Teachings.
The Code of Manu is the highest religious authority among the Hindus. You ask a Hindu about the date and age of his great law-giver and he quickly replies, “He was son of the self-existent Brahm.” Manu’s whole teaching about woman is based on the assumption of her impurity. For instance, a Brahman is enjoined “to suspend reading the Veda if a woman comes in sight.” Her ear is not pure enough to hear what the vilest man may read. “Though unobservant of approved usage, or enamoured of another woman, or devoid of good qualities, yet a husband must constantly be revered as a god by a virtuous wife.”[2]
[2] Dharma Sastra, chap. 5, page 154.
“Let the wife who wishes to perform sacred oblation wash the feet of her husband and drink the water, for the husband is to the wife greater than Vishnu.” Again, “Women have no business with the text of a sacred book, and having no evidence of law, and no knowledge of expiatory texts, sinful women must be foul as falsehood itself, and this is a fixed rule.”[3] And it has remained fixed for forty-three centuries.
[3] Dharma Sastra, chap. 5, page 155, 156.
Seclusion.
The modern Brahmans like to claim that the present custom of immuring their wives in prison-like rooms had its origin in Mohammedan invasion. This is certainly not the whole truth, for in the unalterable law of Manu, written 900 years before Christ, we read, “A woman is not allowed to go out of the house without the consent of her husband, she may not laugh without a veil over her face or look out of a door or a window.” “It may be that when the Mohammedans came, some fifteen centuries after these laws had been in force, they put the crown on the arch already waiting for them. They may have tightened the chains by which woman was already enslaved,”[4] but the teachings of Manu are sufficient to account for all we see in India to-day.
[4] Wilkins’ Modern Hinduism, page 326.
Child Marriage.
The people of the Western World have long wondered why the Hindus were so tenacious of their, to us, revolting customs of child marriage. It is only when we learn that it is not simply a custom but a part of their religion that we apprehend the reason. The sacred laws of the Hindu declare: “If a daughter is married at the age of six, the father is certain to ascend to the highest heaven. If the daughter is not married before seven, the father will only reach the second heaven. If a daughter is not married until the age of ten, the father can only attain the lowest place assigned the blest. If a girl is not married until she is eleven years of age, all her progenitors for six generations will suffer pain and penalties.”[5] When recently an effort was made to induce the Government to raise the legal age of marriage to twelve years, great excitement prevailed. The Brahmans set apart days of fasting and prayer. Multitudes came in processions to the temples, in some cases beating their breasts and calling aloud to the gods to spare them from such calamity.