Part 184 (1/2)
A brocaded Italian Count had an amour with Lady Ligonier. Every body bewailed the fate of her unhappy husband; but every body did not know that his wretchedness was alleviated in the arms of a courtezan. Every body did not know, that these two right honourable cheats made an even bargain.
A clown solicits an attorney to prosecute an obsolete claim against neighbour Clodpole; the limb of the law knows that the claim of his client is as lame, as _his_ hobbling justice, he tells him nevertheless that he will _recover_, and antic.i.p.ates a heavy bill of cost. He does his dirty work, and the plaintiff is nonsuited, who emigrates to _Genesee_, and forgets to pay the advocate his fees. Don't fret, Mr.
Greenbag, keep yourself cool, you have another cause to argue, another false t.i.tle to set up which will demand the calmness and intrepidity of falsehood. Don't d.a.m.n your absconded client. The balance of deception was in equilibrio between you. _Two cheats make an even bargain._
A spruce stripling of sixteen, courts an old beldame of sixty. He thinks her rich, and hopes that her gold will enable him to buy at the female flesh market of beauty a more _juicy rib_. She, relying on the bridegroom's vigour, dreams of the _comforts_ of matrimony, and forthwith p.r.o.nounces--I obey, before the Parson. But alas! the bride's purse is _coinless_, and the fond bridegroom chooses to _consummate_ elsewhere. I advise the husband when in consequence of his wife's fortune, he keeps a coach, to choose for a motto, two cheats make an even bargain.
Last week, I wrote at length, and like Dogberry, in Shakespeare, bestowed all my tediousness upon my readers. I will make atonement. The PROMPTER is laconic, and Adage hates prolixity.
SINGULAR CUSTOMS OF THE HINDOOS.
Although the Hindoos are naturally the most inoffensive of all mortals, yet does their humanity consist more in abstaining from injurious, than in the performance of beneficent actions. There is a wonderful mildness in their manners, and also in their laws, which are influenced by their manners; by which the murder of an human creature, and of a cow, are the only crimes that are punished by death. Yet with all this gentleness of disposition, they are inferior to the boisterous Europeans, with all their vices, in the virtues of compa.s.sion and generosity. They are wanting in that tenderness which is the most amiable part of our nature.
They are less affected by the distresses and dangers, and even the accidental deaths of one another, than any nation I know in the old or new world. Yet they love to excess: a proof, either of the inconstancy of the human character; or that the amorous pa.s.sion is not derived from the n.o.blest part of our nature.
This insensibility of the Hindoos to the distresses and dangers of their fellow-creatures, appears to me a wonderful phenomenon. Perhaps that despotism which has long been exercised under the Mogul tyranny, by familiarising the mind to scenes of death, has blunted a sense of its terrors. Perhaps those ideas of predestination and irresistible fate, which prevail in Asia, and in all despotic governments, prepares the mind for an acquiescence in all events. An English gentleman was standing by a native of Hindostan when an enormous and fierce tiger leaped from a thicket, and carried off a screaming boy, the son of one of his neighbours. The Englishman expressed symptoms of the most extreme horror, while the Hindoo remained unmoved. ”What,” said the former, ”are you unaffected by so dreadful a scene?”--”The great G.o.d,” said the other, ”would have it so.”--Whatever may be the cause, it is certain, that death is regarded with less horror in India than in any other country in the world. The origin and the end of all things, say the philosophers of India of the present time, is a vacuum. A state of repose is the state of greatest perfection: and this is the state after which a wise man aspires. It is better, say the Hindoos, to sit than to walk, and to sleep than to wake; but death is the best of all.
According to the Gentoo laws, criminals sentenced to death are not to be strangled, suffocated, or poisoned, but to be cut off by the sword; because, without an effusion of blood, malefactors are supposed to die with all their sins about them; but the shedding of their blood, it is thought, expiates their crimes. The unjust punishment of Nundcomar, who was hanged on a gibbet against the laws of his country, and even by an _ex post facto_ English law, was aggravated by that circ.u.mstance of horror, that he died without an effusion of blood.
The Hindoos are well acquainted with the nature of simples, and apply them judiciously either in performing cures which require not amputation, or in effecting death by quick or slow poisons. They have been for ages in the practice of inoculating for the small-pox; on which occasion, as well as on others, they have recourse to the favourable mediation of charms, or spells.
Although the practice of Hindoo women burning themselves on the funeral piles of their husbands, and embracing in the mean time their dead bodies in their arms, be not so general now as it has formerly been, yet does it still prevail among some of the wives of men of high caste or condition: and although this effort of frantic love, courage, and ambition, be deemed an aggrandizement of the family and relations of both husband and wife, but especially of the wife's, yet their friends and relations constantly endeavour to dissuade the women who declare their resolutions of burning, from carrying them into execution. Even the Brahmins do not encourage this practice.
The causes which inspire Hindoo women with this desperate resolution, are, I imagine, the following:
In the first place; as the wife has, from her earliest infancy, been betrothed in marriage to her husband, and from that time has never been permitted to see another man; as she is instructed to believe that he is perfectly accomplished, and taught to respect and honour him; as, after consummation, she is shut up from the company, conversation, and even the sight of other men, with still greater care, if possible, than before, being now debarred from seeing even the father or elder brother of her husband, the bonds of her affection must needs be inconceivably strong and indissoluble. To an European lady the zenana naturally appears in the light of an horrible prison: but the daughters of Asia never consider confinement to the zenana as any hards.h.i.+p. They consider it as a condition of their existence, and they enjoy all the happiness of which they have any conception; their whole desires being concentered and fixed on their husband, their food, jewels, and female attendants.
In the second place, if the wife survive her husband, she cannot marry again, and is treated as an inferior person, and an outcast from her family. Nay, she is obliged, in her mournful and hopeless widowhood, to perform all the offices of a menial servant.
In the third place, she is flattered with the idea of having immortalized her name, and aggrandized her children, and her own and husbands families.
Lastly, she is rendered insensible to the pains and horrors of what she is to suffer, by those intoxicating perfumes and mixtures which are administered to her after she has declared her final and unalterable resolution--I say her final resolution, because one or two declarations, of an intention to die with her husband, is not sufficient.
The strength of her resolution undergoes a probation. There is a certain time prescribed by the Gentoo law, during which her family and friends exert their utmost influence in order to dissuade her from burning; and if she persist in her resolution to the end of that period, it is not lawful to use any more persuasions with her, to abandon it. If she should alter her purpose after that period, she would be punished with the loss of all castes, and live in a state of the most complete misery and contempt. Nay, if an European or Christian does but touch her very garment with his finger, when she is going to the pile, an immediate stop is put to the ceremony, she is forced to live an outcast from her family, and from the Gentoo religion.
You will doubtless, my friend, have curiosity to know, in what manner, after all their stimulatives to perseverance, the tender s.e.x, among a soft and effeminate people, sustains the near approach, of a scene so full of awe and horror. Amidst her weeping relations and friends, the voluntary victim to love and honor alone appears serene and undaunted.
A gentle smile is diffused over her countenance: she walks upright, with an easy but firm step; talks to those around her of the virtues of the deceased, and of the joy with which she will be transported when her shade shall meet with his; and encourages her sorrowful attendants to bear with fort.i.tude the sight of those momentary sufferings which she herself is going to feel.--Having ascended the funeral pile, she lays herself down by the body of her husband, which she fervently embraces.
A dose of narcotic mixtures is then administered for the last time; and instantly the person, whose office it is, sets fire to the pile.
Thus the most determined resolution of which we can form any conception, is found in the weaker s.e.x, and in the soft climes of Asia. It is to the honour of that s.e.x and those climes, that the greatest courage they exhibit, is the effect, not of the furious impulses of rage and revenge, but conscious dignity and love.
It might naturally be imagined by an European, that the several wives of one man (for polygamy is general throughout all Asia) would regard one another with mutual jealousy and aversion: and that they in reality do, has been a.s.serted by writers of high reputation. The fact however is quite otherwise: they visit one another with great friends.h.i.+p and cordiality; and if they are of the same caste, will occasionally eat together.--The husband is restrained from eating with his wives, either by a regard to custom; or, as I have been informed by some of the Gentoos themselves, by a precept of their religion.