BUDDUN SING, RAHTORE.
SUDRAM GOSAEN.
PORTRAITS OF A RĀJPUTNI, A RĀJPUT, A MEWĀTI AND GUSĀĪN. To face page 708.
Treatment of Women by the Rājputs.
The Seclusion of Women.
It is scarcely fair to quote Manu as an authority for the proper treatment of the fair sex, since many of his dicta by no means tend to elevate their condition. In his lengthened catalogue of things pure and impure he says, however, “The mouth of a woman is constantly pure,”[[6]] and he ranks it with the running waters and the sunbeam; he suggests that their names should be “agreeable, soft, clear, captivating the fancy, auspicious, ending in long vowels, resembling words of benediction.”[[7]]
“Where females are honoured” (says Manu), “there the deities are pleased; but where dishonoured, there all religious rites become useless”: and he declares, “that in whatever house a woman not duly honoured pronounces an imprecation, that house, with all that belongs to it, shall utterly perish.”[[8]] “Strike not, even with a blossom, a wife guilty of a hundred faults,”[[9]] says another sage: a sentiment so delicate, that Reginald de Born, the prince of troubadours, never uttered any more refined.
However exalted the respect of the Rajput for the fair, he nevertheless holds that
Nothing lovelier can be found