Page:Walter Matthew Gallichan - Women under Polygamy (1914).djvu/84

 The wave of feminine revolt is sweeping steadily eastwards. It has reached Turkey, and has spread to the farther East. In another chapter I shall present a very different point of view from those of certain of my Indian friends and correspondents.

For the present, we are considering the Hindu reverence for woman as the lover, the bride, the life-giver. She is more than this. There is a sacredness, something that arouses awe, in her body, and her physical functions. To show how deep and sincere is this mingled emotion of piety and sex-love, I cannot do better than quote some lines by the greatest living Indian poet, Rabindra Nath Tagore, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.

How exquisitely the writer expresses the holiness of love and parentage.