Page:Classical Poets Of Gujarat.pdf/88

 Digitized by 76 he fervidly sang the poetry of moral strength and religious beauty and helped his village community to stand beautifully against its adversities. During happier intervals his poems were carried to other localities which were brightened by the importations. Women's liberties are larger in Gujaràt than perhaps in any other part of India. Probably this is partially owing to the people having been kept at arm's length from their oriental rulers. Women here sing both indoor and outdoor in the higher castes; and if they are any- where kept in seclusion, it is in those very castes and localities where poetry is neither sung not appreciated. The poetesses have invariably belonged to the higher castes, and they have sung in their own ways all the subjects which men-poets have touched. They have lived as wives, as widows, and as sadhus, and, in what- soever position they have sung, men have heard and res- pected them. And there is also no doubt that many a clever little woman has composed her own sweet song in the name of Mirá or some other favourite name of hers, and has enjoyed the interest taken in it by her circle of friends and admirers. In the provinces where the poets of the seventeenth century lived and sang, men have allowed to women, and women have main- tained, both indoor and outdoor liberties and influence except among those land-holding and political classes who have borrowed the practices of the Mahomedan