Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/813

 VI. |] BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE Fal of wifehood is different from that which governs Hindu women. The Hindu wife in those days bore all kinds of ills from her husband with un- tiring patience ; she lived with her co-wife, to whom often the husband was devoted and bore her neglect and his contempt in a surprising spirit of resigna- tion ; and inspite of all maltreatment cherished only the best feelings for her husband. All this was sometimes done with a grace,—a saintliness and devotion which place her sorrows above our pity. They may be looked upon almost in the light of martyrdom. The supernatural element prevails in the story of Malanchamala, with all imaginable excesses of wild fancy, and this constitutes its in- terest for the young; but as we proceed, the griefs of the heroine becomes the all-absorbing subject of the readers. Her woes claim a tear at every page. She like Behula restores her husband to life; she saves him from the flames of the funeral Her great pyre ; follows him like a shadow ; and, all unseen তে by him, ministers to his every comforts. She was married to him when he wasa mere child. The child grows up, but Malanchamala does not show herself to him till he becomes a handsome youngman and has married a princess. Many years of fasts, and vigils, heart-rending anguish, and cruel treatment from her royal father-in-law, who does not allow her to live in his palace because she is of an in- ferior caste, are rewarded with this, that her hus- band marries the princess and lives in the palace of his new bride’s father. And this husband had been the apple of her eye; in the funeral ground, in the deep shades of the wilderness she had saved him from death, undergoing unheard of hardships, .