Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 08.pdf/24

 The Indian Wife.

THE INDIAN WIFE. By R. Vashon Rogers. MARRIAGE forms the substratum of the whole civil life of the Hindu. It is to him above all things a religous cere mony, not " enterprised, nor taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly or wantonly," but en tered into for religious objects and ends, considering that it affects his spiritual state both here and hereafter. A son is neces sary, indispensably necessary, for he is the one who has to perform the religious funeral rites, and pay the debts, both spiritual and temporal, of his ancestor. Manu — an old and venerable sage who lived either 1280 B. C, or 400 A. D., or somewhere between (no one knoweth exactly), and wrote in verse — says, "By a son, a man gains heaven; by the son of a son he obtains im mortality; by the son of a son of a son, he rises to dwell in the sun." If a man has no son he is excluded from the celestial abodes. A daughter is quite a secondary considera tion, though useful in default of a male heir. Nowhere are the laws, rules and regula tions, anent woman, courtship and matri mony, ct hoc genus ovine, so numerous, ex plicit and imperative as in the writings of the learned pundits who have been the law givers and law expounders of India. Matrimony is compulsory among the Hindus. We mean not that a man is sac rificed upon the hymeneal altar whether he will or whether he won't, but that public opinion is so strong and the customs and usages of society, in all its grades, are so akin to the laws of the Medes and Persians in their cast-ironness, that marriage is inev itable. It is wedlock, or extinction socially. The man marries, if for no other cause, for the reason that (according to Mr. Froude) King Henry VIII married so often, that he may have an heir; the girl is married be

cause she is too weak to stand upright alone, and must ever be watched. " A woman ought never to have her own way "; "A little girl, a young woman and an old woman ought never to do anything of their own will, even in their own house"; " If a woman is not guarded, she would bring misfortunes on two families," says our friend Manu. " Day and night must women be held by their pro tectors in a state of dependence; a woman is never fit for independence," remarked another sage; and the learned pundit to whom we are indebted for the Gentoo laws says, " So long as a woman remains unmarried her father shall take care of her, and so long as a wife remains young her husband shall take care of her; and in her old age her son shall take care of her; and if, before a woman's marriage, her father should die, the brother or the brother's son, or such other near relations of the father shall take care of her; if after marniage her husband should die, and the wife has not brought forth a son, the brothers and brothers' sons, and such other near relations of her husband shall take care of her. If there are no brothers, brothers' sons, or such other near relation of the husband, the brothers or brothers' sons of her father shall take care of her; if there are none of those the magistrate shall take care of her; and in every stage of life, if the persons who have been allotted to take care of a woman do not take care of her, each in his respec tive stage accordingly, the magistrate shall fine them." The African bridegroom who interrupted the officiating parson after the words " love, honor and obey," by the remark, "Read that agin, sah; read it once mo', so's de lady kin ketch de full solemnity of de mean