Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/508

498 jewelry. From a photograph, which has been engraved with equal fidelity, I now present a picture of a Hindoo widow as she appears in her weeds, sitting upon the ground in her sorrow. Her aspect and her attire show at first sight, even to a stranger, the agony of her condition, which will be better understood when the rules of her now hopeless existence are stated. In the forms of their exclamations, when they first realize that they are widowed, there are terribly reflective phrases which imply that, for aught they know, they may be responsible for their husband's death; that not misery alone, but guilt also may fasten upon their wretched hearts. This arises from the fear that in the responsibilities of their caste duties, in preparing food, etc., they may have, even unwittingly, violated some rule of the Shaster, and that the gods have visited the violation with their vengeance in the sickness and death of the husband. The terrific fear thus seizes on the lacerated heart that they may be guilty of the death which they mourn! Her own children and friends, she justly fears, are entertaining similar thoughts concerning her, and this dreadful weight is enough to sink her to despair.

The day she becomes a widow, the lady in India falls to a lot little less terrible than death itself. All her ornaments and beautiful clothing—on which her poor, uninstructed mind has doted—are taken from her, so that “jewelless woman” is the well-understood designation for a widow. She is henceforth to wear the dun-colored robe in which the engraving represents her, on which there must be no seam, no fringe, no figure. Her Tali—the equivalent of the marriage ring in England—which her husband tied round her neck when he married her, is removed. From her forehead the bright vermilion mark is wiped away. Her raven locks are ruthlessly cut off. The terrible indignity is perpetual, for the head is henceforth shaven every ten days. The terrors of the “God of Hell,” breaking forth against the departed husband, are employed to make her endure the degradation, for, says the Casi-Candam, “If matrons who have put off glittering ornaments of gold still wreath their hair in unshortened locks, the