves the difference and its cause.
In rendering this service to the truth I shall be under no liability to exaggerate, nor shall I make a single unsupported statement as to her condition. The evidence shall be all her own, and chapter and verse—Code, Purana, and Shaster—shall give their testimony to the exact truthfulness of my descriptions. I feel assured that those who read these pages will lay them down with the conviction that a more atrocious system for the extinction of the happiness and hopes of woman than that which is contained in the legislation of the Hindoos never was devised by priest or lawgiver since the hour when guilty man first began to throw the blame, the burden, and the wrongs of life, upon the weaker sex.
The most ancient body of human law now extant is the Institutes of Menu. This unique and whimsical system of legislation—the offspring of despotism and priestcraft—fixed the social and religious position of woman in India nearly a thousand years before Christ. The full title of the Code—which has been translated from the ancient Sanscrit by Sir W. Jones—is, “Institutes of Hindoo ​Law, or the Ordinances of Menu—Comprising the Indian System of Duties, Religious and Civil.”
This is the fountain-head of those rules which constitute the laws of life for the women of India, and, terrible as many of them are in their undisguised deformity here, they have been made ever more hideous and horrible by the added ingredients of bitterness which they received as they flowed down through the ages, and were expressed in Puranas and Shasters, in traditional teachings, popular dialogues, in the Hindoo drama, and in their literature generally. We shall quote from these to illustrate and justify the representations given of woman's lot in that land
“Where the skies forever smile,
And the oppressed forever weep.”
In drawing a picture of woman in India, we first speak of her birth; and here we are met with the terrible fact of female infanticide, so common in that land. This is an ancient, systematic, and prevalent crime among the Hindoos. Not especially among the poor or the debased, but prevailing chiefly among the Rajpoot families, some of the proudest and wealthiest of the tribes of India. The doctrine and practice, and the unblushing avowal of this unnatural crime, on the part of its perpetrators, are such as cannot be found anywhere else on earth. And the infernal custom has so drugged their consciences, that even the mothers themselves of these destroyed little ones have declared their insensibility of any feeling of guilt, even where the deed has been done by their own hands.
Girls are not desired, not welcome; and when they come, and must live—as British law now demands, where its power can reach them, that life must be held sacred—still they can be at least ignored, if not despised. Why, if my native friend had six children, three boys and as many girls, and I happened to inquire, “Lalla, how many children have you?” the probability is he would reply, “Sir, I have three children;” for he would not think it worth while to count in the daughters.
They cannot understand our Christian feelings in rejoicing over ​the birth of a girl with as sincere happiness as we would lavish upon our male children; and a case is actually on record, which shows how generally accepted is this idea in the native mind, where an English gentleman at Bombay actually received a visit of condolence from an intelligent native friend. A little girl had been born to him; and the polite Hindoo, having heard of it, had called to express his sympathy with the unfortunate parent!
The prevalence and extent of the horrid crime of female infanticide attracted, many years ago, the attention of the humane men whom England sent to rule her India possessions, and from the official statistics collected, which are now before us, we are able to give some accurate idea of the fatal devastation which, for ages past, this hellish cruelty has wrought upon the female life of India.
Mr. Wilkinson's reports were based upon a census taken in one locality where this custom was known to exist. By the simple, spontaneous admission of the guilty parties themselves, it turned out that in one tribe the portion of sons to daughters was one hundred and eighteen to sixteen; in a second, two hundred and forty to ninety-eight; in a third, one hundred and thirty-one to sixty-one; in a fourth, fourteen to four; and in a fifth, thirty-nine to seven. Now, as statistics in Europe and America have all shown but one result, namely, that the births of males and females are of nearly equal amount, the only inference to be drawn from this disparity is, that females equal, or nearly equal, in number to the difference here exhibited had been destroyed.
The murders, therefore, perpetrated in the first of the above tribes were seventy-seven per cent, of the females born. The aggregate result given by the census taken in this locality was six hundred and thirty-two sons to two hundred and twenty-five daughters. This is an average of thirty-six daughters to one hundred boys; or, in other words, of every one hundred females born sixty-four must have been cruelly immolated by their parents; or, in round numbers, about two thirds were destroyed, and but one third saved alive.
Some of the villages examined presented a more terrible exhibit ​than even this—as where he found only three per cent. of girls, and in one no girls at all, the inhabitants freely “confessing that they had destroyed every girl born in their village.”
The guilty agents were generally the parents themselves, ofttimes the mothers, with their own hands. Sir John Malcolm positively states, in his Report on Central India, that “the mother is commonly the executioner of her own offspring.” Professing to open the fount of life to her babe, she coolly and deliberately impregnates it with the elements of death, by putting opium on the nipple of her breast, which the child inhaling with its milk, dies. But the juice of the poppy is not the only ingredient by whose “mortal taste” so many unoffending victims fill the unmarked graves of India. The madar, or the dutterrea plant, the tobacco leaf, starvation, drowning, exposure in the jungle, and even strangulation, are the modes employed by these wretches for their fell purposes. “Without natural affection,” truly!
Human language, with all its resources, furnishes a feeble and inadequate medium of expression for the horror which such deeds of hell awaken in the heart. Probably the celebrated Encyclopedist has as nearly expressed it as is possible when he says, “Infanticide, or child murder, is an enormity that our reason and feelings would lead us to reckon a crime of very rare occurrence. That it should exist at all is, at first view, surprising; that it should prevail to any extent is difficult of belief; that parents should be its perpetrators is in a high degree painful to imagine; but that mothers should be the executioners of their own offspring—nay, their habitual and systematic executioners—is such an agonizing contemplation, such an outrage on humanity, as every amiable feeling of our nature sickens and revolts at.”
The most awful feature of the matchless enormity is found in the fact that Hindooism has dared to cover the deed with a professed divine sanction. On page 399 we have described the bloody deity, herself a female, under whose sanction these deeds, so inhuman, have been consummated. A fitting locality, as a general center for the hellish enormity, was long since found in that dreary island ​of Saugor, lying below Calcutta, and which few Christians have ever passed without feeling inclined to invoke upon the island and its shrine of blood the unmitigated curse of God and man. The sight of it fired the indignation of that great linguist, Dr. John Leyden, and led to the composition of those rugged, but honest lines of his, which describe the place and those deeds for which it was regularly visited, and which made it so infamous throughout the civilized world:
He then turns and addresses Kalee, and in the second verse following literally quotes the Shaster describing her:
This iniquity was openly and fearlessly practiced in India up to the time when the Marquis Wellesley, brother of the Duke of Wellington, was appointed Governor-General, and India's daughters will yet learn to revere and love the memory of that humane and intrepid man, who, in the face of the obstacles that arose around him on every side, when he attempted to deal with this “custom,” never faltered till he had put the protection of Christian law over the life of every child in India. His Excellency honestly The Marquis Wellesley. and bravely placed in the hands of the magistracy of India “A Regulation for Preventing the Sacrifice of Children at Saugor and other places, passed by the Governor-General in Council, on the 20th of August, 1802,” “declaring the practice to be murder, punishable by death.” In British India, so far as law could reach the case, he made infanticide to be regarded and punished as in England.
We present here an outline of the countenance of this true friend of woman, as that of one whose deeds of mercy will be held in everlasting remembrance.
It is no doubt true that children have been secretly offered to ​sanguinary demons in India, and many of the infants thrown to the crocodiles or sharks at Saugor by their mothers were immolated in fulfillment of religious vows. Even the desire for children has led to their destruction, the mother promising her deity, in advance, that if blessed with offspring, the first-born should be returned in sacrifice. In this case “the child of the vow” is carefully cherished for three or four years, and then the mother, tempting it a step beyond its depth, resigns it to the Ganges, or deliberately casts it toward the pampered alligator, and stands to see it bleeding within the monster's jaws! Again, it is not uncommon for a poor, sickly babe (under the blind infatuation of its parents, that its illness is caused by some malignant demon who has taken possession of it) to be placed in a basket and carried into the forest, and there suspended from a tree, and abandoned for three or four days and nights; and if, at the end of that time, the vultures, or ants, or beasts of prey, have not made away with it, and its sickness has departed, it is restored to its home.
But none of these abominable cruelties adequately account for the prevalence of female infanticide. We have to seek its causes in more unworthy motives than even these. In fact, the daughters of India have been sacrificed one generation after another, not to the superstition of their parents, but to their Satanic pride.
It is very difficult to convey to American readers, or to the common sense of a Christian lady, any adequate idea of the soaring and extravagant pride of family descent of such a race as the Rajpoots.
Multitudes of these Rajpoots are as poor as they are proud, and as immemorial custom requires, in the event of a daughter's marriage, not only her own “gift and dowry” to be provided, but the festivities of the occasion, lasting six days, to be furnished for all relatives and friends, priests, bards, and various functionaries, who must be “bidden” and provided for munificently, it is simply ruinous for all but the wealthy to dare the experiment, certainly more than once: hence the female children are still secretly murdered.
To this is added, what is equally difficult for Europeans and ​Americans to understand or sympathize with, the general horror which parents in India feel in view of the supposed disgrace which would rest upon them and theirs in the event of their daughters remaining unmarried.
An additional explanation is found in the relation which a son bears to the Shraad of his father—those funeral rites at which he is to officiate, and which are considered essential to the happy transmigration and future welfare of the departed parent; so that the birth of a boy, and of each in succession, is an assurance of salvation to the father, while, as sacrifice and religious rites are all denied to women, a girl is regarded as of no moral moment whatever. She is a mere secular creature, whose life is considered as forfeited if the father concludes that there is no reasonable prospect of a suitable marriage for her, or that his means wont allow him to contemplate the customary nuptial expenses of his tribe. What girls are saved from death are usually those first born; the later ones have not a chance of life, those spared requiring their death as a necessity of their position and dignity.
This wholesale destruction of human life in the homes of India is a parental responsibility; but at whose hands have these innocents perished? By the midnight assassin, or the Indian tomahawk or scalping knife? No, no; let humanity shudder. They are the mothers—the unhappy mothers—who, in the name of false honor, demon pride, and hereditary fictions of rank or purity of lineage, have no compassion on the fruit of their own womb, who imbrue their hands in the blood of their new-born babes.
Say, ye happy American mothers, who have fondled your smiling babes, and clasped them to your bosoms as the most precious gifts of Heaven, if ever such a tale of woe as this has sounded in your ears? It will be a satisfaction to you to reflect that the lady missionaries whom your societies are now sending to that land, and who carry right into the center of these homes your Christian sentiments and feelings upon this subject, may be designed by God to work out a remedy for an evil which has hitherto defied human law and all that man alone could do for its extirpation. ​May Heaven help them, until the day shall dawn when the mothers of India, exulting over their daughters—over each and all of them—as joyously as they have ever done over their sons, shall delight to direct their husband's loving attention to their female children, as the Christian poet has expressed it for them:
“O look on her, see how full of life,
Of strength, of bloom, of beauty, and of joy!
How like to me, how like to thee, when gentle,
For then we are all alike: is it not so? Mother, and sire, and babe, our features are
Reflected in each other.
Look! how she laughs and stretches out her arms,
And opens wide her bright eyes upon thine.
To hail her father, while her little form
Flutters as winged with joy. Talk not of pain!
The childless seraphs well might envy thee
The pleasures of a parent! Bless her! As yet she has no words to thank thee, but
Her heart will, and mine own too.”
It seems a rapid transition, from describing the early childhood of the female sex in India, to speak of betrothal, yet the intervening space is not very extensive. The Hindoo Shasters say that a girl is marriageable when she is seven years of age, but that she may wait till she is ten years old. The term “marriage” is used in their writings to include betrothal as well as what we mean by the term. Reserved for a husband is, in their view, almost as sacred as being resigned to his care.
As soon as a little girl has reached her fifth birthday her parents begin anxiously to seek a marriage settlement for her. Their great concern henceforth relates to her nuptials. They would consider it a decided reproach if she saw her twelfth natal day without being at least betrothed. The whole matter is held in their own hands. The poor girl has no choice or voice in her own destiny—all is arranged without consulting her views or affections in any way whatever.
The lawgiver Menu has laid the obligations heavily upon the father, so that he cannot escape the public sentiment. Menu ordains as follows: “Reprehensible is the father who gives not his ​daughter in marriage at the proper time;” and again, “To an excellent and handsome youth of the same class let every man give his daughter in marriage, according to law, even though she have not attained her age of eight years.”
He carries up the responsibility to an awful height by declaring the neglectful father, whose daughter has not been wed at twelve years old, as incurring a guilt equal to that of the murder of a Brahmin for every additional month she continues single. He reduces, according to her age, the amount of the nuptial present which the father receives, and even deprives herself of the right to carry her ornaments from her home in the same proportion, and thus appeals to the mean motive of personal interest to hurry on her settlement.
The accountability is also pressed to avoid the condemnation of leaving his daughter asancrita, that is, destitute of the marriage sacrament. If he fails in this the law releases his children from all obligation of respect or obedience to him.
In the same chapter he also claims that “the wife of an elder brother is considered as mother-in-law to the younger, and the wife of the younger as daughter-in-law to the elder.” This implies, what is generally a fact, that it is seldom that a young couple in India have the luxury of a separate home. The bride is generally taken to her father-in-law's residence, and receives her apartment within the inclosure surrounding the general home. The outer rooms are occupied by the males of the family, the inner or secluded ones by the women—hence called the Zenana. These inner apartments are never entered by one of the opposite sex, save by the father, her husband's brothers, or by children.
Harem—or as Mr. Lane spells it, Hhareem— signifies sacred, prohibited. The temple at Mecca is called Al-haram, that is, the sacred inviolable temple. The Seraglio of the Turks is a compound word, formed from sura, “house, apartment,” and ahul, “family, domestic;” hence Surahulio, or Seraglio, the “family or female apartment.” Haram sera, and muhal sera, are nearly synonymous words, and are often used to express the inner ​apartments in India. The common term is Zenana—from Zun, “a woman,” Zunun, “women,” an instance of the prevalence of the Persian language over the vernacular. (The Calcutta Review, No. IV.)
“Courtship,” in our Christian sense, the maiden in India can never know. She is not allowed to see or converse with him to whose control she will erelong be handed over. She cannot write to him, for she can neither read nor write; all she is able to do is to follow the instructions, to “worship the gods for a good husband.” She is taught to commence as soon as she is four years old. Her prayers are addressed chiefly to Kama-dera, the Hindoo Cupid. The books represent him as having for a steed an elephant composed of entwined female forms, and that elephant is darkness; his car is the south wind; his bow the sweet sugar-cane, with a row of green honey bees for its string, and charmed flowers for its fine arrows; his minister is spring; the ocean is his drum; his trumpeters are birds, and his conquering troops are women. He is especially worshiped where he celebrates his triumphs in connection with marriage festivals.
The maiden prays, and father and mother manage the business of selection. Each caste has its professional match-makers, whose aid is indispensable. When the negotiations have reached a certain definiteness, the Pundits are consulted to avoid mistakes of consanguinity, and then the astrologers, who pronounce upon the carefully preserved horoscopes of the boy and girl, whether they can be united with safety. These preliminaries all found satisfactory, the aid of the Brahmin is sought to ascertain if the family god favors the union. The stars, the gods, and men being a unit, negotiations are opened between the parents and relations as to the amount of gift and dowry, and when conclusions are reached here to their mutual satisfaction, the astrologer is again called in to ascertain and name a lucky day when the agreement may be registered and a bond for the dowry executed. This is done with due solemnity, and then the astrologer has again to ascertain and name a lucky day for the ceremony, which is accepted by the ​parents under their bond to see to the consummation of the engagement. This is the usual method, slightly varied in different localities. It is easily expressed in these few words, but what anxiety, what care and inquiry before these determinations can be reached!
No part of the Institutes of Menu is more definite and circumstantial than that which gives the law of selection in marriage. With the eye and taste of a whimsical connoisseur in female charms, the old legislator has prescribed the standard of excellence in age, caste, condition, and qualities, by which the Hindoo maiden is to be tested. Nor has he or his commentators forgotten the requisite compromises that will arise in such cases.
With great care and anxiety the questions of consanguinity, name, physical condition, motion, family, etc., have all to be decided upon. But let this singular law speak for itself
As to relationship, “she who is not descended from his paternal or maternal ancestors within the sixth degree, and who is not known by the family name to be of the same primitive stock with his father or mother, is eligible by a twice-born man for nuptials and holy union.”
The phrase “twice-born” refers to the investiture of high-caste men with the sacred string into the full immunities of their order, called a “second birth.”
As to families outside the pale of selection Menu ordains: “In connecting himself with a wife let him studiously avoid the ten following families, be they ever so great, or ever so rich in kine, goats, sheep, gold, and grain — the family that has omitted prescribed acts of religion; that which has produced no male children; that in which the Veda has not been read; that which has thick hair on the body; and those which have been subject to hemorrhoids, to phthisis, to dyspepsia, to epilepsy, to leprosy and to elephantiasis.”
The right family and the proper relationship having been carefully sought and found, the child's personal suitability is then examined; and first her age: “A Brahmin should, according to law, marry a maiden about a third of his own age.” The exact ​proportion is not frequently realized; but whether the bridegroom be old or young, the Hindoo bride should not be over twelve years of age.
Her name is the next consideration, and the legislator has seriously provided for this also. Lovers in this land offer new names, and ladies accept them and lose their own. In India it is not so. There the wife is ever known only by her maiden name; hence the name is of vital importance, and the law gravely prescribes as follows: “Let him not marry a girl with the name of a constellation, of a tree, or of a river, of a barbarous nation, or of a mountain, or of a winged creature, a snake, or a slave; nor one with any name raising an image of terror. The names of women should be agreeable, soft, clear, captivating the fancy, auspicious, ending in long vowels, resembling words of benediction.” Chapter iii, sec. 4.
A list of sixty-nine names of Hindoo ladies is before us as we write, and all of them answer to this requirement. They run thus: “Hira, Kaminee, Dasee, Munee, Pudma, Sidhoo, Bhowanee, Rutuna,” etc.
The preliminaries we have already noted completed, the two children are then duly and properly betrothed by the officiating Brahmin. So legal, however, is the ceremony considered, that, should the boy die ere they come to live together as man and wife, the little girl is thereby considered a widow, and under the law of her religion is debarred from ever marrying any one else. Indeed, till British humanity interfered, many of them became suttees, and were actually burned with the dead body of the youth whom they never knew nor loved as a husband — being at once a virgin, a widow, and a suttee on the last wretched day of their singular life!
As soon as the ceremony of betrothal has taken place, the little girl enters on a new phase of her existence. Henceforth she is no more free to roam the fields and enjoy the lovely face of nature. Reserved for her husband, she can no longer be seen with propriety by any man save her father and brothers.
She is from that day “a purdah nasheen”—one who sits behind ​the curtains, within the inclosure which surrounds her mother's home, and her education commences.
What, then, is the education, so called, which the betrothed wife in her Hindoo home receives during her five or six years of training for her future life? Her mother is her sole instructor. But she can teach no more than she herself knows; that, however, she fully communicates. We may epitomize the young lady's education, the entire curriculum of it, under four heads, cooking, domestic service, religion, and their peculiar female literature.
The first qualification is to cook, not only well, but appropriately. Each caste has its own ordinances, and these are very minute and particular as to the kinds of food that may be eaten, their mode of preparation and serving, and the care required to preserve the cooking utensils from all contact with things or persons whose touch would pollute them. In fact, caste is preserved in the matter of food more carefully than in any thing else. A violation of her duty here would involve consequences at which she is taught to shudder. The health and life of her husband may be forfeited by an unintentional neglect of hers. Even where wealth and high position may excuse her from the drudgery of preparation, the Hindoo wife is not released from the careful superintendence of this vital duty. We in this western world have little idea of the importance attached to it there, where, indeed, it may be truly said that their “kingdom of God is meat and drink,” and where the Christian freedom of the text, “Every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused if it be received with thanksgiving,” is a doctrine unknown and a liberty unenjoyed. By the little lady long, weary months are thus employed in the acquirement of these distinctions and customs.
Woman, ignorant though she be, is the depository of the system of Hindustanee heathenism. She was taught it orally by her mother in girlhood. In her memory are treasured up the “slokes” of her religion—the verses of the Shasters which illustrate the popular idolatry. She has learned the histories of her gods and the dialogues of her mythological legends, and with these she is ​now industriously storing the mind of the child whom she is training to be a Hindoo wife.
To these she adds the literature for females found in the books of her country. Space permits us to notice but one of those manuals of maiden education, which this mother is now teaching from her own remembrance—for she cannot read a word of it—to her little daughter to fit her for her future duties.
There are three leading deities in Hindooism. The first, Brahma, is not worshiped; he lost the right to be by his own unspeakable vileness. The other two, Vishnu and Shiva, divide between them the more special regard of the women of India; and as the two gods are in a state of hostility, their devotees join their respective factions and keep up the wordy contest. Vishnu and Shiva have consorts who, of course, take sides, each with her own lord and against the other. Lakshmi is Vishnu's consort, and Parvati that of Shiva. The two deities seem to have left the high dispute, so far as words are concerned, to be carried on by their ladies, between whom it is supposed to be progressing continually. The little book containing this celestial quarrel is a special favorite with the women of India; they learn it and treasure its sentences in their memory, and rehearse it, taking the parts at festivals and other occasions, for the amusement of the guests.
This abominable circle of endless strife, in every bitter invective uttered, refers to alleged facts in the mythological history of the parties named, and of course has a depth of meaning and pungency which it is impossible to convey to readers unacquainted with the legends of India. But enough is here intimated to cause the gentle heart of any Christian woman to compassionate the millions of her sex who are thus systematically debauched in their imaginations and affections by their very mothers, as they educate them thus to continue their own degradation and that of their offspring forever. How much such females need the Christian teacher, and what light the Holy Bible would bring to such homes, and what a contrast of loveliness, and purity, and goodness the story of our Incarnate God would be to such instruction, can be seen at a glance! ​We have mentioned the present dawn of a better day. It is but the dawn. Dr. Mullen's statistics tell us that already there are 39,647 women and girls receiving an education in the Zenana schools in India. The number is by this time larger, and still increasing, yet what are these among 100,000,000!
The question of caste has an immense influence in the marriage arrangement of the Hindoos, and its discriminations against women are particularly mean and insulting to her nature; while the compromises constantly occurring show how the cupidity of the legislators, and of the violators of the code, outrage the professed inflexibility of their own regulations.
For instance, the Institutes ordain: “Men of the twice-born classes, who, through weakness of intellect or irregularity, marry women of the lowest class, very soon degrade their families and progeny to the state of Sudras. A Brahmin, if he takes a Sudra as his first wife, sinks to the region of torment; if he have a child by her he loses even his priestly rank.”
In their absurd mythology, the deities and the souls of their ancestors are represented as suffering from hunger, which can only be appeased by human attention, the cooking and presentation of which is part of the wife's duty. The regular and frequent fulfillment of this service is considered to merit heaven. But these dainty deities and transmigrated folk are too fastidious to touch the offering, hungry though they be, unless proffered by high-caste hands. The result is, that the lady of low rank can never rise in India, while the favored few of high caste, with all their peculiar immunities, are sacredly reserved for themselves by these sacerdotal legislators.
The head of a family, a shade higher in caste, will not give his son in marriage to the daughter of a family a shade lower on equal terms. But he will do it on receiving a sum of money in proportion to the means of that family, the cash condoning the caste.
April and May are favorite months for the marriage ceremony among the Hindoos, though the rite takes place earlier in the year. But no father will have a marriage in his house during June, July, ​August, and September, the universal belief being that the deity is then, during the whole rainy season, down on a visit to the celebrated Rajah Bull, and is consequently unable to bless the rite with his presence.
The ceremonies of marriage in India are too well known to need repetition here. Often, when traveling at night in my palanquin, I have been roused from my sleep by my bearers catching sight of an approaching marriage procession, with its torches, music, and shouting; falling in with the enthusiasm of each event, they would cry out that “the bridegroom cometh.” First, the bridegroom would make his appearance, mounted on a fine horse, splendidly caparisoned—his own or borrowed for the occasion—and wearing a grand coat, decked out in tinsel and gold thread, with the matrimonial crown on his head, and his richly embroidered slippers, all very fine, his friends shouting and dancing along-side of him; and, of course, as he passes, we make our salaam and wish him joy.
Right behind the bridegroom's horse comes the palanquin of the bride, but she is vailed, and the Venetians are closely shut, and on the little lady is borne to a home which she never saw before, to surrender herself into the hands of one who has neither wooed nor won her; a bride without a choice, with no voice in her own destiny; married without preference; handed over, by those who assumed to do all the thinking for her, to a fate where the feelings of her heart were never consulted in the most important transaction of her existence; beginning her married life under circumstances which preclude the possibility of her being sustained by the affection which is founded upon esteem.
When the procession has come within hailing distance of his home the watching friends go forth to meet the bridegroom, the bride enters her apartments, the door is shut, and the guests are entertained in other parts of the establishment.
Let us now consider her life as a married lady in her own home, surrounded by the cruel prejudices and customs which meet her at the threshold and subject her to their sway. What they are may be gathered from a few statements.
​When I sit down at a table in this land, spread with Heaven's bounty for the family and friends, and look at the Christian woman who so sweetly presides at the board, and whose blessed presence sheds such light and gladness on the scene, I often sigh to think that no such sight as this is enjoyed in India, for that land is cursed by the iron rule of a system which denies to her the joys and charities of social life. No lady in India sits at the head of her own table; no stranger can share her presence in hospitality; her healing word or hand cannot be extended to the sick or to the whole. Woman's gentle, blessed ministries have no exercise in India. Her services are all selfishly reserved for him whom now she is taught to regard as lord and master, and on whom she is henceforth to wait in a state of abject submission and obedience that has no parallel in any other system in this world.
My lady readers will bear in mind that these conditions are all realized within the four walls of the “compound” which inclose the home of the Hindoo lady. That compound is the woman's world in India. In it she lives, and seldom leaves it till she is carried out a corpse. Ever while she inhabits it, she has “jealousy for her jailer, and suspicion as her spy;” and fain would her husband draw all these bonds tighter when he is obliged to trust her in his absence. Thus saith the Shaster: “If a man goes on a journey, his wife shall not divert herself by play, nor shall see any public show, nor shall laugh, nor shall dress herself in jewels or fine clothes, nor hear music, nor shall sit at the window, nor shall behold any thing choice and rare, but shall fasten well the house door, and remain private, and shall not eat any dainty food, and shall not blacken her eyes with powder, and shall not view her face in a mirror; she shall never amuse herself in any such agreeable employment during the absence of her husband.”
Was there any insult ever offered to a lady's nature equal to that which this law has laid down, when it enjoins the Brahmin to suspend his reading of the Veda to his disciples should a woman happen to come in sight while he was so employed, and directs him not to resume the utterance of the holy texts until she has ​passed beyond the possibility of hearing them? Her ear is not pure enough to hear what the vilest male thief or sensualist in the Bazaar may listen to freely! Woman's religious knowledge must not rise higher than the Shasters, The “holy” Vedas are reserved for men, and for them alone.
These old laws were in existence when the New Testament was written; and in the provisions of that Christianity which threw its blessed protection over woman's nature and rights, did not the Holy Spirit glance at these wrongs, and provide the principle of their final overthrow when he said: “There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither bond nor free; there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus?”—one in the freedom, equality and privilege to which Heaven's impartial mercy was to raise the Pariah, the woman, and the slave, from the degradation to which heathenism, in its pride of power, had reduced those over whom it could thus safely tyrannize.
The Shaster renders her duty very definitely, as follows: “When in the presence of her husband, a woman must keep her eyes upon her master and be ready to receive his commands. When he speaks she must be quiet, and listen to nothing else besides. When he calls she must leave every thing else and attend upon him alone. A woman has no other god on earth but her husband. The most excellent of all good works that she can perform is to gratify him with the strictest obedience. This should be her only devotion. Though he be aged, infirm, dissipated, a drunkard, or a debauchee, she must still regard him as her god. She must serve him with all her might, obeying him in all things, spying no defects in his character, and giving him no cause for disquiet. If he laughs, she must also laugh; if he weeps, she must also weep; if he sings, she must be in an ecstasy.”
Menu declares, “Though inobservant of approved usages, [the services of their religion,] or enamored of another woman, or devoid of good qualities, yet a husband must constantly be revered as a god by a virtuous wife.”—Institutes, sec. 154. Such is the law, and the popular sentiment is not better than the law even ​today, after these long ages of helpless woman's subordination and suffering.
She waits upon her lord, who is “her god, her guru, and her religion,” as the Shaster phrases it. She lulls him to rest by the soft shampooing of his feet, and is at once his slave and stewardess. Her worth is well summed up by one of their poets, who describes the best condition she can know, when her bereaved husband thus laments her:
“Dost thou depart, who didst prepare
My savory food with skillful care?
On whom alone of woman kind
In ceaseless love I fixed my mind?
Whose palms so softly rubbed my feet,
Till charmed I lay in slumbers sweet?
Who tendedst me with wakeful eyes.
The last to sleep, the first to rise.
Now weary night denies repose; My eyelids never more shall close.”
Yet while living she might not walk by his side, even in the marriage procession; she may not even call him by his name nor directly address him; nor can a friend so far notice her existence as to inquire for her welfare, for the Sacontala lays it down as a rule of social life that “it is against good manners to inquire concerning the wife of another man.” The face of any man, save her husband and father, and her own and husband's brothers, she must never see, at the risk of compromising her character. So inveterate is the prejudice occasioned by their education that many of the women of India have sacrificed their lives sooner than violate the rule. The writer heard of a case which sadly illustrates this. In the detachment which Major Broadfoot had to take from Lodiana to Cabul in 1841 there were wives of many native officers, and the Major, in the performance of his troublesome duty, had them each provided for their long journey with a howdah fixed on a camel's back. During the march one of these came to the ground suddenly, and there was a general halt, for the native lady had got entangled in the frame-work and had swung around beneath. An English officer, seeing her danger, sprang from his horse to rescue
​her; but his action was arrested by the other ladies, who saw his intention as well as the lady's peril, and from behind their curtains cried out that he must not approach her, as he could not save her unless by touching her person and lifting the vail that enveloped her. The astonished officer would have done it, nevertheless, had it not been that the poor lady herself implored him not to approach her—she would rather risk death. Her struggle to escape was in vain; the terrified and unwieldly beast actually trampled her to death before their eyes!
Look into the home where we left the young bride, and see her as she begins the duties for which she has been trained. She rises to prepare her husband's food, and when all is ready and laid out upon the mat—for they ignore such aids as chairs and tables, knives or forks, and take their meals with the hand, sitting on the floor—she then announces to her lord that his meal is ready. He enters and sits down, and finds all duly prepared by her care. Why does she still stand? Why not sit down, too, and share with her husband the good things which she has made ready? She dares not. He would not allow it—the law of her religion forbids it. She must stand and wait upon him. He “eats his morsel alone” truly. No wife in India can legally dine with her husband unless she becomes a Christian.
Hindoo Woman and her Husband.
​ The opposite wood-cut, taken from a picture of a Hindoo home of the middle class, shows the situation of affairs generally. It is substantially the same whether the person be wealthier or poorer than the one here represented. The higher classes use more indulgences. The weather is warm and a fan is needed, or a fly flapper is required, for he considers that he cannot use his curry-stained fingers to drive the flies away or cool himself; so the duty in either case devolves upon the wife.
The fan is made of a fragrant grass called khus-khus; a basin of water is at her feet, and she dips the fan into it occasionally, shaking off the heavy drops, and cools her lord and master, who enjoys, as he eats, the fragrant evaporation. Or the mosquitoes may be troublesome, and provision is made also for this. The tail of the
​yak, or snow-cow of Thibet, white and bushy, inserted into an ornamental shaft, is ready at hand, and with it the lady whisks around him and saves him from the slightest inconvenience.
The duty is patiently performed, and when he has fully satisfied himself, she removes what remains to another apartment—for her religion not only forbids her eating with him, but also prohibits her from eating, even what he may leave, “in the same room where he dines”—and then, and not till then, can she and her children eat their food.—Code, sec. 43.
Woman is absolutely, and without redress, in the power of her husband, and no one can interfere when it stops short of actual murder. In the western provinces of India the reckless treatment of woman was carried to its greatest extreme. Before British rule interfered there was positively no limit to the cruelty of native husbands. Twenty years have not passed since similar tyranny might have been witnessed in the kingdom of Oude, (before the introduction of British rule there threw the protection of the law of Christ over woman's life, so far as it can reach her secluded existence.) An extract from a reliable work, “The Private Life of an Eastern King,” will illustrate this. The writer says, speaking of Nussir-i-Deen, the late King of Oude: “Being irritated, the King retired into the female apartment, and we returned to our tents. Heaven help the poor woman who has the misfortune at such a moment to displease or disgust an irritated despot! An accidental sneeze, a louder cough than usual, nay, even an ungraceful movement, may bring down punishment terrible to think of—torture, perhaps, at the bare mention of which the English wife, or mother, or daughter would shudder. Such things take place but too often in the Hindoo zenanas of India. Magistrates know that such things often take place, but they are helpless to punish or prevent. But the zenana and the harem are sacred; and the female slave that revealed their horrid mysteries would suffer a lingering and excruciating death at the hands of the very woman whom her revelations might be intended to protect. The chief and the wealthy man who is disposed to be cruel can act despotically, tyrannically ​enough; but the king, with unquestioned power of life or death in his hands, if once infuriated or enraged, can torture or kill without question. ‘My wife is about to be confined,’ said a savage Hindoo Rajah to his European friend, a solicitor, ‘and if she does not make me the father of a son, I will whip her to death with my hunting-whip.’ The child was born; it was a daughter; the woman's body was burned two days after. How she died no one out of the zenana certainly knew. The fact of the threat only transpired long afterward, when it was the interest of the solicitor, to whom the remark had been made, to prove the Rajah mad in his later days in order to set aside a will.”
The discrimination is against women as such. Menu and his commentators decree no equivalent punishment upon male violators of their law or customs, and he actually shields from all penalty the whole sacerdotal class who formed these laws, no matter how many or flagrant their crimes may be. No such “class legislation” was ever enacted as is exhibited in the following section of the Code: “Never shall the king slay a Brahmin, though convicted of all possible crimes; let him banish the offender from his realm, but with all his property secure and his body unhurt. No greater crime is known on earth than slaying a Brahmin, and the king, therefore, must not even form in his mind an idea of killing a priest.” Sec. 380.
When General Havelock, in 1857, laid his hands upon these dainty and pampered Brahmins, and, finding them guilty of mutiny or murder, tried and convicted them like common men, and ordered them for punishment or execution, some of the poor benighted people whom they had thus deluded thought that the earth would surely quake or the heavens fall. But, in defiance of this unjust Code, they were strung up, and the earth was still, the sun rolled on in its course indifferent to their fate, and the spell of Brahminical inviolability was broken forever, after the long imposition and cruel falsehood of its claim. But in the breaking of that spell women in India had more interest, and gained more advantage, than in any event of the past generation. She knows it not ​yet, but it is nevertheless true that Havelock's grand march and Christian soldiership and justice snapped a galling link of that heavy chain that had so long encircled her mind and body.
Notwithstanding the inhumanity and deep injustice of Hindoo legislation for the ladies of that land, their married lives are not without honor and influence, nor their persons unsupplied with gorgeous clothing and ornaments. On the contrary, the law repeatedly requires these things to be supplied in abundance. But let the whole truth, as to the expressed design and motive of this generosity, be candidly stated, and then let the reader judge what is the value of this magnanimity to the heart of any noble woman. Is it for her sake, as true love would prompt, or is it for the gratification and interest of him who confers it all? The reply to this painful question I place before the reader.
Let it be remembered, as explanatory, that in India a woman's curse is considered to blast the person, the property, or the home against which it is uttered. Men stand in fear of it, for prosperity is impossible where it impends. The legislator (in Secs. 55-59 of the Code) has affirmed its liability, with the duty of marital liberality as a motive of prevention. Also let it be borne in mind that a husband's passion for sons, in view of the relation of his male offspring to his shraad and happy transmigration—as previously explained—is such, that all considerations are expected to bow to this desire.
Polygamy throws its terrors, either as a possibility or a fact, over the heart of every married lady in India. Creation and divine law have ordained woman to be queen of her husband's heart, and to reign without a rival. But heathenism has dared to overthrow that right, and sternly tells the loving and trusting wife that she must, and without complaining, admit a partner in her, husband's affection, if he desires it. How often are long years of duty and fidelity thus rewarded, and the true, faithful heart is crushed for life, as she sees herself superseded by some youthful stranger, who has stolen her lord's heart and attention, and leaves her to pine in neglect and sorrow!
​The right to become a polygamist, should he prefer it for any reason, must unsettle any man's heart, and be a barrier to true and permanent affection. That right to be thus unsympathetic and fickle, and to inflict this terrible wrong upon her whom he ought to cherish and cleave to, “forsaking all others, as long as they both should live,.” Menu fully grants in the following ordinance of his Code: “A wife who drinks any spirituous liquors, who acts immorally, who shows hatred to her lord, who is incurably diseased, who is mischievous, who wastes his property, may at all times be superseded by another wife; a barren wife may be superseded by another in the eighth year; she whose children are all dead, in the tenth; she who brings forth only daughters, in the eleventh; she who speaks unkindly, without delay; but she who, though afflicted with illness, is beloved and virtuous, must never be disgraced, though she may be superseded by another wife with her own consent.”—Code VIII, Sec. 204.
Here is wide range enough from which to select a cause of dissatisfaction, in any hour of alienation or dislike. No tribunal or process is required; the husband is sole judge and executor of this facile law; and in a single day the virtuous and faithful lady may find herself superseded by some youthful addition to her home, or become a discarded outcast, without pity or redress on earth.
I have been often asked to what extent polygamy prevails in India. For reasons already manifest, it is not easy to give a sufficient answer to this inquiry. I fear it is more general than is supposed. Of course the crime is limited by its expense. It is a luxury that poor men cannot well afford; yet even they are not innocent of successional polygamy: they often forsake or change their wives, and then take others. Among the rich it is very common. Indeed, with that class it is viewed rather as an exhibition of wealth and splendor, and cases are not rare where ten or a dozen ladies may be found in the zenana of a Rajah or Nawab.
There are varieties in the law and usage of the different religionists of India in this regard, but all of them allow the practice. The Parsee faith and usage limits polygamy to a second wife, and ​then only where the first is childless and gives her consent to the introduction of the second. The Mohammedan is allowed by his Koran to take up four wives or concubines, and few of the wealthy among them limit themselves to less than this number, while it is notorious that they use their facilities of divorce with so little scruple that their license under their law is practically unlimited. The opulent Hindoos are restricted somewhat in the increase of their wives by the absurd expensiveness of their marriage ceremonies, but are limited in no other way as to the number they choose to take.
The law lays down the subordination which is to exist in a home where there are several wives. The first married remains mistress of the family. The others are designated sapatnis, or auxiliary wives, and the first is expected and required to treat them as younger sisters. Every additional wife added is thus instructed by the Hindoo authority called Sacontala: “Here, my daughter, when thou art settled in the mansion of thy husband, show due reverence to him, and to those whom he reveres; though he have other wives, be rather an affectionate handmaid to them than a rival.”
Extremes meet, and that often when we would least expect them. Who would imagine, in a country where such rules of social life exist, that we should meet with a custom so opposite to it in all respects as polyandry? And yet this singular and amazing relation existed in India twenty-five centuries ago, and lingers to-day in some localities to such an extent as to call for the legislative action of the English Government. It is bad enough to be one among many wives, but to be the wife of many husbands must be a wonderful relation for any woman to sustain.
India's greatest poem is the Mahabharata, and its lovely heroine, Draupady, is represented, at the great tournament, as throwing the garland of preference over the neck of the valiant Arjuna, whom she loves so well. But with him she accepts his four elder brothers, and is henceforth regarded by all five as their common consort. Singularly enough, there is not a word of reprehension for the relation, and the story ends with the reception of the entire family to ​the home of the gods. Sir William Jones, the great Orientalist, facetiously designates this family of the Pandian chiefs and their common consort as “the five-maled, single-female flower,” and there is reason to believe that this curiosity bloomed then in other localities of the land besides Indraprasta. The Code must certainly have tended to its abolition, for except in the Ceylon Mountains, among the Nairs of the South, and very limitedly in the Himalaya Mountains, the daughters of India have ceased to lament the Dwaper Yug—a departed age—when they sang:
“Prepost'rous! that one biped vain
Should drag ten housewives in his train,
And stuff them in a gaudy cage,
Slaves to weak lust or potent rage!
Not such the Dwaper Yug! O then
One buxom dame might wed five men!”
Whatever may have been the motive for this unnatural alliance in the ancient days, the purpose in our own, as I learned in the Himalayas, is the gain to be realized by the sale of their fairer daughters to supply the zenanas of the plains, and the dearth of women thus occasioned led to the continuance of this unnatural custom; and so one vice created another, and that, too, its very opposite. The English Government has done what it could to repress the practice of polyandry where it still exists.
A widow in India is undoubtedly the most miserable of her sex anywhere. She is now more than ever under the tyranny of her cruel law, and the bitterest dregs of a woman's misery are then and henceforth wrung out to her. Her youth, her beauty, her wealth, give her no exemption whatever; the rules, relentless as death, enforce their dreadful claims upon her and crush her down. Formerly they were expected to become Suttees and burn with the man's body. British humanity, thank Heaven! has ended that hellish custom. So they live, but how much better than death is their condition let my readers judge, when they learn the facts in her case.
In the first of these pages I introduced a Hindoo wife as she appears in her best estate—a married wife in her full dress and
​jewelry. From a photograph, which has been engraved with equal fidelity, I now present a picture of a Hindoo widow as she appears in her weeds, sitting upon the ground in her sorrow. Her aspect and her attire show at first sight, even to a stranger, the agony of her condition, which will be better understood when the rules of her now hopeless existence are stated.
Hindoo Widow, in her usual dress.
​ In the forms of their exclamations, when they first realize that they are widowed, there are terribly reflective phrases which imply that, for aught they know, they may be responsible for their husband's death; that not misery alone, but guilt also may fasten upon their wretched hearts. This arises from the fear that in the responsibilities of their caste duties, in preparing food, etc., they may have, even unwittingly, violated some rule of the Shaster, and that the gods have visited the violation with their vengeance in the sickness and death of the husband. The terrific fear thus seizes on the lacerated heart that they may be guilty of the death which they mourn! Her own children and friends, she justly fears, are entertaining similar thoughts concerning her, and this dreadful weight is enough to sink her to despair.
The day she becomes a widow, the lady in India falls to a lot little less terrible than death itself. All her ornaments and beautiful clothing—on which her poor, uninstructed mind has doted—are taken from her, so that “jewelless woman” is the well-understood designation for a widow. She is henceforth to wear the dun-colored robe in which the engraving represents her, on which there must be no seam, no fringe, no figure. Her Tali—the equivalent of the marriage ring in England—which her husband tied round her neck when he married her, is removed. From her forehead the bright vermilion mark is wiped away. Her raven locks are ruthlessly cut off. The terrible indignity is perpetual, for the head is henceforth shaven every ten days. The terrors of the “God of Hell,” breaking forth against the departed husband, are employed to make her endure the degradation, for, says the Casi-Candam, “If matrons who have put off glittering ornaments of gold still wreath their hair in unshortened locks, the
​ministers of fiery-eyed Yama shall bind with cords the husband of her desire.”
But even this is not the end of the widow's misery. She must henceforth consider herself as a creature of evil destiny, practicing severe austerities; her weary limbs are no longer to repose upon a comfortable bed; her food is to be taken but once a day, and then only of the coarsest fare; and, lest her presence should involve the dreadful doom of a widow's condition, she is prohibited from ever appearing in the wedding ceremonies of another woman, no matter how nearly related to her. The higher in caste she is, the more rigorously are these rules exacted; so that a Brahmin's widow is the most wretched of all: and this is “according to law”—a doom laid on willfully and wickedly by their legislation and its commentators. Menu ordains as follows: “Let her emaciate her body by living voluntarily on pure flowers, roots, and fruit; but let her not, when her lord is deceased, ever pronounce the name of another man. Let her continue till death forgiving all injuries, performing harsh duties, avoiding every sensual pleasure, and cheerfully practicing the incomparable rules of virtue which have been followed by such women as have been devoted to one only husband.”—Institutes, secs. 157, 158. To this the Casi-Candam adds: “On the death of their attached husband, women must eat but once a day, must eschew betel and a spread mattress, must sleep on the ground, and continue to practice rigid mortification. Women who have put off glittering jewels of gold must discharge with alacrity the duties of devotion, and, neglecting their persons, must feed on herbs and roots, so as barely to sustain life within the body.”
Can any thing equal this cruel audacity of proscription to hearts which their system had already crushed! Yet it may be matched by the willful blindness of our American and British transcendentalists, who profess to find in Vedic teaching and Hindoo philosophy sentiments and ethics which they deem and commend as even superior to our Christian faith and morality!
It was for the interest of Brahminism that these wretched widows, henceforth so useless and inconvenient, should die, and ​their valuables be divided in the ceremonies of the suttee. For ages this was done, and the young and beautiful ladies of the land
Lord William Bentinck.
were immolated amid solemn religious ceremonies and music, before applauding crowds of priests, and pundits, and philosophers, while no voice was raised against these vile murders until the Christian missionary came to plead for the widow's life. Then a merciful God, in response to their prayers and efforts, sent that noble man, Lord William Bentinck, to India as Governor-General, and to him was given the honor to face the opposition of Pundits and Brahmins, and in 1829 to sign the law that extinguished these murderous fires forever. The women of India will yet hang his portrait in their homes, and gratefully cherish his memory as one of India's greatest benefactors.
The law of Christ and the legislation of Christian countries permit a widow, where she chooses to do so, to create and enjoy the sunshine of a second home; but from this right Hindooism has for twenty-five hundred years bitterly prohibited every widow in India.
The Code declares that she is bound by the law to her husband even after he is dead, and that to change her life is to sacrifice her claim to be a virtuous woman. Menu says: “A faithful wife, who wishes to attain in heaven the mansion of her husband, must do nothing unkind to him, be he living or dead; while she who slights not her lord, but keeps her mind, speech, and body devoted to him, attains his heavenly mansion, and by good men is called sadivi, or virtuous. Let her obsequiously honor him while he lives, and ​when he dies let her never neglect him. Nor is a second husband allowed in any part of this code to a virtuous woman.”—[Institutes, secs. 151, 162, 165.
Let me remind the reader that these rules refer not only to the aged widows, whose long life-relation to their husbands might give some color to these stern demands, but as fully place the obligation upon the virgin widows who never knew the husband’s care or love. The law is explicit here. Two authorities give the rule: “It is said to be unlawful for any to touch jewelless women, whose eyes are like the dewy cavi ﬂower, being deprived of their beloved husband, like a body deprived of the spirit.” “Nor must a damsel once given away in marriage be given a second time.”
Old or young, faded or lovely, it is all one dull uniformity of woe. The number of widows is, necessarily, larger in India than in any other land on earth.
Can Christian ladies in this happy land wonder that these villainous laws have brought forth their fruits of death; that women in India, being thus degraded by system and rule, have dragged the nation down into their own ruin, or that their sisters there have become demented and broken-hearted, so that they have so long and often preferred immolation to the sorrowful lot of a Hindoo widow? Alas! tens of thousands of them, after such married lives as theirs, ignorant, impulsive, and indolent, when the terrible alternative has stared them in the face, have either committed suicide, or else, bidding a long farewell to peace and virtue, have buried themselves for life in the hells which abound in every Bazaar in India!
The death and funeral of the Hindoo wife is a very sad topic. Those ﬁnal scenes are complete contrasts to what such words express under Christianity. In our civilization, with all its honor, and love, and blessing for woman, as wife and mother, what tender thoughts and holy memories surround a wife’s or a mother’s grave! It is far different in the Land of the Veda.
The Hindoo wife and mother falls sick. Her case grows worse and the fear fastens upon her heart that she is dying. She must ​have sad anxieties for her children and their future, knowing well that none can ever be to them what she has been. Coming days of desolation lie before them. For her husband's future she can have little concern, as she knows that she is in no sense essential to his comfort.
The usual means are tried to restore her. Superstition and astrology do their best; but she is sinking. Her symptoms are reported to the Hukeem—the native doctor—and at last he pronounces that hope has fled. No time is to be lost now. If she is too far from the Ganges to be carried there before the vital spark has fled, preparations are made for the burning of the body. Within a few hours after death it is laid upon the pyre and quickly consumed. When the heap is cold, a small portion of the ashes and calcined remains, representing the rest, are taken and put into an earthen vessel to be carried to the sacred river; and the rest of the remains are left there to be, as I have so often seen them, tossed about by the hogs and pariah dogs, or scattered by the winds of heaven.
But, should the Ganges not be more than a few miles away, instead of being kept to be burned at home, the dying wife and mother is laid on a charpoy — the light native bedstead — and raised on the shoulders of four bearers. She leaves her home forever, unattended, however, by her husband; her eldest son instead goes with her, and they hurry her by the shortest route across the country to the sacred river. She is dying; the sun blazes upon her with its fierce rays, often as high as one hundred and thirty-eight degrees, and she is, of course, jolted and shaken by the runners; but they must go on, and she must bear it all. At length the river is reached — those banks where all Hindoos so much desire to die—and now they lift her off, and lay her on her back on the brink, with her feet in “the sacred waters,” and the bearers depart, for no restoration is ever anticipated; none there grow better and return. They think that it would be fitting in such a case to prevent it. So the son takes his station by the dying mother, and every few minutes he wets ​her tongue with the sacred water, or puts the mud of the Ganges on her lips.
The sun sinks low in the heavens; the shades of night commence to fall, and the place begins to look very dreary, for the wolves and jackals which abound will come there to drink when it is dark; and the son, it may be a mere youth, timid and superstitious, thinks his mother is a long time dying. But he cannot immerse her till the heart ceases to beat; so he watches on, and wets her lips again. And there they are, alone, far from house or friends, in “the valley and shadow of death” together. At length the last gasp is over, and his final duty is ready. He goes outside into the water, and, taking her by the heels, draws her down into the river, and floats her out till the water is above his own breast, and then with a final push he sends her from him as far as he can into the river, and turns to the shore and makes his way home as fast as possible. She is left to her fate, no more to be thought of or protected. To her son, who thus deserts her—to her husband, who left her to die without his presence—it is nothing that the body of the mother and wife is rolling along with the current in the darkness, and that, most probably, within a few hours, and within a few miles of her dwelling, it will strand upon a sand-bar, and be discovered by the vultures, who, with the jackals, will fiercely contend together during the night as they feast upon it, or that the sun of the next day will shine on the gory and naked skeleton of the wife and the mother to whom, by their gloomy religion, even the rest of the grave is thus denied!