Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/513

Rh when he dies let her never neglect him. Nor is a second husband allowed in any part of this code to a virtuous woman.”—[Institutes, secs. 151, 162, 165.

Let me remind the reader that these rules refer not only to the aged widows, whose long life-relation to their husbands might give some color to these stern demands, but as fully place the obligation upon the virgin widows who never knew the husband’s care or love. The law is explicit here. Two authorities give the rule: “It is said to be unlawful for any to touch jewelless women, whose eyes are like the dewy cavi ﬂower, being deprived of their beloved husband, like a body deprived of the spirit.” “Nor must a damsel once given away in marriage be given a second time.”

Old or young, faded or lovely, it is all one dull uniformity of woe. The number of widows is, necessarily, larger in India than in any other land on earth.

Can Christian ladies in this happy land wonder that these villainous laws have brought forth their fruits of death; that women in India, being thus degraded by system and rule, have dragged the nation down into their own ruin, or that their sisters there have become demented and broken-hearted, so that they have so long and often preferred immolation to the sorrowful lot of a Hindoo widow? Alas! tens of thousands of them, after such married lives as theirs, ignorant, impulsive, and indolent, when the terrible alternative has stared them in the face, have either committed suicide, or else, bidding a long farewell to peace and virtue, have buried themselves for life in the hells which abound in every Bazaar in India!

The death and funeral of the Hindoo wife is a very sad topic. Those ﬁnal scenes are complete contrasts to what such words express under Christianity. In our civilization, with all its honor, and love, and blessing for woman, as wife and mother, what tender thoughts and holy memories surround a wife’s or a mother’s grave! It is far different in the Land of the Veda.

The Hindoo wife and mother falls sick. Her case grows worse and the fear fastens upon her heart that she is dying. She must