"A rich husband (merchant caste) brought his wife to me for treatment. He said she was sixteen, and they had been married eight years. 'She was good wife, do everything he want, wait on him and eight brothers, carry water up three flights of stairs on her head; now, what will you cure her for? She suffer much. I not pay too much money. When it cost too much I let her die. I don't care. I got plenty wives. When you cure her for ten shilling I get her done, but I not pay more.' I explained to him that her medicines would cost more than that amount, and he left, saying, 'I don't care. Let her die. I can have plenty wives. I like better a new wife.'"[267]

Though the lawgiver Manu wrote "where women are honored there the G.o.ds are pleased," he was one of the hundreds of Sanscrit writers, who, as Ramabai Sarasvati relates, "have done their best to make woman a hateful being in the world's eye." Manu speaks of their "natural heartlessness," their "impure desires, wrath, dishonesty, malice, and bad conduct." Though mothers are more honored than other women, yet even they are declared to be "as impure as falsehood itself."

"I have never read any sacred book in Sanscrit literature without meeting this kind of hateful sentiment about women.... Profane literature is by no means less severe or more respectful toward women."

The wife is the husband's property and cla.s.sed by Manu with "cows, mares, female camels, slave girls, buffalo cows, she goats, and ewes."

A man may abandon his wife if he finds her blemished or diseased, while she must not even show disrespect to a husband who is diseased, addicted to evil pa.s.sions, or a drunkard. If she does she shall be deserted for three months and deprived of her ornaments and furniture.[268] Even British rule has not been able to improve the condition of woman, for the British Government is bound by treaties not to interfere with social and religious customs; hence many pathetic cases are witnessed in the courts of unwilling girls handed over, in accordance with national custom, to the loathed husbands selected for them. "The G.o.ds and justice always favor the men." "Many women put an end to their earthly sufferings by committing suicide."

WIDOWS AND THEIR TORMENTORS

If anything can cast a ray of comfort into the wretched life of a Hindoo maiden or wife it is the thought that, after all, she is much better off than if she were a widow--though, to be sure, she runs every risk of becoming one ere she is old enough to be considered marriageable in any country where women are regarded as human beings.

In considering the treatment of Hindoo widows we reach the climax of inhuman cruelty--a cruelty far exceeding that practised by American Indians toward female prisoners, because more prolonged and involving mental as well as physical agonies.

In 1881 there were in British India alone 20,930,000 widows, 669,000 of whom were under nineteen, and 78,976 _under nine_ years of age.[269] Now a widow's life is naturally apt to be one of hardship because she has lost her protector and bread-winner; but in India the tragedy of her fate is deepened a thousandfold by the diabolical ill-treatment of which she is made the innocent victim. A widow who has borne sons or who is aged is somewhat less despised than the child widow; on her falls the worst abuse and hatred of the community, though she be as innocent of any crime as an angel. In the eyes of a Hindoo the mere fact of being a widow is a crime--the crime of surviving her husband, though he may have been seventy and the wife seven.

All women love their soft glossy hair; and a Hindoo woman, says Ramabai Sarasvati (82), "thinks it worse than death to lose her hair"; yet "among the Brahmans of Deccan the heads of all widows must be shaved regularly every fortnight." "Shaved head" is a term of derision everywhere applied to the widows. All their ornaments are taken from them and they are excluded from every ceremony of joy. The name "rand"

given to a widow "is the same that is borne by a Nautch girl or a harlot." One poor woman wrote to a missionary:

"O great Lord, our name is written with drunkards, with lunatics, with imbeciles, with the very animals; as they are not responsible, we are not. Criminals confined in jails for life are happier than we."

Another of these widows wrote:[270] "While our husbands live we are their slaves, when they die we are still worse off." The husband's funeral, she says, may last all day in a broiling sun, and while the others are refreshed, she alone is denied food and water. After returning she is reviled by her own relatives. Her mother says: "Unhappy creature! I can't bear the thought of anyone so vile. I wish she had never been born." Her mother-in-law says: "The horned viper!

She has bitten my son and killed him, and now he is dead, and she, useless creature, is left behind." It is impossible for her to escape this fate by marrying again. The bare mention of remarriage by a widow, though she be only eight or nine years old, would be regarded, says Dubois (I., 191), "as the greatest of insults." Should she marry again "she would be hunted out of society, and no decent person would venture at any time to have the slightest intercourse with her."

Attempts have been made in recent times by liberal-minded men to marry widows; but they were subjected to so much odium and persecution therefor that they were driven to suicide.

When a widow dies her corpse is disposed of with hardly any ceremony.

Should a widow try to escape her fate the only alternatives are suicide or a life of shame. To a Hindoo widow, says Ramabai Sarasvati, death is "a thousand times more welcome than her miserable existence."

It is for this reason that the suttee or "voluntary" burning of widows on the husband's funeral pyre--the climax of inhuman atrocity--lost some of its horrors to the victims until the moment of agony arrived.

I have already (p. 317) refuted the absurd whim that this voluntary death of Hindoo widows was a proof of their conjugal devotion. It was proof, on the contrary, of the unutterably cruel selfishness of the male Hindoos, who actually forged a text to make the suttee seem a religious duty--a forgery which during two thousand years caused the death of countless innocent women. Best was told that the real cause of widow-burning was a desire on the part of the men to put an end to the frequent murders of husbands by their cruelly treated wives (Reich, _212_). However that may be, the suttee in all probability was due to the shrewd calculation that the fear of being burned alive, or being more despised and abused than the lowest outcasts, would make women more eager to follow obediently the code which makes of them abject slaves of their husbands, living only for them and never having a thought or a care for themselves.

HINDOO DEPRAVITY

Since, as Ward attests (116), the young widows "without exception, become abandoned women," it is obvious that one reason why the priests were so anxious to prevent them from marrying again was to insure an abundant supply of victims for their immoral purposes. The hypocritical Brahmans were not only themselves notorious libertines, but they shrewdly calculated that the simplest way to win the favor and secure control of the Indian populace was by pandering to their sensual appet.i.tes and supplying abundant opportunities and excuses for their gratification--making these opportunities, in fact, part and parcel of their religious ceremonies. Their temples and their sacred carts which traversed the streets were decorated with obscene pictures of a peculiarly disgusting kind,[271] which were freely exposed to the gaze of old and young of both s.e.xes; their temples were little more than nurseries for the rearing of bayaderes, a special cla.s.s of "sacred prost.i.tutes;" while scenes of promiscuous debauchery sometimes formed part of the religious ceremony, usually under some hypocritical pretext.

It would be unjust, however, to make the Brahman priests entirely responsible for Hindoo depravity. It has indeed been maintained that there was a time when the Hindoos were free from all the vices which now afflict them; but that is one of the silly myths of ignorant dreamers, on a level with the notion that savages were corrupted by whites. One of the oldest Hindoo doc.u.ments, the _Mahabharata_, gives us the native traditions concerning these "good old times" in two sentences:

"Though in their youthful innocence the women abandoned their husbands, they were guilty of no offence; for such was the rule in early times." "Just as cattle are situated, so are human beings, too, within their respective castes"

which suggests a state of promiscuity as decided as that which prevailed in Australia. Civilization did not teach the Hindoos love--for that comes last--but merely the refinements of l.u.s.t, such as even the Greeks and Romans hardly knew. Ovid's _Ars Amandi_ is a model of purity compared with the Hindoo "Art of Love," the _K[=a]mas[=u]tram_ (or _Kama Soutra_) of V[=a]tsy[=a]yana, which is nothing less than a handbook for libertines, of which it would be impossible even to print the table of contents. Whereas the translator of Ovid into a modern language need not omit more than a page of the text, the German translator of the _K[=a]mas[=u]tram_, Dr. Richard Schmidt, who did his work in behalf of the Kgl. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, felt it inc.u.mbent on him to turn more than fifty pages out of four hundred and seventy into Latin. Yet the author of this book, who lived about two thousand years ago, recommends that every one, including young girls, should study it. In India, as his French translator, Lamairesse, writes, "everything is done to awaken carnal desires even in young children of both s.e.xes." The natural result is that, as the same writer remarks (186):

"Les categories des femmes faciles sont si nombreuses qu'elles doivent comprendre presque toutes les personnes du s.e.xe. Aussi un ministre protestant ecrivait-il au milieu de notre siecle qu'il n'existait presque point de femmes vertueuses dans l'Inde."

The Rev. William Ward wrote (162) in 1824:

"It is a fact which greatly perplexes many of the well-informed Hindus, that notwithstanding the wives of Europeans are seen in so many mixed companies, they remain chaste; while their wives, though continually secluded, watched, and veiled, are so notoriously corrupt. I recollect the observation of a gentleman who had lived nearly twenty years in Bengal, whose opinions on such a subject demanded the highest regard, that the infidelity of the Hindu women was so great that he scarcely thought there was a single instance of a wife who had been always faithful to her husband."[272]

TEMPLE GIRLS

The Brahman priests, who certainly knew their people well, had so little faith in their virtue that they would not accept a girl to be brought up for temple service if she was over five years old. She had to be not only pure but physically flawless and sound in health. Yet her purity was not valued as a virtue, but as an article of commerce.

The Brahmans utilized the charms of these girls for the purpose of supporting the temples with their sinful lives, their gains being taken from them as "offerings to the G.o.ds." As soon as a girl was old enough she was put up at auction and sold to the highest bidder. If she was specially attractive the bids would sometimes reach fabulous sums, it being a point of honor and eager rivalry among Rajahs and other wealthy men, young and old, to become the possessors of bayadere debutantes. Temporarily only, of course, for these girls were never allowed to marry. While they were connected with the temple they could give themselves to anyone they chose, the only condition being that they must never refuse a Brahman (Jacolliot, 169-76). The bayaderes, says Dubois, call themselves Deva-dasi, servants or slaves of the G.o.ds, "but they are known to the public by the coa.r.s.er name of strumpets." They are, next to the sacrificers, the most important persons about the temples. While the poor widows who had been respectably married are deprived of all ornaments and joys of life, these wantons are decked with fine clothes, flowers, and jewelry; and gold is showered upon them. The bayaderes Vasantasena is described by the poet Cudraka as always wearing a hundred gold ornaments, living in her own palace, which has eight luxurious courts, and on one occasion refusing an unwelcome suitor though he sent 100,000 gold pieces.

Bayaderes are supposed to be originally descendants of the apsaras, or dancing girls of the G.o.d Indra, the Hindoo Jupiter. In reality they are recruited from various castes, some parents making it a point to offer their third daughter to the Brahmans. Bands of the bayaderes are engaged by the best families to provide dancing and music, especially at weddings. To have dealings with bayaderes is not only in good form, but is a meritorious thing, since it helps to support the temples. And yet, when one of these girls dies she is not cremated in the same place as other women, and her ashes are scattered to the winds. In some provinces of Bengal, Jacolliot says, she is only half burnt, and the body then thrown to the jackals and vultures.

The temple of Sunnat had as many as five hundred of these priestesses of Venus, and a Rajah has been known to entertain as many as two thousand of them. Bayaderes, or Nautch girls, as they are often called in a general way, are of many grades. The lowest go about the country in bands, while the highest may rise to the rank and dignity of an Aspasia. To the former cla.s.s belong those referred to by Lowrie (148)--a band of twenty girls, all unveiled and dressed in their richest finery, who wanted to dance for his party and were greatly disappointed when refused. "Most of them were very young--about ten or eleven years old." Their course is brief; they soon lose their charms, are discarded, and end their lives as beggars.

AN INDIAN ASPASIA

A famous representative of the superior cla.s.s of bayaderes is the heroine of King cudraka's drama just referred to--Vasantasena. She has ama.s.sed immense wealth--the description of her palace takes up several pages--and is one of the best known personages in town, yet that does not prevent her from being spoken of repeatedly as "a n.o.ble woman, the jewel of the city."[273] She is, indeed, represented as differing in her love from other bayaderes, and, as she herself remarks, "a bayaderes is not reprehensible in the eyes of the world if she gives her heart to a poor man." She sees the Brahman Tscharudatta in the temple garden of Kama, the G.o.d of love, and forthwith falls in love with him, as he does with her, though he is married. One afternoon she is accosted in the street by a relative of the king, who annoys her with his unwelcome attentions. She takes refuge in her lover's house and, on the pretext that she has been pursued on account of her ornaments, leaves her jewelry in his charge. The jewels are stolen during the night, and this mishap leads to a series of others which finally culminate in Tscharudatta being led out to execution for the alleged murder of Vasantasena. At the last moment Vasantasena, who had been strangled by the king's relative, but has been revived, appears on the scene, and her lover's life is saved, as well as his honor.

The royal author of this drama, who has been called the Shakspere of India, probably lived in one of the first centuries of the Christian era. His play may in a certain sense be regarded as a predecessor of _Manon Lescaut_ and _Camille_, inasmuch as an attempt is made in it to ascribe to the heroine a delicacy of feeling to which women of her cla.s.s are naturally strangers. She hesitates to make advances to Tscharudatta, and at first wonders whether it would be proper to remain in his house. See informs her pursuer that "love is won by n.o.ble character, not by importunate advances." Tscharudatta says of her: "There is a proverb that 'money makes love--the treasurer has the treasure,' But no! she certainly cannot be won with treasures." She is in fact represented throughout as being different from the typical bayaderes, who are thus described by one of the characters:

"For money they laugh or weep; they win a man's confidence but do not give him theirs. Therefore a respectable man ought to keep bayaderes like flowers of a cemetery, three steps away from him. It is also said: changeable like waves of the sea, like clouds in a sunset, glowing only a moment--so are women. As soon as they have plundered a man they throw him away like a dye-rag that has been squeezed dry. This saying, too, is pertinent: just as no lotos grows on a mountain top, no mule draws a horse's loud, no scattered barley grows up as rice; so no wanton ever becomes a respectable woman."

Vasantasena, however, does become a respectable woman. In the last scene the king confers on her a veil, whereby the stain on her birth and life is wiped away and she becomes Tscharudatta's legitimate second wife.

But how about the first wife? Her actions show how widely in India conjugal love may differ from what we know as such, by the absence of monopoly and jealousy. When she first hears of the theft of Vasantasena's jewels in her husband's house she is greatly distressed at the impending loss of his good name, but is not in the least disturbed by the discovery that she has a rival. On the contrary, she takes a string of pearls that remains from her dowry, and sends it to her husband to be given to Vasantasena as an equivalent for her lost jewels. Vasantasena, on her part, is equally free from jealousy.

Without knowing whence they came, she afterward sends the pearls to her lover's wife with these words addressed to her servants:

"Take these pearls and give them to my sister, Tscharudatta's wife, the honorable woman, and say to her: 'Conquered by Tscharudatta's excellence, I have become also your slave. Therefore use this string of pearls as a necklace.'"

The wife returned the pearls with the message:

"My master and husband has made you a present of these pearls. It would therefore be improper for me to accept them: my master and husband is my special jewel. This I beg you to consider."

And, in the final scenes, the wife shows her great love for her husband by hastening to get ready for the funeral pyre to be burnt alive with his corpse. And when, after expressing her joy at his rescue and kissing him, she turns and sees Vasantasena, she exclaims: "O this happiness! How do you do, my sister?" Vasantasena replies: "Now I am happy," and the two embrace!

The translator of cudraka's play notes in the preface that there is a curious lack of ardor in the expression of Tscharudatta's love for Vasantasena, and he navely--though quite in the Hindoo spirit--explains this as showing that this superior person (who is a model of altruistic self-sacrifice in every respect), "remains untouched by coa.r.s.e outbursts of sensual pa.s.sion." The only time he warms up is when he hears that the bayaderes prefers him to her wealthy persecutor; he then exclaims, "Oh, how this girl deserves to be worshipped like a G.o.ddess." Vasantasena is much the more ardent of the two. It is she who goes forth to seek him, repeatedly, dressed in purple and pearls, as custom prescribes to a girl who goes to meet her lover. It is she who exclaims: "The clouds may rain, thunder, or send forth lightning: women who go to meet their lovers heed neither heat nor cold." And again: "may the clouds tower on high, may night come on, may the rain fall in torrents, I heed them not. Alas, my heart looks only toward the lover." It is she who is so absent-minded, thinking of him, that her maid suspects her pa.s.sion; she who, when a royal suitor is suggested to her, exclaims, "'Tis love I crave to bestow, not homage."

SYMPTOMS OF FEMININE LOVE

This portrayal of the girl as the chief lover is quite the custom in Hindoo literature, and doubtless mirrors life as it was and is. Like a dog that fawns on an indifferent or cruel master, these women of India were sometimes attached to their selfish lovers and husbands. They had been trained from their childhood to be sympathetic, altruistic, devoted, self-sacrificing, and were thus much better prepared than the men for the germs of amorous sentiment, which can grow only in such a soil of self-denial. Hence it is that Hindoo love-poems are usually of the feminine gender. This is notably the case with the _Saptacatakam_ of Hala, an anthology of seven hundred Prakrit verses made from a countless number of love-poems that are intended to be sung--"songs,"

says Albrecht Weber, "such as the girls of India, especially perhaps the bayaderes or temple girls may have been in the habit of singing."[274] Some of these indicate a strong individual preference and monopoly of attachment:

No. 40: "Her heart is dear to her as being your abode, her eyes because she saw you with them, her body because it has become thin owing to your absence."

No. 43: "The burning (grief) of separation is (said to be) made more endurable by hope. But, mother, if my beloved is away from me even in the same village, it is worse than death to me."

No. 57: "Heedless of the other youths, she roams about, transgressing the rules of propriety, casting her glances in (all) directions of the world for your sake, O child."

No. 92: "That momentary glimpse of him whom, oh, my aunt, I constantly long to see, has (touched) quenched my thirst (as little) as a drink taken in a dream."

No. 185: "She has not sent me. You have no relations with her. What concern of ours is it therefore? Well, she dies in her separation from you."

No. 202: "No matter how often I repeat to my mistress the message you confided to me, she replies 'I did not hear' (what you said), and thus makes me repeat it a hundred times."