"represent them" thus; he says "they are represented;" that is, he
gives his information at second-hand, without naming his authority,
who, to judge by some of his remarks, was apparently a facetious
globe-trotter. It is of course possible that these young folks are
much attached to each other. Even sheep are "miserable if separated
only for an hour;" they bleat pathetically and are disconsolate,
though there is no question of an "absorbing passion for one." What
kind of love unites these Pahária lads and lasses may be inferred from
the further information given in Dalton's book that "they work
together, go to market together, eat together, and sleep together;"
while indiscretions are atoned for by shedding the blood of an animal,
whereupon all is forgiven! In other words, where Westermarck found
"the absorbing passion for one," a critical student can see nothing
but a vulgar case of reprehensible free lust.

And yet, though we have found no indications of true love, I can see
reasons for Dalton's exclamation,

"It is singular that in matters of the affections the
feelings of these semi-savages should be more in unison
with the sentiments and customs of the highly organized
western nations than with the methodical and unromantic
heart-schooling of their Aryan fellow-countrymen."

Whether these wild tribes are really more like ourselves in their
amorous customs than the more or less civilized Hindoos to whom we now
turn our attention, the reader will be able to decide for himself
after finishing this chapter.


CHILD MURDER AND CHILD MARRIAGE

Twenty years ago there were in India five million more men than women,
and there has been no change in that respect. The chief cause of this
disparity is the habitual slaughter of girl babies. The unwelcome
babes are killed with opium pills or exposed to wild beasts. The
Pundita Ramabai Sarasvati, in her agonizing book, _The High Caste
Hindu Woman_, writes with bitter sarcasm, that

"even the wild animals are so intelligent and of such
refined taste that they mock at British law and almost
always steal _girls_ to satisfy their hunger." "The
census of 1870 revealed the curious fact that three
hundred children were stolen in one year by wolves from
within the city of Umritzar, _all the children being
girls_."

Hindoo females who escape the opium pills and the wolves seldom have
occasion to congratulate themselves therefor. Usually a fate worse
than death awaits them. Long before they are old enough, physically or
mentally, to marry, they are either delivered bodily or betrothed to
men old enough to be their grandfathers. A great many girls are
married literally in the cradle, says the authoress just quoted (31).
"From five to eleven years is the usual period for this marriage among
the Brahmans all over India." Manu made twenty-four the minimum age
for men to marry, but "popular custom defies the law. Boys of ten and
twelve are now doomed to be married to girls of seven to eight years
of age." This early marriage system is "at least five hundred years
older than the Christian era." As superstitious custom compels poor
parents to marry off their daughters by a given age "it very
frequently happens that girls of eight or nine are given to men of
sixty or seventy, or to men utterly unworthy of the maidens."[261]


MONSTROUS PARENTAL SELFISHNESS

In an article on "Child Marriages in Bengal,"[262] D.N. Singha
explains the superstition to which so many millions of poor girls are
thus ruthlessly sacrificed. "It is," he says,

"a well-nigh universal conviction among Hindoos that
every man's soul goes to a hell called Poot, no matter
how good he may have been. Nothing but a son's fidelity
can release or deliver him from it, hence all Hindoos
are driven to seek marriage as early as possible to
make sure of a son." "A son, the fruit of marriage,
saves him from perdition, so that the one purpose of
marriage is to leave a son behind him."[263] A
daughter's son may take his son's place: hence the
eagerness to marry off the girls young. In other words,
in order to save themselves from a hell hereafter the
brutal fathers drive their poor little daughters to a
hell on earth. And what is worse, public opinion
compels them to act in this cruel manner; for, as the
same writer informs us, the man who suffers his
daughter to remain unmarried till she is thirteen or
fourteen years old is "subjected to endless annoyances,
beset with stinging remarks, unpleasant whisperings and
slanderous gossip. No orthodox Hindoo will allow his
son to accept the hand of such a grown-up girl."

How preventive of all possibility of free choice or love such a custom
is may be inferred from another brief extract from the same article:

"The superstitious notion of a Hindoo parent that it is
a sin not to give his daughter in marriage before she
ceases to to be a child impels him urgently to get her
a husband before she has passed her ninth or tenth
year. He sends out to match-makers and spares no pains
to discover a bridegroom in some family of rank equal
or superior to his own. Having found a boy ... he
endeavors to secure him by entreaty or by large offers
of money or jewels."

The Pundita Ramabai Sarasvati (22) gives some further grewsome details
which would seem like the inventions of a burlesque writer were they
not attested by such unbiassed authority. "Religions enjoin that every
girl must be given in marriage; the neglect of this duty means for the
father unpardonable sin, public ridicule, and caste excommunication."

But in the higher castes the cost of a marriage is at least $200,
wherefore if a man has several daughters his ruin is almost certain.
Female infanticide is often the result, but even if the girls are
allowed to grow up there is a way for the father to escape. There is a
special high class of Brahmans who make it their business to marry
these girls. They go up and down the land marrying ten, twenty,
sometimes as many as one hundred and fifty of them, receiving presents
from the bride's parents and immediately thereafter bidding good-by to
her, going home never to see their "wife" again. The parents have now
done their duty; they have escaped religious and social ostracism at
the expense, it is true, of their daughters, who remain at home to
make themselves useful. These poor girls can never marry again, and
whether or not they become moral outcasts, their life is ruined; but
that, to a Hindoo, is a trifling matter; girls, in his opinion, were
not created for their own sake, but for the pleasure, comfort, and
salvation of man.


HOW HINDOO GIRLS ARE DISPOSED OF

In some parts of India the infant girls are merely subjected to an
"irrevocable betrothal" for the time being, while in others they fall
at once into the clutches of their degraded husbands.[264] In either
case they have absolutely no choice in the selection of a
life-partner. As Dubois remarks (I., 198):

"In negotiating marriage the inclinations of the future
spouses are never attended to. Indeed, it would be
ridiculous to consult girls of that age; and,
accordingly, the choice devolves entirely upon the
parents," "The ceremony of the 'bhánwar,' or circuit of
the pole or branch, is," says Dalton (148), "observed
in most Hindu marriages.... Its origin is curious.. As
a Hindu bridegroom of the upper classes has no
opportunity of trotting out his intended previous to
marriage, and she is equally in the dark regarding the
paces of her lord, the two are made to walk around the
post a certain number of times to prove that they are
sound in limb."

Even the _accidental_ coincidence of the choice of a husband with the
girl's own preference--should any such exist--is rendered impossible
by a superstitious custom which demands that a horoscope must in all
cases be taken to see if the signs are propitious, as Ramabai
Sarasvati informs us (35), adding that if the signs are not propitious
another girl is chosen. Sometimes a dozen are thus rejected, and the
number may rise to three hundred before superstition is satisfied and
a suitable match is found! The same writer gives the following
pathetic instance of the frivolous way in which the girls are disposed
of. A father is bathing in the river; a stranger comes in, the father
asks him to what caste he belongs, and finding that all right, offers
him his nine-year-old daughter. The stranger accepts, marries the
child the next day, and carries her to his home nine hundred miles
away. These poor child brides, she says, are often delighted to get
married, because they are promised a ride on an elephant!

But the most extraordinary revelation made by this doctor is contained
in the following paragraph which, I again beg the reader to remember,
was not written by a humorous globetrotter or by the librettist of
_Pinafore_, but by a native Hindoo woman who is bitterly in earnest, a
woman who left her country to study the condition of women in England
and America, and who then returned to devote her life to the attempt
to better the dreadful fate of her country-women:

"As it is absurd to assume that girls should be allowed
to choose their future husbands, in their infancy, this
is done for them by their parents or guardians. In the
northern part of this country the _family barber_ is
generally employed to select the boys and girls to be
married, it being considered _too humiliating and mean
an act_ on the part of the parents and guardians to go
out and seek their future daughters and sons-in-law."


HINDOOS FAR BELOW BRUTES

A more complete disregard of the real object of marriage and of the
existence of love could hardly be found among clams and oysters. In
their sexual relations the civilized Hindoos are, indeed, far beneath
the lowest of animals. Young animals are never prevented by their
parents from mating according to their choice; they never unite till
they have reached maturity; they use their procreative instinct only
for the purpose for which it was designed, whereas the Hindoos--like
their wild neighbors--indulge in a perpetual carnival of lust; they
never kill their offspring, and they never maltreat their females as
the Hindoos do.[265] On this last point some more details must be
given:

"The Hindu is supposed to be, of all creatures on
earth, the most generous, the most kind-hearted, the
most gentle, the most sympathetic, and the most
unselfish. After living for nearly seven years in
India, I must tell you that the reverse of this is
true.... It has been said that among the many languages
spoken by the people of Hindustan there is no such word
as home, in the sense in which we understand it; that
among the languages spoken there is no such word as
love, in the sense in which we know it. I cannot vouch
for the truth of this, as I am not acquainted with the
languages of India, but I do know that among all the
heathen people of that country there is no such place
as home, as we understand it; there is no such
sentiment as love, as we feel it."

The writer of the above is Dr. Salem Armstrong-Hopkins, who, during
her long connection with the Woman's Hospital of Hyderabad, Sindh, had
the best of opportunities for observing the natives of all classes,
both at the hospital and in their homes, to which she was often
summoned. In her book _Within the Purdah_ she throws light on the
popular delusion that Hindoos must be kind to each other since they
are kind to animals. In Bombay there is even a hospital for diseased
and aged animals: but that is a result of religious superstition, not
of real sympathy, for the same Brahman who is afraid to bring a curse
upon his soul by killing an animal "will beat his domestic animals
most cruelly, and starve and torture them in many ways, thus
exhibiting his lack of kindness." And the women fare infinitely worse
than the animals. The wealthiest are perpetually confined in rooms
without table or chairs, without a carpet on the mud floor or picture
on the mud walls--and this in a country where fabulous sums are spent
on fine architecture. All girl babies are neglected, or dosed with
opium if they cry; the mother's milk--which an animal would give to
them--being reserved for their brothers, though these brothers be
already several years old. Unless a girl is married before her twelfth
year she is considered a disgrace to the family, is stripped of all
her finery and compelled to do the drudgery of her fathers household,
receiving

"kicks and abuses from any and all its members, and
often upon the slightest provocation. Should she fall
ill, no physician is consulted and no effort is made to
restore her health or to prolong life." "The expression
of utter hopelessness, despair, and misery" on such a
girl's face "beggars description."

Nor are matters any better for those who get married. Not only are
they bestowed in infancy on any male--from an infant boy to an old man
with many wives--whom the father can secure[266]--but the
daughter-in-law becomes "a drudge and slave in her husband's home."
One of her tasks is to grind wheat between two great stones. "This is
very arduous labor, and the slight little women sometimes faint away
while engaged in the task", yet by a satanic refinement of cruelty
they are compelled to sing a grinding song while the work lasts and
never stop, on penalty of being beaten. And though they prepare all
the food for the family and serve the others, they get only what is
left--which often is nothing at all, and many literally starve to
death. No wonder these poor creatures--be they little girls or
women--all wear "the same look of hopeless despair and wretchedness,"
making an impression on the mind more pitiable than any disease. The
writer had among her patients some who tried by the most agonizing of
deaths--voluntary starvation--to escape their misery.


CONTEMPT IN PLACE OF LOVE

No one can read these revelations without agreeing with the writer
that "the Hindu is of all people the most cowardly and the most
cruel," and that he cannot know what real love of any kind is. The
Abbé Dubois, who lived many years among the Hindoos, wearing their
clothes and adopting their customs so far as they did not conflict
with his Christian conscience, wrote (I., 51) that

"the affection and attachment between brothers and
sisters, never very ardent, almost entirely disappears
as soon as they are married. After that event, they
scarcely ever meet, unless it be to quarrel."

Ramabai Sarasvati thinks that loving couples can be found in India,
but Dubois, applying the European standard, declared (I., 21,
302-303):

"During the long period of my observation of them and
their habits, I am not sure that I have ever seen two
Hindu marriages that closely united the hearts by a
true and inviolable attachment."

The husband thinks his wife "entitled to no attentions, and never pays
her any, even in familiar intercourse." He looks on her "merely as his
servant, and never as his companion." "We have said enough of women in
a country where they are considered as scarcely forming a part of the
human species." And Ramabai herself confesses (44) that at home "men
and women have almost nothing in common." "The women's court is
situated at the back of the houses, where darkness reigns
perpetually." Even after the second ceremony the young couple seldom
meet and talk.

"Being cut off from the chief means of forming attachment, the young
couple are almost strangers, and in many cases ... a feeling kindred
to hatred takes root between them." There is "no such thing as the
family having pleasant times together."

Dr. Ryder thinks that for "one kind husband there are one hundred
thousand cruel ones," and she gives the following illustration among
others:

"A rich husband (merchant caste) brought his wife to me
for treatment. He said she was sixteen, and they had
been married eight years. 'She was good wife, do
everything he want, wait on him and eight brothers,
carry water up three flights of stairs on her head;
now, what will you cure her for? She suffer much. I not
pay too much money. When it cost too much I let her
die. I don't care. I got plenty wives. When you cure
her for ten shilling I get her done, but I not pay
more.' I explained to him that her medicines would cost
more than that amount, and he left, saying, 'I don't
care. Let her die. I can have plenty wives. I like
better a new wife.'"[267]

Though the lawgiver Manu wrote "where women are honored there the gods
are pleased," he was one of the hundreds of Sanscrit writers, who, as
Ramabai Sarasvati relates, "have done their best to make woman a
hateful being in the world's eye." Manu speaks of their "natural
heartlessness," their "impure desires, wrath, dishonesty, malice, and
bad conduct." Though mothers are more honored than other women, yet
even they are declared to be "as impure as falsehood itself."

"I have never read any sacred book in Sanscrit literature
without meeting this kind of hateful sentiment about
women.... Profane literature is by no means less severe or
more respectful toward women."

The wife is the husband's property and classed by Manu with "cows,
mares, female camels, slave girls, buffalo cows, she goats, and ewes."
A man may abandon his wife if he finds her blemished or diseased,
while she must not even show disrespect to a husband who is diseased,
addicted to evil passions, or a drunkard. If she does she shall be
deserted for three months and deprived of her ornaments and
furniture.[268] Even British rule has not been able to improve the
condition of woman, for the British Government is bound by treaties
not to interfere with social and religious customs; hence many
pathetic cases are witnessed in the courts of unwilling girls handed
over, in accordance with national custom, to the loathed husbands
selected for them. "The gods and justice always favor the men." "Many
women put an end to their earthly sufferings by committing suicide."


WIDOWS AND THEIR TORMENTORS

If anything can cast a ray of comfort into the wretched life of a
Hindoo maiden or wife it is the thought that, after all, she is much
better off than if she were a widow--though, to be sure, she runs
every risk of becoming one ere she is old enough to be considered
marriageable in any country where women are regarded as human beings.
In considering the treatment of Hindoo widows we reach the climax of
inhuman cruelty--a cruelty far exceeding that practised by American
Indians toward female prisoners, because more prolonged and involving
mental as well as physical agonies.

In 1881 there were in British India alone 20,930,000 widows, 669,000
of whom were under nineteen, and 78,976 _under nine_ years of
age.[269] Now a widow's life is naturally apt to be one of hardship
because she has lost her protector and bread-winner; but in India the
tragedy of her fate is deepened a thousandfold by the diabolical
ill-treatment of which she is made the innocent victim. A widow who
has borne sons or who is aged is somewhat less despised than the child
widow; on her falls the worst abuse and hatred of the community,
though she be as innocent of any crime as an angel. In the eyes of a
Hindoo the mere fact of being a widow is a crime--the crime of
surviving her husband, though he may have been seventy and the wife
seven.

All women love their soft glossy hair; and a Hindoo woman, says
Ramabai Sarasvati (82), "thinks it worse than death to lose her hair";
yet "among the Brahmans of Deccan the heads of all widows must be
shaved regularly every fortnight." "Shaved head" is a term of derision
everywhere applied to the widows. All their ornaments are taken from
them and they are excluded from every ceremony of joy. The name "rand"
given to a widow "is the same that is borne by a Nautch girl or a
harlot." One poor woman wrote to a missionary:

"O great Lord, our name is written with drunkards, with
lunatics, with imbeciles, with the very animals; as
they are not responsible, we are not. Criminals
confined in jails for life are happier than we."

Another of these widows wrote:[270] "While our husbands live we are
their slaves, when they die we are still worse off." The husband's
funeral, she says, may last all day in a broiling sun, and while the
others are refreshed, she alone is denied food and water. After
returning she is reviled by her own relatives. Her mother says:
"Unhappy creature! I can't bear the thought of anyone so vile. I wish
she had never been born." Her mother-in-law says: "The horned viper!
She has bitten my son and killed him, and now he is dead, and she,
useless creature, is left behind." It is impossible for her to escape
this fate by marrying again. The bare mention of remarriage by a
widow, though she be only eight or nine years old, would be regarded,
says Dubois (I., 191), "as the greatest of insults." Should she marry
again "she would be hunted out of society, and no decent person would
venture at any time to have the slightest intercourse with her."

Attempts have been made in recent times by liberal-minded men to marry
widows; but they were subjected to so much odium and persecution
therefor that they were driven to suicide.

When a widow dies her corpse is disposed of with hardly any ceremony.
Should a widow try to escape her fate the only alternatives are
suicide or a life of shame. To a Hindoo widow, says Ramabai Sarasvati,
death is "a thousand times more welcome than her miserable existence."
It is for this reason that the suttee or "voluntary" burning of widows
on the husband's funeral pyre--the climax of inhuman atrocity--lost
some of its horrors to the victims until the moment of agony arrived.
I have already (p. 317) refuted the absurd whim that this voluntary
death of Hindoo widows was a proof of their conjugal devotion. It was
proof, on the contrary, of the unutterably cruel selfishness of the
male Hindoos, who actually forged a text to make the suttee seem a
religious duty--a forgery which during two thousand years caused the
death of countless innocent women. Best was told that the real cause
of widow-burning was a desire on the part of the men to put an end to
the frequent murders of husbands by their cruelly treated wives
(Reich, _212_). However that may be, the suttee in all probability was
due to the shrewd calculation that the fear of being burned alive, or
being more despised and abused than the lowest outcasts, would make
women more eager to follow obediently the code which makes of them
abject slaves of their husbands, living only for them and never having
a thought or a care for themselves.


HINDOO DEPRAVITY

Since, as Ward attests (116), the young widows "without exception,
become abandoned women," it is obvious that one reason why the priests
were so anxious to prevent them from marrying again was to insure an
abundant supply of victims for their immoral purposes. The
hypocritical Brahmans were not only themselves notorious libertines,
but they shrewdly calculated that the simplest way to win the favor
and secure control of the Indian populace was by pandering to their
sensual appetites and supplying abundant opportunities and excuses for
their gratification--making these opportunities, in fact, part and
parcel of their religious ceremonies. Their temples and their sacred
carts which traversed the streets were decorated with obscene pictures
of a peculiarly disgusting kind,[271] which were freely exposed to the
gaze of old and young of both sexes; their temples were little more
than nurseries for the rearing of bayadères, a special class of
"sacred prostitutes;" while scenes of promiscuous debauchery sometimes
formed part of the religious ceremony, usually under some hypocritical
pretext.

It would be unjust, however, to make the Brahman priests entirely
responsible for Hindoo depravity. It has indeed been maintained that
there was a time when the Hindoos were free from all the vices which
now afflict them; but that is one of the silly myths of ignorant
dreamers, on a level with the notion that savages were corrupted by
whites. One of the oldest Hindoo documents, the _Mahabharata_, gives
us the native traditions concerning these "good old times" in two
sentences:

"Though in their youthful innocence the women abandoned
their husbands, they were guilty of no offence; for
such was the rule in early times." "Just as cattle are
situated, so are human beings, too, within their
respective castes"

which suggests a state of promiscuity as decided as that which
prevailed in Australia. Civilization did not teach the Hindoos
love--for that comes last--but merely the refinements of lust, such as
even the Greeks and Romans hardly knew. Ovid's _Ars Amandi_ is a model
of purity compared with the Hindoo "Art of Love," the
_K[=a]mas[=u]tram_ (or _Kama Soutra_) of V[=a]tsy[=a]yana, which is
nothing less than a handbook for libertines, of which it would be
impossible even to print the table of contents. Whereas the translator
of Ovid into a modern language need not omit more than a page of the
text, the German translator of the _K[=a]mas[=u]tram_, Dr. Richard
Schmidt, who did his work in behalf of the Kgl. Akademie der
Wissenschaften zu Berlin, felt it incumbent on him to turn more than
fifty pages out of four hundred and seventy into Latin. Yet the author
of this book, who lived about two thousand years ago, recommends that
every one, including young girls, should study it. In India, as his
French translator, Lamairesse, writes, "everything is done to awaken
carnal desires even in young children of both sexes." The natural
result is that, as the same writer remarks (186):

"Les catégories des femmes faciles sont si nombreuses
qu'elles doivent comprendre presque toutes les personnes du
sexe. Aussi un ministre protestant écrivait-il au milieu de
notre siècle qu'il n'existait presque point de femmes
vertueuses dans l'Inde."

The Rev. William Ward wrote (162) in 1824:

"It is a fact which greatly perplexes many of the
well-informed Hindus, that notwithstanding the wives of
Europeans are seen in so many mixed companies, they
remain chaste; while their wives, though continually
secluded, watched, and veiled, are so notoriously
corrupt. I recollect the observation of a gentleman who
had lived nearly twenty years in Bengal, whose opinions
on such a subject demanded the highest regard, that the
infidelity of the Hindu women was so great that he
scarcely thought there was a single instance of a wife
who had been always faithful to her husband."[272]


TEMPLE GIRLS

The Brahman priests, who certainly knew their people well, had so
little faith in their virtue that they would not accept a girl to be
brought up for temple service if she was over five years old. She had
to be not only pure but physically flawless and sound in health. Yet
her purity was not valued as a virtue, but as an article of commerce.
The Brahmans utilized the charms of these girls for the purpose of
supporting the temples with their sinful lives, their gains being
taken from them as "offerings to the gods." As soon as a girl was old
enough she was put up at auction and sold to the highest bidder. If
she was specially attractive the bids would sometimes reach fabulous
sums, it being a point of honor and eager rivalry among Rajahs and
other wealthy men, young and old, to become the possessors of bayadère
débutantes. Temporarily only, of course, for these girls were never
allowed to marry. While they were connected with the temple they could
give themselves to anyone they chose, the only condition being that
they must never refuse a Brahman (Jacolliot, 169-76). The bayadères,
says Dubois, call themselves Deva-dasi, servants or slaves of the
gods, "but they are known to the public by the coarser name of
strumpets." They are, next to the sacrificers, the most important
persons about the temples. While the poor widows who had been
respectably married are deprived of all ornaments and joys of life,
these wantons are decked with fine clothes, flowers, and jewelry; and
gold is showered upon them. The bayadères Vasantasena is described by
the poet Cûdraka as always wearing a hundred gold ornaments, living in
her own palace, which has eight luxurious courts, and on one occasion
refusing an unwelcome suitor though he sent 100,000 gold pieces.

Bayadères are supposed to be originally descendants of the apsaras, or
dancing girls of the god Indra, the Hindoo Jupiter. In reality they
are recruited from various castes, some parents making it a point to
offer their third daughter to the Brahmans. Bands of the bayadères are
engaged by the best families to provide dancing and music, especially
at weddings. To have dealings with bayadères is not only in good form,
but is a meritorious thing, since it helps to support the temples. And
yet, when one of these girls dies she is not cremated in the same
place as other women, and her ashes are scattered to the winds. In
some provinces of Bengal, Jacolliot says, she is only half burnt, and
the body then thrown to the jackals and vultures.

The temple of Sunnat had as many as five hundred of these priestesses
of Venus, and a Rajah has been known to entertain as many as two
thousand of them. Bayadères, or Nautch girls, as they are often called
in a general way, are of many grades. The lowest go about the country
in bands, while the highest may rise to the rank and dignity of an
Aspasia. To the former class belong those referred to by Lowrie
(148)--a band of twenty girls, all unveiled and dressed in their
richest finery, who wanted to dance for his party and were greatly
disappointed when refused. "Most of them were very young--about ten or
eleven years old." Their course is brief; they soon lose their charms,
are discarded, and end their lives as beggars.


AN INDIAN ASPASIA

A famous representative of the superior class of bayadères is the
heroine of King Çûdraka's drama just referred to--Vasantasena. She has
amassed immense wealth--the description of her palace takes up several
pages--and is one of the best known personages in town, yet that does
not prevent her from being spoken of repeatedly as "a noble woman, the
jewel of the city."[273] She is, indeed, represented as differing in
her love from other bayadères, and, as she herself remarks, "a
bayadères is not reprehensible in the eyes of the world if she gives
her heart to a poor man." She sees the Brahman Tscharudatta in the
temple garden of Kama, the god of love, and forthwith falls in love
with him, as he does with her, though he is married. One afternoon she
is accosted in the street by a relative of the king, who annoys her
with his unwelcome attentions. She takes refuge in her lover's house
and, on the pretext that she has been pursued on account of her
ornaments, leaves her jewelry in his charge. The jewels are stolen
during the night, and this mishap leads to a series of others which
finally culminate in Tscharudatta being led out to execution for the
alleged murder of Vasantasena. At the last moment Vasantasena, who had
been strangled by the king's relative, but has been revived, appears
on the scene, and her lover's life is saved, as well as his honor.

The royal author of this drama, who has been called the Shakspere of
India, probably lived in one of the first centuries of the Christian
era. His play may in a certain sense be regarded as a predecessor of
_Manon Lescaut_ and _Camille_, inasmuch as an attempt is made in it to
ascribe to the heroine a delicacy of feeling to which women of her
class are naturally strangers. She hesitates to make advances to
Tscharudatta, and at first wonders whether it would be proper to
remain in his house. See informs her pursuer that "love is won by
noble character, not by importunate advances." Tscharudatta says of
her: "There is a proverb that 'money makes love--the treasurer has the
treasure,' But no! she certainly cannot be won with treasures." She is
in fact represented throughout as being different from the typical
bayadères, who are thus described by one of the characters:

"For money they laugh or weep; they win a man's
confidence but do not give him theirs. Therefore a
respectable man ought to keep bayadères like flowers of
a cemetery, three steps away from him. It is also said:
changeable like waves of the sea, like clouds in a
sunset, glowing only a moment--so are women. As soon as
they have plundered a man they throw him away like a
dye-rag that has been squeezed dry. This saying, too,
is pertinent: just as no lotos grows on a mountain top,
no mule draws a horse's loud, no scattered barley grows
up as rice; so no wanton ever becomes a respectable
woman."

Vasantasena, however, does become a respectable woman. In the last
scene the king confers on her a veil, whereby the stain on her birth
and life is wiped away and she becomes Tscharudatta's legitimate
second wife.

But how about the first wife? Her actions show how widely in India
conjugal love may differ from what we know as such, by the absence of
monopoly and jealousy. When she first hears of the theft of
Vasantasena's jewels in her husband's house she is greatly distressed
at the impending loss of his good name, but is not in the least
disturbed by the discovery that she has a rival. On the contrary, she
takes a string of pearls that remains from her dowry, and sends it to
her husband to be given to Vasantasena as an equivalent for her lost
jewels. Vasantasena, on her part, is equally free from jealousy.
Without knowing whence they came, she afterward sends the pearls to
her lover's wife with these words addressed to her servants:

"Take these pearls and give them to my sister,
Tscharudatta's wife, the honorable woman, and say to
her: 'Conquered by Tscharudatta's excellence, I have
become also your slave. Therefore use this string of
pearls as a necklace.'"

The wife returned the pearls with the message:

"My master and husband has made you a present of these
pearls. It would therefore be improper for me to accept
them: my master and husband is my special jewel. This I
beg you to consider."

And, in the final scenes, the wife shows her great love for her
husband by hastening to get ready for the funeral pyre to be burnt
alive with his corpse. And when, after expressing her joy at his
rescue and kissing him, she turns and sees Vasantasena, she exclaims:
"O this happiness! How do you do, my sister?" Vasantasena replies:
"Now I am happy," and the two embrace!

The translator of Çûdraka's play notes in the preface that there is a
curious lack of ardor in the expression of Tscharudatta's love for
Vasantasena, and he naïvely--though quite in the Hindoo
spirit--explains this as showing that this superior person (who is a
model of altruistic self-sacrifice in every respect), "remains
untouched by coarse outbursts of sensual passion." The only time he
warms up is when he hears that the bayadères prefers him to her
wealthy persecutor; he then exclaims, "Oh, how this girl deserves to
be worshipped like a goddess." Vasantasena is much the more ardent of
the two. It is she who goes forth to seek him, repeatedly, dressed in
purple and pearls, as custom prescribes to a girl who goes to meet her
lover. It is she who exclaims: "The clouds may rain, thunder, or send
forth lightning: women who go to meet their lovers heed neither heat
nor cold." And again: "may the clouds tower on high, may night come
on, may the rain fall in torrents, I heed them not. Alas, my heart
looks only toward the lover." It is she who is so absent-minded,
thinking of him, that her maid suspects her passion; she who, when a
royal suitor is suggested to her, exclaims, "'Tis love I crave to
bestow, not homage."


SYMPTOMS OF FEMININE LOVE

This portrayal of the girl as the chief lover is quite the custom in
Hindoo literature, and doubtless mirrors life as it was and is. Like a
dog that fawns on an indifferent or cruel master, these women of India
were sometimes attached to their selfish lovers and husbands. They had
been trained from their childhood to be sympathetic, altruistic,
devoted, self-sacrificing, and were thus much better prepared than the
men for the germs of amorous sentiment, which can grow only in such a
soil of self-denial. Hence it is that Hindoo love-poems are usually of
the feminine gender. This is notably the case with the _Saptacatakam_
of Hâla, an anthology of seven hundred Prakrit verses made from a
countless number of love-poems that are intended to be sung--"songs,"
says Albrecht Weber, "such as the girls of India, especially perhaps
the bayadères or temple girls may have been in the habit of
singing."[274] Some of these indicate a strong individual preference
and monopoly of attachment:

No. 40: "Her heart is dear to her as being your abode,
her eyes because she saw you with them, her body
because it has become thin owing to your absence."

No. 43: "The burning (grief) of separation is (said to
be) made more endurable by hope. But, mother, if my
beloved is away from me even in the same village, it is
worse than death to me."

No. 57: "Heedless of the other youths, she roams about,
transgressing the rules of propriety, casting her
glances in (all) directions of the world for your sake,
O child."

No. 92: "That momentary glimpse of him whom, oh, my
aunt, I constantly long to see, has (touched) quenched
my thirst (as little) as a drink taken in a dream."

No. 185: "She has not sent me. You have no relations
with her. What concern of ours is it therefore? Well,
she dies in her separation from you."

No. 202: "No matter how often I repeat to my mistress
the message you confided to me, she replies 'I did not
hear' (what you said), and thus makes me repeat it a
hundred times."

No. 203: "As she looked at you, filled with the might
of her self-betraying love, so she then, in order to
conceal it, looked also at the other persons."