Page:Woman in India.djvu/43

Rh youth of the married couples, or to their fertility, so much as to the great prevalence of marriage. ... This rate amounts to between forty-four and fifty per mille, and may be attributed to the encouragement given to marriage first by the religious idea that a son is necessary to the spiritual welfare of the deceased after death, and still more by the fact that in a



society organized as is that of India, a wife so far from being an additional burden on the resources of the household, directly or indirectly adds to them.” It may be remembered, too, that a very appreciable ratio of women of the child-bearing age, among the middle and upper classes, as widows, are not c