Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/478

 CHAPTER IX. MONG the mercies resultant from recent events in India may be reckoned “the door of hope” which God has thus opened for the women of that land; but to appreciate the hopeful possibilities of the present it is needful that we consider the past, and what, up to this hour, has been the condition of women there, under the law of her religion and the customs of her country. If she is rising at last in any respect, it is in decided defiance of the system that has so long repressed and wronged her, and her elevation therefore involves its overthrow.

On page forty-two we have presented a picture of the class whose legal relations we now more fully represent.

What is this woman, thus “gorgeously appareled,” in her condition, character, and prospects? Even the Zenana has had to give up its secrets, and the rest of the world may now know how the women of India live and die.

Of course every lady of intelligence has heard more or less of the condition of her sex in India, and has had her sympathy called forth by the wrongs which they have so long suffered; yet few understand why these things are so, much less, what is the full measure of the disabilities to which this lady, or any of her sisters in India, is always exposed, without that appeal which other women possess to the divine rule of their religion, which forbids such treatment.

In other lands, and under the teachings and forms of a different civilization, the wrongs which women suffer at the hands of lordly and vicious men are the result of the current wickedness of those who oppress them; but in India the abject humility, subordination,