Part 91 (1/2)
[257] Hall, _Narrat. of Second Arctic Exp._, 102; Cranz, I, 207-12 (German ed.); Letourneau, _E.d.M._, 72.
[258] Among the Nagas, we read in Dalton (43), ”maidens are prized for their physical strength more than for their beauty and family;” and the reason is not far to seek. ”The women have to work incessantly, while the men bask in the sun.”
[259] Shortt in _Trans. Ethnol. Soc_., _N.S._, VII., 464.
[260] For our purposes it is needless to continue this list; but I may add that of the very few tribes Westermarck ventured to claim specifically for his side, three at any rate--the Miris, Todas, and Kols (Mundas) do not belong there. The state of mind prevalent among the Miris is indicated by Dalton's observation (33) that ”two brothers will unite and from the proceeds of their joint labor buy a wife between them.” In regard to the Todas, Westermarck apparently forgot what he himself had written about them on a previous page (53), after Shortt:
”When a man marries a girl, she becomes the wife of his brothers as they successively reach manhood, and they become the husbands of all her sisters, when they are old enough to marry.”
To speak of ”liberty of choice” in such cases, or of the marriage being only ”ostensibly” arranged by the parents, is nonsense. As for the Kols, what Dalton says about the Mundas (194) not only indicates that parental interference is more than ”ostensible,” but makes clear that what these girls enjoy is not free choice but what is euphemistically called ”free love,” before marriage:
”Among Mundas having any pretensions to respectability the young people are not allowed to arrange these affairs [matrimonial] for themselves. Their parents settle it all for them, French fas.h.i.+on, and after the liberty they have enjoyed, and the liaisons they are sure to have made, this interference on the part of the old folk must be very aggravating to the young ones.”
If the dissolute or imbecile advocates of ”free love” had their way, we should sink to the level of these wild tribes of India; but there is no danger of our losing again the large ”tracts of mind, and thought, and feeling” we have acquired since our ancestors, who came from India, were in such a degraded state as these neighbors of theirs.
[261] Statistics have shown that twenty-eight per cent of the females were married before their fourth year. The ancient _Sutras_ ordained the age of six to seven the best for girls to marry, and declared that a father who waits till his daughter is twelve years old must go to h.e.l.l. The evils are aggravated by the fact noted by Dr. Ryder (who gives many pathetic details) that a Hindoo girl of ten often appears like an European child of six, owing to the weak physique inherited from these girl mothers. Yet Mrs. Mansell relates:
”Many pitiable child-wives have said to me, 'Oh, Doctor mem Sahib, I implore you, do give me medicine that I may become a mother.' I have looked at their innocent faces and tender bodies, and asked, 'Why?' The reply has invariably been, 'My husband will discard me if I do not bear a child.'”
[262] _Journal of Nat. Indian a.s.soc._, 1881, 543-49.
[263] The roots of this superst.i.tion, which has created such unspeakable misery in India, go back to the oldest times of which there are records. The Vedas say, ”Endless are the worlds for those men who have sons; but there is no place for those who have no male offspring.”
[264] Dr. S. Armstrong-Hopkins writes in her recent volume _Within the Purdah_ (51-52): ”A few years ago the English Government pa.s.sed a law to the effect that no bride should go to the house of her mother-in-law before she arrived at the age of twelve years. I am witness, however, as is every practising physician in India, that this law is utterly ignored.... Often and often have I treated little women patients of five, six, seven, eight, nine years, who were at that time living with their husbands.”
[265] If Darwin had dwelt on such facts in his _Descent of Man_, and contrasted man's vileness with the devotion, sympathy, and self-sacrifice shown by birds and other animals, he would have aroused less indignation among his ignorant contemporaries. In these respects it was the animals who had cause to resent his theory.
[266] Dr. Ryder says in her pathetic book, _Little Wives of India_: ”A man may be a vile and loathsome creature; he may be blind, a lunatic, an idiot, a leper, or diseased in any form; he may be fifty, sixty, or seventy years old, and may be married to a child of five or ten, who positively loathes his presence; but if he claims her she must go.
There is no other form of slavery equal to it on the face of the earth.”
[267] The London _Times_ of November 11, 1889, had the following in its column about India:
”Two shocking cases of wife killing lately came before the courts, in both cases the result of child marriage.
In one a child aged ten was strangled by her husband.
In the second case a child of tender years was ripped open with a wooden peg. Brutal s.e.xual exasperation was the sole apparent reason in both instances. Compared with the terrible evils of child marriage, widow cremation is of infinitely inferior magnitude.”
[268] Manu's remark that ”where women are honored there the G.o.ds are pleased” is one of those expressions of unconscious humor which naturally escaped him, but should not have escaped European sociologists. What he understands by ”honoring women” may be gathered from many maxims in his volume like the following (the references being to the pages of Burnell and Hopkins's version):
”This is the nature of women, to seduce men here” (40);
”One should not be seated in a secluded place with a mother, sister, or daughter; the powerful host of the senses compels even a wise man” (41).
”No act is to be done according to (her) own will by a young girl, a young woman, or even by an old woman, though in (their own) houses.”
”In her childhood (a girl) should be under the will of her father; in (her) youth, of (her) husband; her husband being dead, of her sons; a woman should never enjoy her own will” (130).
”Though of bad conduct or debauched, or even devoid of good qualities, a husband must always be wors.h.i.+pped like a G.o.d by a good wife.”
”For women there is no separate sacrifice, nor vow, nor even fast; if a woman obeys her husband, by that she is exalted in heaven” (131).