“Happy shall he be whose choice is approved by all the good.
“It is ordained that a devotee shall choose a wife from his own class.
“The Brahman who marries a woman who is not a virgin, who is a widow, or divorced by her husband, or who is not known as a virtuous woman, cannot be permitted to offer sacrifice, for he is impure, and nothing can cleanse him from his impurities.”
And Jacolliot adds, “It is not recorded, says the divine Manu, that a Brahman has ever, even by compulsion, married a girl of low class.
“Let the Brahman espouse a Brahmine, says the Veda.
“Let him take a well-formed virgin, of an agreeable name, of the graceful carriage of the swan, or of the young elephant, whose body is covered with light down, her hair fine, her teeth small, and her limbs charmingly graceful.”
Jacolliot compares these early Vedic injunctions with Leviticus, Chapter XXI, and the absurdities introduced by Moses as to a “crooked nose or a squint eye.”
Woman here in the West is just emerging from the slavery and degradation of ages, and she ought to know that that degradation was not the handicap of barbaric and undeveloped races, so far as the Aryan race is concerned, but a demoralization and degradation instituted by priests, in the name of religion, through which they have sought to rule the world, and so far as institutional religions are concerned, woman has had to progress in spite of them.
Without the aid and influence of woman to-day, neither Protestant nor Roman Church could exist at all, as witness almost any Sabbath service where women outnumber men often ten to one.
One day woman will be wise enough and brave enough to dictate terms, as she did ages ago in old Aryavarta. When that day comes, and the really Divine Motherhood planted in every true woman’s soul is recognized by man and woman alike, God grant that she may thenceforth hold the fort till the Kali-Yuga is at full tide, and the Spiritual Evolution of our present Humanity is fully accomplished.