Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/463

 Some Matrimonial Problems of India. 427

on six-week tours can do that. For instance, one such tourist, lecturing on India not long ago, said, among other things, that the English mind dealt with the earth that was as a rule earthy; the Indian mind was precisely the opposite, for it was an intellectual and philosophical mind, and dealt with things of the spirit. Well, this may be the opinion of one who, not knowing the languages of the different Indias, had conversed for six weeks with a few educated Indians, mainly Hindus, generally Brahmins, and mostly Bengalis, but I cannot accept it. To me there are spiritually-minded persons in both England and India, and earthy persons in both England and India, and my paper concerns the earth and pure prose, not poetry or fiction.

There are many nations in India, and there are also many matrimonial systems in India. There are systems which give a lady five husbands, if the joint family estate does not allow for more than one batch of children. There are systems which give her a fiftieth part of a husband, and she may consider herself lucky to be born under such a system and not under one which, starting from exactly the same social structure, ends in the destruction of many female children at birth. But I confine myself to the Muhammedan Pathans, Balochis, and Jats of the Western border, and, perhaps, to prevent the disclaimer already made from going too far, I may say that at least a population as large as that of greater London lives, more or less, under the conditions to which I will refer.

Firstly, there is a marked deficiency of the fairer sex. The districts in which they live are arid, and the domestic burdens that fall upon the women of all ages are very severe. I have been in places where the women have to go five miles each way daily to fetch the water for the day's consumption. Apart from this, the work which their lords consent to do is strictly defined, and those especially who are graziers live placid lives, playing panpipes among the flocks, and not doing much to relieve their womenfolk of toil. It follows