The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1886-05-15
HlNDOO MARRIAGES.
Girls of Eleven Compelled to Marry Boys
Fifteen Years of Age.

AO@AS VI <hSos
From an article a Hindoo recently
published it appears that marriage in
the writer's country is managed entirely
by the parents. Courtship, he says, is
literally unknown in India, and the
persons who are united in wedlock re-
main perfect strangers to each other
till their nuptial day, and often for
long period afterward. Every thing is
settled to suit the fancies or caprices of
the parents. To the parties chiefly
concerned marriage is pure lottery;
but, fortunately, Hindoo connubial life
is not generally miserable lot, as the
wife is unsurpassed in faithfulness and
devotion to her husband. The highest
age at which Hindoo girl is married
with rare eXceptions-is eleven
years. The bridegroom is in his teens
and his bride has hardly seen ten sum-
mers when they are united for life.
Many girls have been married when
they have barely learned to feed them
selves.
The boy inmate of a Hindoo house
finds himself betrothed by his father S or
grandfather's command to some girl
perhaps an infant of six or seven years
old, whom he has not seen; nor does he
see her till at the age of fifteen or
Whereabouts. While he is yet at school
he is sent out to fetch her home to his
mothers or grandmother zenana.
There the child-wife takes the lowest
place, and becomes at once the toy and
slave of all the women. She has to
learn her domestic duties under the
strict eye of her mother-in-law, and
drudges on; unless indeed, Gas is gen
orally the case,) there is widow in
the family to have all the work heaped
upon her; for Hindoo widow is the
cursed of gods and men. However,
even If this be the case, the child-wife
must learn to do her work, which is
often mental, and must absolutely obey
her mother-in-law. The husband and
wife pass their lives in two almost en-
tirely different tracks, and are brought
up in ideas and associations widely
different from each other. Beginning
as wife at so early an age, and enter
ing by the door of marriage GER
emonies the little girl passes from
infancy into the duties and trial of ma
ture life, or at any rate into the seclu-
sion and Imprisonment which are the
grave of childhood. This dreary life
doom is appalling and most incon-
ceiyable to English readers. There is
no divorce in the Hindoo law; and,
even when she is cruelty treated or
mercilessly neglected, the Hindoo wife
fc Gall bo Oo1vy
thought occupying her mind is the
welfare of her husband, whose wrongs
and injustices she religiously forgives.
Yet this cruel treatment from her
husband is preferable to widowhood.
The Hindoo widow is never allowed to
marry again. She has no one on
whom to rely; she is subject to unkind-
ness from every one, and is liable to
be driven to despair. She has to put
on the plainest dress, to live only on
vegetables and fruits, frequently to alb
stain from all food, to use no articles
of luxury. She is expected to harbor
no cheerful thoughts-to pass her life
immured within the four walls of the
zenana, with grief for her only COM
panion. Thus the widow drags through
her wretched life till welcome death
comes and relieves her. 1t oft
en- happens that Hindoo wife
loses her husband soon after
marriage; and then she is initiated
into the horrors of widows life ere
she has passed her girlhood. An old
man of sixty will not scruple to marry
a girl of eight, though he knows that
she will be az outcast in his house all
her life after she has been deprived of
her husband Out of the total popula-
ton of India there must at least be six
millions of women suffering in this
way. The last census of Calcutta shows
that there are tifty-fve thousand widows
in that city.
The more enlightened natives of India
are strongly in favor of the abolition of
infant marriage and the introduction
of widow marriage; but the enlight-
ened are very few, and custom is ON
nipotent in that land. The only i'm
provement that has taken place in
respect to marriage is among the Brah-
mos, the new theistic body in India,
who do not marry their girls before
| they attain their fourteenth year, and
who have also introduced the marriage
| of widows. But their head, the late
Baboo Keshub Chunder Sen, married
his daughter when she was only lit
| tie over thirteen years of age to the
| Maharajah of Cooch Behar. For this
breach of faith he was severely blamed
by all his educated countrymen, and
| the whole of the native press turned
against him. James Gazette.