CHAPTER XXXIV
ORIENTAL NUPTIALS
A Parsi Wedding
The Parsi gentlemen are charming. The Parsi women are delicate in appearance, refined and womanly, and, I thought, rather stupid; but very possibly what I was rude enough to think stupidity was reserve. I found it quite impossible to get acquainted with them, or at least to pass beyond the barriers of slight acquaintance. I “made friends” with but one Parsi woman. She was dainty in all her ways, gracious and hospitable to a degree, an ideal housekeeper, from a Parsi point of view, a loved and loving wife, a devoted and happy mother; but she was rather uneducated, and had, I thought, no great mental capacity.
When we were first living in Bombay, I found the Parsi men rather difficult. My husband would tell me that this one was decidedly clever, and the other one highly educated; yet, if I entered the room where he was sitting with both of them, they invariably froze conversationally. One condoled with me about the weather, and the other asked me if I did not find the Bombay shops superior to those in Calcutta. I replied that I never went shopping, that if I really had to have anything, my nurse bought it for me. One of them laughed heartily and evidently thought that I was joking; the other cast down his eyes and looked embarrassed. He went home an hour later and told his wife that I was not quite right in my head, and that my husband had to carry about a nurse for me, who dressed me and undressed me, and that I was not allowed to go into a shop alone.
It was some weeks before I could make those two Parsi men—of whom we saw a great deal—understand that they could discuss in my presence anything of serious importance, not to mention the doings of the French Academy or the writings of Herbert Spencer, without being guilty of a rudeness analogous to that of speaking before me in a language with which I was unacquainted. We became good friends, and they were angels of patience in telling me all I longed to know about the history of their race, its manners and customs, and its belief. But I suspect that they would have liked me better had I thought—as did the wife of a prominent Parsi at Poona—that St. Petersburg was the capital of Italy! I believe that there are no men in the world more kind to their women than the Parsi men; but they do not regard those women as their intellectual fellows; nor do the women aspire to be so regarded. This simplifies the Parsi marriage question amazingly—simplifies it to the loss of the men and to the gain of the women.
The Parsis are in a transition state. The customs that they all rigidly observed fifty years ago are now observed by less than half their number, and rarely with entire rigidity. The Parsi wedding I saw a little over two years ago in Bombay was not the Parsi wedding of the last century; but it was picturesque in the extreme. It was un-European and merits description, I think; for, were I to return to Bombay in 1950, I should expect to find almost all the old Parsi customs quite discarded.
The father of the bridegroom came a few days before the marriage to invite us to the ceremony and to the feast, which was very polite of him, as invitations are usually given by priests, and only when an especial compliment is intended does the father of one of the contracting parties go in person to bid the guest. In this instance it was a love match, which always makes it a bit more interesting to a woman; and the bride was exquisitely pretty, which always makes it more interesting to a man. Both bride and bridegroom belonged to very wealthy and prominent Parsi families. All the Bombay Parsi élite were there.
Child marriages are still, I believe, a part of the Parsi code, but not of the Parsi custom. Children are still betrothed very young, but not often. The bridegroom of whom I am writing was about twenty-seven, and the bride looked about twenty.
At four in the afternoon, the bridegroom and his friends marched to the house of the bride. The men were all dressed in white, and very striking they looked. Almost every well-to-do (i.e. well-fed) Parsi man is handsome. A band of music was with the procession, and played unceasingly. Formerly the Parsi women formed a considerable part of every Parsi marriage procession; but on this occasion there were only men. The bridegroom’s mother had preceded him, inconspicuously, to the house of the bride, bearing with her the prescribed gift of a dress. At the end of the procession walked a score or more of coolies carrying on their heads shallow baskets, heaped with cocoanuts. At every turn of the street, a cocoanut was waved about the bridegroom’s head, then broken and thrown away. Some time before the bride’s house was reached, her only sister met the procession, carrying three silver chattees. Into the upper one the bridegroom dropped a rupee. That was, I believe, symbolical of his determination never to fail to befriend his wife’s family. At the threshold of the house, an aunt of the bride threw rice and water and an uncooked egg beneath the feet of the bridegroom; then she welcomed him in; and he was careful to put his right foot in before his left.
We women—about two hundred Parsis and three Europeans—were waiting in a large, handsomely-furnished room. The bride’s father had spent some time in France when a young man, and Louis XV. cabinets were crowded between black, carved Indian tables, and creamy Chinese ivories. The Parsi ladies sat on small silk carpets that had been placed for them on the floor. I and my two compatriots (whom I did not know) sat in solemn elegance upon a solitary satin sofa. The men all sat about the walls, on low, narrow, backless benches, and I noticed that the European men, of whom there were about twenty, looked neither graceful nor comfortable. The father of the bride and the father of the groom sat down side by side, and the chief priest blessed them. In the centre of the room a low platform of stone had been built; this is called the “wedding booth.” Sometimes a complete booth is erected and richly decorated, but not invariably. The stone foundation, however, must be laid. It denotes purity and chastity. Chastity in the best and broadest sense is the beginning and end of the Parsi religion. Two chairs were placed, side by side, upon the stone foundation. Then the bride came in with her mother.
I caught my breath, she was so pretty! Her skin was fairer than mine, but with a lovely olive tinge in it. Her scarlet lips were trembling with a shy, half smile. She was dressed, or rather wrapped, in a pale-blue satin sari; it was edged with a delicate embroidery of pink and gold. Her little hands were heavy with gems. Her slender throat was hidden by a string of big pearls, and a string of bigger diamonds. There were diamonds at her girdle, and diamonds caught here and there her satin draperies. As she moved slowly forward, her graceful garment half hid, half revealed, the delicate outlines of her svelte figure. She lifted her big brown eyes for a half instant to the face of the man who was waiting for her, and I thought of Byron’s Zadie.
The contracting couple were seated upon the chairs that were on the stone. They were facing each other. Then the ceremony proper began. A priest tied their right hands together with a soft, silken, bright-red thread. Two younger priests stepped forward, carrying a large piece of yellow cloth. This they held between the bride and bridegroom. The chief priest stood near them, holding in one hand a lit censer and in the other a dish of benjamin. Another priest gave a handful of rice to both the bridegroom and his bride. The chief priest began a long prayer. At a certain word, for which the young couple listened intently, he threw the incense into the fire. At that moment the couple threw their handfuls of rice each into the other’s face. Then their position was changed, and they were placed side by side. Two of the priests stood before them, and two witnesses stood beside them, holding brass plates heaped with rice. The priests began the marriage blessing. This they recited in Zend and Sanscrit, and at every sentence they pelted the couple with rice.
Then the priest put the two questions, “Have you espoused her?” and “Have you espoused him?” He was answered, “Yes, I have espoused her,” and “Yes, I have espoused him.” The questions and the answers were in Persian, of which, I believe, the contracting parties, the priests, and the guests, were equally ignorant.
During the long prayers I looked at the assembled company as often as I could tear my eyes from the bride’s pretty, flushing face. I saw a royal banquet once. It was in Munich, in celebration of the marriage of the King’s brother with the Emperor of Austria’s daughter. I have always remembered it as a gigantic display of diamonds. But it was insignificant beside the display of diamonds at that Parsi wedding. Many of the Parsis in Bombay are very rich. All the Parsis are extravagantly fond of gems; and the Parsi men dearly delight in decking their women to the utmost. A European man, who was more bored than interested with the strange marriage service, told me afterwards that he had tried to compute how many lakhs of rupees were represented there by diamonds,—“But I had to give it up after half an hour,” he said; “the things flashed and danced so, that they made my head ache.” All the women were exquisitely dressed. The Parsis have an almost French abundance of good taste. Indeed they are like the French in many ways. The bride’s mother wore more diamonds than any lady present, excepting only the bridegroom’s mother. It was hard to say which of those two was the most bejewelled, and harder still to understand how they held their heads up, and moved their arms.
After the marriage benediction there were other ceremonies, more fanciful and less interesting. The husband and wife (which they now were) ate out of one dish, and each found in it a ring.
The marriage feast followed in an adjacent room. This was a very European innovation. Among strictly conservative Parsis the marriage feasts are all held at the house of the bridegroom’s father.
Upon the floor of the “dining-room” were laid long silken carpets. They were about a foot and a half wide, and about fifty feet long. Upon them the Parsi guests seated themselves. We Europeans were shown to an elaborately-laid table, in an adjacent room. I asked permission to sit and eat with the Parsis. They made me very welcome, and I ate all sorts of good things, with my fingers. I do not know whether my intrusion was felt a pollution, as it would have been at an orthodox Hindoo feast. My hosts (which they all seemed to feel themselves) were too well bred to let me feel that I was de trop, and I believe they were far too sensible to resent my respectful curiosity. Indeed the presence of the Parsi ladies was so very improper that they could well afford to wink at the greater enormity of eating with one European woman.
When we were living at Khandalah our nearest neighbours were Parsis. I never grew to know them well. We had very little in common, the graceful feminine women and I, but my bairns became very much at home in their bungalow. My boy used to come home with bulging pockets, and I very often took a surreptitious nibble of the Parsi sweetmeats that had been given him—they were so very good. But I had tasted nothing in Khandalah so nice as many of the dishes given me at this Parsi wedding in Bombay. I had a plantain leaf for a plate, and, as I have said, my fingers for forks. The other Europeans laughed at me, and told me they had oysters and champagne and a score of other conventional dainties at their nicely damasked table. I returned their laugh with something very like a sneer. I had eaten of a hundred unknown delicacies, and I could have oysters and champagne galore any time at the hotel.
Except in the matter of hats and caps, many Parsi men, on ordinary occasions, dress quite like Europeans; but I have never seen a Parsi woman in European dress. In this respect, at least, they are wiser than the Japanese women, whom they are like in being fragile, pretty, and dainty.
Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji said, in a paper read before the Liverpool Philomathic Society in 1861: “There is neither bigamy nor polygamy amongst the Parsis. They are simple monogamists.” When Mr. Naoroji wrote that, it was undoubtedly true. In the strict, narrow sense it is true now, but in the broadest and most beautiful sense, it is, I think, no longer wholly true. Chastity is the great law of Parsi life, and the Parsi women have, I believe, been guarded, not only from any possible infringement of that law, but even from the knowledge that the law is ever broken. But I am disinclined to believe that the Parsi men obey the chief command of their ancestral faith as staunchly as they used to do. Perhaps, alas, when the Parsi women have learned to mingle as freely with the Europeans, and to adopt their ways as fully as the Parsi men do now, they may gain the sad knowledge that there is one law for man and another for woman—that right is of one sex and wrong of another.
Periodically there is an Occidental agitation for the advancement and the emancipation of the women of the Orient. As far as that agitation aims at giving the women of the East medical succour in their hours of pain, as far as it seeks to teach them the best possibilities and the best care of their own bodies and of their children’s, it has my warmest sympathy; but when it attempts their disturbance, mental and moral, I deplore it. Intellectuality, education, enfranchisement, are all very fine, but happiness is far finer. Over-educate, abnormally develop woman’s intellect, create in her a longing for freedom which will gall her, and you destroy half her happiness. We are very learned, you and I who live in the West; we understand quadratic equations and we read Greek; we are man’s equal, or think we are. Let us be satisfied with our own big mental attainments, and let us leave the Marthas of the East their placid content, their sweet, unsophisticated happiness.