It is a pity that Hindoo females are withdrawn from schools the moment they are married; this is an insuperable obstacle to the full development of their mental powers. The progress made by some of them in the zenana is really very creditable, and challenges the commendation of all who have the elevation of native female character at heart. They are not only assiduous in the cultivation of feminine graces and accomplishments, but their superior grasp of thought and language rank them among the literary women of their country. Some thirty years back the Hindoo females of Bengal were immersed in ignorance; they were represented as degraded beings incapable of improvement; not one in a thousand could read or write; but since proper steps have been taken to remove this national reproach, they have evinced an ardent desire to enrich their minds by a course of study which, though not profound, is well fitted to adorn female life. The English Church Mission, "The Scottish Ladies' Association," a department of the Church of Scotland Mission, the Free Church Mission, the American Mission, &c. are all doing an incalculable amount of good by their disinterested efforts to impart the blessings of knowledge to such zenana females as are precluded by being married from attending schools. The complete regeneration of India cannot be expected until the emancipation of the females is accomplished, practically proving to the world, as it has already done in a very limited degree, the palpable absurdity of Manu's interdictory edict, restraining them from cultivating their intellectual powers.
As a proof of the progress already made in the higher branches of female education, it is gratifying to state that two young ladies passed the First Arts' Examination of the Calcutta University at the end of last year. One of these was trained in the Bethune School, and the other in the Free Church Normal School. This examination represents a very considerable amount of acquirement, and is next to the B. A. Several other female candidates also passed the Entrance or Matriculation Examination at the same time. Similar progress has been reported from the Madras Presidency.
Authentic history furnishes abundant evidence of the prevalence of female education in the country to a considerable extent, until Mahomedan oppression not only proscribed Hindoo women from pursuing a literary career, but ultimately dragged them into a state of unhealthy seclusion for the preservation of their honor, which they valued more than their very life. In Rajpootana every respectable female was instructed to read and write. Of their intellectual endowments and knowledge of mankind, whoever has had opportunities of conversing with them could not fail to form a favorable impression.[107]
XVIII.
POLYGAMY.
In this, as well as in some other eastern countries, polygamy has from time out of mind been in existence. That it is subversive of moral order and of conjugal felicity, is admitted by all who have paid the slightest degree of attention to the very many evil consequences of this abnormal institution. It is a violation of a just and divine law, opposed to the nurture and education of children, and inconsistent with the due equality of the sexes. In every country where this obnoxious practice prevails, and is dignified with the hallowed name of a social and religious ordinance, as is done in India, woman occupies a degraded position, and society is rude and unexpansive in its character. The most heinous crimes are committed without remorse, and conscience is seared, as it were, with a red-hot iron. "Nature has designed woman to be the equal of man as a moral and intellectual being; and confined to the exercise of her own proper duties as a wife and mother, she is placed in a favourable position as relates to her own happiness and the happiness of her husband." Much of the civilization of Europe is due to the high position of the fair sex in the social scale. Their education, their capacity for rearing their children in orderly and virtuous habits, their elevated conceptions of a Supreme Being, their social and domestic manners, the purity of their lives, their natural tenderness and affection, their freedom, and the moral influence of their actions on society, give them a rank in no way inferior to that of the other sex. But in this country, it is painful to realise that they are not only denied the inestimable blessings of a good education but that their first lawgiver has condemned them to a state of abject servitude. "Women have no business" says Manu, "with the text of the Veda, this is the law fully settled: having, therefore, no evidence of law, and no knowledge of expiatory texts, sinful women must be as foul as falsehood itself; and this is a fixed rule. Through their passion for men, their mutable temper, their want of settled affection, and their perverse nature, (let them be guarded in this world ever so well,) they soon become alienated from their husbands." Manu allotted to such women "a love of their bed, of their seat, and of ornament, impure appetites, wrath, weak flexibility, desire of mischief and bad conduct. Day and night must women be held by their protectors in a state of dependence." Apart from their practically servile condition, the apparent complacence with which polygamy is tolerated, and the facility with which a plurality of wives can be obtained, are circumstances which poison the perennial source of conjugal felicity, reduce them to a state of moral and intellectual degradation, and sap the very foundation of virtue. "A barren wife," says Manu, "may be superseded by another in the eighth year; she whose children are all dead, in the tenth; she who brings forth only daughters, in the eleventh year; she who speaks unkindly, without delay." Bullal Sen, who, if I mistake not, had first established the system of Koolinism in Bengal, and prescribed certain rules in favor of polygamy, was singularly deficient in foresight and wisdom when he entirely overlooked the evil consequences inseparable from this monstrous matrimonial arrangement, so pregnant with mischief in whatever aspect we view it. Any artificial institution which is subversive of divine law will, in the main, prove highly unfavourable to the best interests of society. The marriage of a man with but one wife is an arrangement which should never be departed from. To dispose of the ministering angels of our existence, without the slightest regard to their future happiness, and yoke them to an unprincipled libertine, or a Koolin perhaps on the verge of his grave, is a system alike destructive of all social, benevolent and humane feelings. A Koolin has no regard, much less sympathy, for any one of his numerous wives, on the contrary he looks to them for gain and other worldly advantages. It is a notorious fact that Koolin wives after their marriage almost invariably live with their parents, thus virtually closing all avenues to the growth of affection between the husband and wife. The one is as estranged from the other as if there had been no bond of union between them. As the temptations to vicious indulgences are so very powerful and numerous in this wicked world of ours, the unscrupulous Koolin females of the sacerdotal class often sacrifice chastity at the altar of sensuality. The perpetration of the most horrible crimes is the necessary effect. The fault does not rest so much with the poor unfortunate females as with the diabolical system which openly tolerates and religiously upholds polygamy. That it is an unnatural state, even the most thoughtless will readily admit. In every case it is the source of perpetual disputes and misery. Domestic happiness can have no place in a family in which more than one wife lives. I have known many a person who under the impulse of passion had entered into this unnatural state deplore it as the greatest of all domestic afflictions. Even separate cook rooms, separate apartments, and separate mehals, and dining and sleeping alternately with two wives with the greatest punctuality, and giving the same set of ornaments to both, were not enough to ensure harmony, peace and tranquillity. Indeed it has become a proverb among the Hindoos, that "one wife would rather go with her husband to the gloomy regions of yama (Pluto) than see him sit with the other." As has already been described, a tender girl of five years of age is, as her first instruction before emerging from her nursery, initiated into the Brata or religious vow of Sayjooty, the primary object of which is the ruin and destruction of a Sateen or rival wife. The germs or jealousy against, and contempt for, a rival being thus sown so early, they take deep root and expand in time so as to become absolutely ineradicable.
When the presence of two wives in the same house is attended with so much disquietude, the evil arising from the practices of professional Koolins is much greater. They are married to a number of females whose prospect of connubial bliss is as remote as the poles are asunder. Instead of true love and genuine attachment, the legitimate conditions of matrimony, the natural apathy of the husband is often requited by the infidelity of his numerous wives; nor can it be otherwise, the visits of the husband being, like those of a meteor, few and far between. Being destitute of the finer susceptibilities of human nature, and looking upon matrimony as a matter of traffic, he regards his wives as so many automata whose happiness is not at all identified with his own. Influenced by a sordid love of gain, bred and brought up in the lap of ignorance and laziness, and pampered by effeminate habits, he leads a profligate life typical of utter demoralisation. He cares as little for the chastity of his wives as a child does for the nicety of his playthings. By rank, profession and habit he is a debauchee. His sense of female honor is totally blunted. The thought of nurturing and educating his numerous children never enters into his mind. He knows not how many sons and daughters he has, whether legitimate or illegitimate; he is not capable of recognising them, simply because he has seldom or never seen their faces. If he keep a register of the number of his wives, he keeps no record of the number of his children. When he wants money, he pounces on such a father-in-law as can satisfy him. If he keep one wife at home, it is not from warmth of affection that he does so, but merely for his own convenience and comfort; she is made to discharge all the menial offices of a domestic maid-servant. Though never placed in affluent circumstances, yet he is the lord of thirty, forty or fifty women. It has been very aptly remarked by an eminent writer who had paid much attention to the manners and customs of the Hindoos,—that "amongst the Turks, seraglios are confined to men of wealth, but here, a Hindoo Brahmin, possessing only a shred of cloth and a piece of thread, (poita) keeps more than a hundred mistresses." Indeed such a system of monstrous polygamy is without a parallel in the history of human depravity. Prostitution, adultery, and the horrible crime of the destruction of the foetus in the womb by means of deleterious drugs administered by old women, are the inevitable consequences of this unnatural state of things. It is an undeniable fact that the daughters of Koolin Brahmins, abandoned by their unprincipled husbands, are often led into the forbidden paths of life, partly through the impulse of passion amidst the seductions of a wicked world, and partly through their exceedingly miserable circumstances. The houses of ill fame in Calcutta and other large towns are filled with women of this infamous character, and the inhuman practice of patefaláno prevails to an alarming extent, notwithstanding the increased vigilance of the police. Some fifty years ago a number of respectable Hindoos felt so disgusted at the mischievous tendency of the Koolin system of marriage that they were on the eve of memorialising the Government to put down the practice by a legislative enactment, such as had been done in the prohibition of sati or female immolation, but they were assured that the authorities would not interfere in the domestic and social usages of the people.