Page:The World's Parliament of Religions Vol 1.djvu/350

322 period of pupilage ends aiter nine years at the shortest, and thirty-six years at the longest period, The boy then retarns home, after duly rewarding his teacher, and finds out some suitable girl for his wife. This return in itself makes up the fifteenth Samskâra. The last, but not the least, is vivâha, matrimony. The Sutras and Smrtis are most clear on the injunctions about the health, learning, competency, family connections, beauty, and above all, personal liking of the principal parties to a marriage. Marriages between children of the same blood or family are prohibited. As to age, the books are very clear in ordaining that there must be a distance of at least ten years between the respective age of wife and husband, and that the girl may be married at any age before attaining puberty, preferably at 10 or 11, though she may he affianced at about 8 or 9. Be it remembered that marriage and consummation of marriage are two different things in India, as a consideration of this Samskâra in connection with the first of the nine enumerated at the beginning of this group will amply show. Several kinds of marriage are enumerated, and among the eight generally given we find marriage by courting as well, the marriage ceremony is performed in the presence of priests, and gods represented by fire on the altar, and the tie of love is sanctified by Vedic mantras, repetition of which forms indeed an indispensable part of every rite and ceremony. The pair exchange vows of fidelity and indissoluble love, and bind themselves never to separate, even after death, The wife is supposed henceforth to be as much dependent on her husband as he on her; for as the wife has the complete fulfilment of love as her principal duty, the husband has in return the entire maintenance of the wife, temporally and spiritually, as his principal duty. When the love thus fostered has sufficiently educated the man into entire forgetfulness of self, he may retire, either alone or with his wife, into some secluded forest and prepare himself for the last period of life—complete renunciation, i.e., renunciation of all individual attachment, of personal likes and dislikes, and realization of the all in the eternal self-sacrifice of universal love. It goes without saying that widow re-marriage as such is unknown in this system of life; and the liberty of woman is more a sentiment than something practically wanting in this careful arrangement. Woman, as woman, has her place in nature quite as much as man has as man, and if there is nothing to hamper the one or the other in the discharge of his or her functions as marked out by nature, liberty beyond this limit means disorder, and irresponsible freedom. And indeed nature never meant her living embodiment of love—woman—to be degraded to a footing of equality with her partner, to fight the, hard struggle for existence, or to allow love's pure stream to be defiled by being led into channels other than those marked, out for if. This, in substance, is the spirit of the ancient Sâstras,, when they limit the sphere of woman’s action to the house, and the flow of her heart to one and one channel alone.

But this is an unnecessary digression into which I am tempted by the