Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/496

486 When I sit down at a table in this land, spread with Heaven's bounty for the family and friends, and look at the Christian woman who so sweetly presides at the board, and whose blessed presence sheds such light and gladness on the scene, I often sigh to think that no such sight as this is enjoyed in India, for that land is cursed by the iron rule of a system which denies to her the joys and charities of social life. No lady in India sits at the head of her own table; no stranger can share her presence in hospitality; her healing word or hand cannot be extended to the sick or to the whole. Woman's gentle, blessed ministries have no exercise in India. Her services are all selfishly reserved for him whom now she is taught to regard as lord and master, and on whom she is henceforth to wait in a state of abject submission and obedience that has no parallel in any other system in this world.

My lady readers will bear in mind that these conditions are all realized within the four walls of the “compound” which inclose the home of the Hindoo lady. That compound is the woman's world in India. In it she lives, and seldom leaves it till she is carried out a corpse. Ever while she inhabits it, she has “jealousy for her jailer, and suspicion as her spy;” and fain would her husband draw all these bonds tighter when he is obliged to trust her in his absence. Thus saith the Shaster: “If a man goes on a journey, his wife shall not divert herself by play, nor shall see any public show, nor shall laugh, nor shall dress herself in jewels or fine clothes, nor hear music, nor shall sit at the window, nor shall behold any thing choice and rare, but shall fasten well the house door, and remain private, and shall not eat any dainty food, and shall not blacken her eyes with powder, and shall not view her face in a mirror; she shall never amuse herself in any such agreeable employment during the absence of her husband.”

Was there any insult ever offered to a lady's nature equal to that which this law has laid down, when it enjoins the Brahmin to suspend his reading of the Veda to his disciples should a woman happen to come in sight while he was so employed, and directs him not to resume the utterance of the holy texts until she has