CHAPTER VII
MARRIAGE—THE GOAL OF WOMAN
There are three great events in a Hindu woman’s life: first, her marriage; second, the birth of her son; and third, if she should be so unfortunate, her widowhood.
These three events are of immense importance to all women, but as a woman of the Far East is supposed to be created for one purpose only, the rearing of sons to her husband’s house, marriage and birth of children assume a larger place in her life than in the life of the Western woman, where these two events are often merely incidents. Also when a Hindu woman marries she expects to stay married, as she cannot divorce her husband, and he can only divorce her for infidelity. Even death will not open for her the doorway to remarriage, because if her husband should die before her, she must remain true to his memory for life.
The woman’s inclinations are seldom consulted in regard to the choice of a husband, because, quite likely, when she is not much more than a child, her parents begin to look around for a suitable alliance for her. Their choice must fall upon a man of the same caste, a relative if possible. The prospective bridegroom may be a young boy, or he may be an old man, a widower. The girl must be married. There are no reasons in the Hindu philosophy which allow a girl to pass the marriageable age without a husband being chosen for her. Men may become “sanyassis,” that is, renounce the world and remain bachelors, but this is not allowed women under any circumstances, as they must fulfil their destiny, which is to be the mothers of men.
If a girl passes the marriageable age, if she should be twelve or thirteen without being settled in life, her family would feel that they were disgraced, and she would have slight opportunity for marriage in any respectable family. Therefore, it is incumbent upon her parents to find for her a husband as soon as possible, which leads to one of the greatest crimes against Indian womanhood—child marriages.
There are many preliminaries to be arranged before the final choice of a bridegroom is decided, but when he is found at last, the important question of the dowry arises. In some places the father of the bride gives a dowry with his daughter, in others the groom’s father pays a certain sum to the parents of the little bride, practically buying her. Nearly every caste has a different mode of procedure regarding the exchange of presents and money.
The girl’s personal jewellery and everything she receives from her future father-in-law, or that she takes with her to her new home, are most clearly set down, article by article, in a document, and constitute her own personal property, which she may claim if she becomes a widow.
Marriage is a most ruinous operation financially for the parents, especially for the father of the bride. He must give a feast lasting for five days to all friends and relatives, presents to all the contracting parties, and great liberality must be shown the Brahmans and priests who assist in the ceremony. If his new son-in-law is an educated youth, he will demand a much larger dowry with his bride, in these days when Western education is meaning so much in the life of the Indian youth. If he is a “failed B.A.,” he may only demand, we will say, one thousand rupees from his father-in-law. If he successfully passed his examinations and is a full B.A., he quite likely would feel that those letters added to his name were worth at least two thousand rupees; and if he should by chance be a Doctor of Laws, his demands might be limited only by the knowledge of the amount of gold the father of his bride has stored for this emergency.
After the preliminary ceremonies have been concluded and the family priest has decided upon the most propitious day for the nuptials, the family begin to make preparations for the wedding. Invitations are taken to friends and relatives who are within visiting distance by the women of the household, who make upon the forehead of the invited female guest the round red caste mark, and leave a small bundle of pan leaves and betel-nut for the other members of the family. Often a little sandalwood paste is touched to the chin and between the shoulders by the bearer of the invitation. Mohammedan ladies send a tiny mica box with a cardamom seed in it and a piece of confectionery, which is given with the verbal invitation by the messenger, who must, if possible, be some member of the family instead of a servant.
In the case of rich people the strong box is opened and the hoarded rupees brought forth with which to buy the gold and silver jewellery for both bride and groom, the elaborate wedding garments, and the saris, which are given as presents to the women guests, and shawls for the men; the store-rooms are examined to make sure that there is rice in plenty, also wheat flour, butter, oil of sessaman, peas, vegetables, fruits, pickles, curries, in fact, all the many foodstuffs necessary in the preparation of the elaborate feasts which are the main events of the wedding. Sandalwood powder is bought in great quantities, antimony for the eyes, incense, the red paste which wives use on the forehead, and innumerable numbers of the beautiful flower wreaths with which the guests are garlanded after the entertainments. Plenty of new earthen dishes are selected from the potters’ store, for these vessels may never be used the second time.
In the case of the poor man, now is the time when the visits are made to the moneylender, because, rich or poor, prince or peasant, there must be no question of stint at this time of rejoicing.
A wedding is a very gorgeous affair, being limited only by the means of the contracting parties, but it is generally conceded that all Indians, of whatever class of society they may be members, spend far too much upon the nuptials of their children.
Each one of the five days has its especial religious rite. One ceremony typifies the giving of the girl by the father to the husband and the renunciation of his parental authority. On another day the husband fastens the tali around his young wife’s neck, which is practically the same as placing the marriage-ring upon the finger of the new bride. This tali is a small gold ornament strung on a little cord composed of one hundred and eight very fine threads closely twisted together and dyed yellow with saffron. Before tying the tali it is taken to the guests, both men and women, who bless it. Old ladies whose husbands are alive are specially requested to bless the tali, in order to insure the couple a long married life. This symbol of wifehood is tied with three knots, thus trebly ensuring the marriage tie, and is never to be removed unless the wearer is so unfortunate as to become a widow, when the cord is cut. The most unkind thing one woman can say to another is, “May your tali be cut!”
After the tying of this emblem the newly married couple walk three times around a lighted fire, which is the ultimate binding of the marriage contract, for there is no more solemn engagement than that which is entered into in the presence of fire. Rice is thrown over the pair, and they throw it upon each other, signalling that they hope to enjoy an abundance of this world’s goods and a fruitful union. Rice is used at weddings in nearly all Eastern countries as typifying prosperity and fruitfulness, and it is perhaps from the Far East that we borrow our custom of throwing rice upon the newly married pair.
Many Hindu women wear, in addition to the tali, an iron bracelet to indicate their marriage state. Among the rich it is gilded and, consequently, not easily distinguished from the many bracelets that always cover the Indian lady’s arm.
A young Hindu boy is not supposed to chew betel-nut nor put flowers in his hair until he is married. On the fourth day of the marriage festivities the groom is given his first betel-nut by his brother-in-law, and his head is wreathed with flowers. In a few castes the bride has her left nostril bored on the fifth day of the marriage and an ornament placed therein. After marriage in some parts of India the woman wears a streak of red powder in the parting of her hair, and in practically all provinces she wears the little round mark of wifehood between the eyes, which, as age comes, is elongated, until gradually, by the time that children and grandchildren cluster around her knee, the little red mark has grown into a straight line, losing itself in the whitening locks. In Mysore and in some of the southern provinces a woman does not tuck up her dress in the back until she is married. Then an end of the long sari, which is twisted several times around the body, is brought from the front to the back and tucked into a belt, forming a sort of trousers, and incidentally exposing more brown leg than we women of the Western world think consistent with modesty.
At the final feast the bride and groom eat together from the same leaf to show their complete union. This is the first and last time that the wife will eat in company with her husband, if he is an orthodox Hindu and not imbued with the new Western ideas. Always, in the future, she will serve him his meal, and after he has finished she will eat with the other women of the household and the smaller children, using the same leaf which has done service for her lord and master.
When all the religious rites are finished and the festivities have come to an end, there is a final procession, when the wife and husband, gorgeously arrayed in all their jewellery, are carried round the town to the accompaniment of music, the explosion of fire crackers, the shooting of rockets, and the shouting of friends. Then, if the bride is still a child, she returns home with her parents, who keep her secluded until the time arrives for her to return to her husband’s home and fulfil the duties of a wife. The day the husband and mother-in-law come to take the wife to their home is made another time of rejoicing. She remains with them for a month when she revisits her old home, and often for the first few years, or until she has children, she lives alternately in her husband’s house and in that of her parents. If she finds herself ill-treated by her husband and tormented by her mother-in-law, the young girl often seeks her father’s home for shelter and protection, and remains with them until the husband or his mother come in person to persuade her to return home. Nearly always her family add their persuasions, if not their force, to compel the wife to return to her husband’s roof, as it is a great disgrace to all concerned to have a wife leave her husband. After the children come, the wife rarely leaves her house and devotes her time and energies to the rearing of the little ones that fill all homes, from the mansions of the rich to the huts of the poor peasants. There seem to be more little brown bodies in India than in any place I have visited, unless I except China, where the staple articles are rice and babies.
The new wife has to accommodate herself to the customs of her husband’s family, and much of her future happiness depends upon the women members of the household. If it is a very aristocratic family, she may have all the luxuries of life, beautiful gold-embroidered saris, jewels, servants, and slaves, but very little liberty. There is a saying that you can tell the degree of a family’s aristocracy by the height of the windows in the home. The higher the rank, the smaller and higher are the windows and the more secluded the women. An ordinary lady may walk in the garden and hear the birds sing and see the flowers. A higher grade lady may only look at them from her windows, and if she is a very great lady indeed, this even is forbidden her, as the windows are high up near the ceiling, merely slits in the wall for the lighting and ventilation of the room.
There are many rules of etiquette prescribed for the young girl-wife if she would show that she has been properly trained by her parents. For example, she must never speak of her husband by name, nor may she use a word with the same syllable as her husband’s first name. A friend of mine has a husband whose name begins with the same syllable as that used in the word sugar. She always speaks of sugar as “the substance you put in your tea,” and she generally refers to her husband as “he.” Nor would the man say “my wife,” but “my house,” or some word denoting the home. A man in Hyderabad met his doctor on the street and said, “I wish you would come and see me. My house has a boil on its neck.”
This same wife would not sit in the presence of her mother-in-law or her husband if others were present. It would show extreme lack of respect; nor would she speak if her husband were in the room. We called upon the wife of a high official of Bangalore, who came into the room with her daughter-in-law and her young daughter, an extremely pretty girl. The daughter-in-law would not sit down in the presence of her husband’s mother, nor did she speak, and looked extremely awkward and self-conscious, as she stood with her sari drawn across her mouth and watched us with her big black eyes. The little daughter played the veena, the national instrument, and as she sat upon the rug, gorgeously arrayed in an elaborate red and gold sari, with jewellery on arms, neck, ankles, toes, and with diamonds in each tiny nostril, she made a picture never to be forgotten.
In some of the big households where the sons bring their wives to live beneath the family roof-tree, the married quarters are not large enough to allow a separate room for each couple, and the women sleep in one room and the men in another. The mother has the right of assigning the couples who are to inhabit the married quarters for the week. But even the eagle eye of the mother-in-law cannot always watch the young people, and many a girl-wife steals across the courtyard to find her husband, who is waiting for her in the shadows. A crowd of young men in a school were asked to give their idea of what was the most beautiful music in the world. One answered, “The song of the bul-bul,” another, “The plaintive strains of the zither,” a third, “The cry of the night bird,” but a young bridegroom said, “The music of my wife’s anklets as she tries to suppress their sound when she steals to meet me in the moonlight.”
One is amazed at the amount of jewellery worn by the Indian women, yet this vanity is not confined solely to the women, as in some of the provinces nearly every man has a jewel in his ear, and many of them wear most expensive finger-rings. The women excel in the artistic use of jewellery that on other people would seem tawdry and barbaric, but on these dainty little women is most becoming to their rich, dark beauty. Jewellery is not only worn by the lady, but women of every class are covered with it. The village woman will have perhaps but one cotton sari, and her home would be merely a mud hovel, but she will clink as she walks, and you know she wears silver anklets, and as she moves her sari to peep at you, you see the glisten of a bracelet. It may be of brass or it may be of silver, or, if she be very poor, coloured glass bangles will satisfy her cravings for the beautiful, and her arms will be covered with these ornaments from the wrist to the elbow.
At a railway-station near Baroda I saw women whose legs to the knee were covered with huge brass bands that must have been most inconvenient and heavy to carry. In Poona we stopped to watch a merchant of toe-rings place his wares upon his patron’s toes which were held out to him for the purpose. The rings were so tight that soap had to be used to force them over the twinging toes. The operation was most painful to vanity, judging from the faces of the victims, but evidently the sight of the shining ring as they trudged down the dusty road repaid them for the suffering they had undergone. In this same market were innumerable booths for the sale of the glass bracelets that are worn by all the women of India, with the exception of widows. I watched an old woman in the bangle bazaar working them over the hands of the women who sat on the ground in front of her, prepared to spend unlimited time in acquiring these articles of adornment. The purchaser made her choice from the green or gold or red bangles piled carelessly upon the trays in front of her, then the bangle-seller squeezed and manipulated the hand, slowly working, pushing, coaxing the bangle over the hand, until finally it was on the arm, where evidently it would remain.
My husband and I dined with a Mohammedan who, after dinner, asked me into the zenana to meet his wife. The bareness of my arms shocked her, and she insisted upon presenting me with three bracelets for each arm, working them on so skilfully that it did not pain me, but on arriving at the hotel I found I could not remove them. I tried to persuade the Indian servant to break them for me, but he was horrified and said it would bring me very bad luck, as only widows had them broken on the arm. I feared I would be compelled to wear them all my life as my husband would not break them, having overheard the remarks about the widow. Finally I broke them myself, much to the detriment of my arms, which carried the scars for many days.
There is an immense amount of money going into India each year that never gets into circulation, as the gold coins are strung upon chains or melted to make the bracelets for the women and children. Life could be made much more comfortable for the Indian peasant if he would turn the money invested in jewellery for his womenfolk into comforts for the home.
The Hindu woman has few legal rights. Any property which her husband wishes to leave her must be given to her in his lifetime, as she cannot inherit his estate, but she may claim maintenance from his heirs, and if she should survive her son, she may become his legal heir. The male relatives are supposed to provide maintenance for the women of the family.
An outsider looking upon the Hindu home does not see where real union can possibly exist between a husband and wife. This is especially true at the present time, when nearly all the better class of India’s sons are being educated, and are reading, listening, touching hands with the outside world. The women of the middle and lower classes, except in rare cases, are practically without education, few being able to read or write. The signs point to the fact that they will not long remain in this ignorant state, because the young men are demanding educated wives, and a desire for education is abroad in the land, although an old proverb says that to educate a woman is like placing a knife in the hands of a monkey. The English Government is establishing schools for girls in every town and village, and in Baroda enforced schooling is demanded for girls as well as for boys. But because of the early marriage of the girl, she has little opportunity of becoming a real companion to her husband, as he may continue his studies for years, while, when she becomes a wife, her schooldays are over.
I met a gentleman of about fifty years of age in the South of India who asked me to call upon his wife, a young girl of seventeen years, who became his bride at the age of twelve. She was not at all what the average girl of seventeen years would be in England or America. She was the polite hostess, with no trace of self-consciousness or gaucherie, graceful in her every movement. She was exquisitely dressed and covered with jewels. Large diamond clusters were in her ears, diamonds in each nostril, and around her neck a chain of rubies with a large pendant of pearls. Her manners were charming, and as we were parting she excused herself for a moment then returned to the room with a small tray on which was the red powder for the caste mark, betel-nut, fruit, and a small bouquet of flowers. She came to each of us and bowed, then with her right hand made the mark of wifehood upon our foreheads, and handed us the betel-nut and flowers. This gracious and pretty service is one of the many little kindly acts that are always performed by the hostess herself, as it would not be polite to delegate it to a servant.
I was charmed with this dainty little woman, yet I could not help thinking that she might be a pretty toy, but not a companion to the man with whom I had been conversing a few hours previous, and in whose library I had seen Emerson’s “Essays,” Farrar’s “Life of Christ,” “Pilgrim’s Progress,” the works of Tolstoy, Epictetus, and lying upon the desk, as if just left by the master, Maeterlinck’s “Life and Death.”
According to the ethical, moral, and religious standards of the Hindus, man and woman are equal. The Vedas teach—
Before the creation of this phenomenal world, the first born Lord of all creatures divided his own self in two halves so that one half should be male and the other half female. Just as the halves of fruit possess the same nature, the same attributes and the same properties in equal proportion, so man and woman, being the equal halves of the same substance, possess equal rights, equal privileges, and equal power.
This sounds very well in print, and learned Hindus quote us the Vedas to show that in their country women and men are considered equal. They are most indignant at the conception by the Western people of the treatment accorded the Indian woman by her husband. They say that books are filled with the stories of the brutality of husbands who marry these girl-wives without love on either side, yet they point out that it is a well-known fact that there are fewer wife-beaters in India than there are in England. Manu, the great law-giver, says, “A woman’s body must not be struck hard even with a flower, because it is sacred.”
In the olden time we are told that women were well versed in the Vedas, although it is now claimed that they are forbidden to read them or to be taught their truths. It is known that two of the famous songs of the Rig Veda were revealed by women, and when Sankaracharya, the great commentator of the Vedanta, was discussing this philosophy with another savant, a Hindu lady well versed in the Hindu scriptures was requested to act as umpire.
Whatever may have been her position in former times, at present there is no woman on earth who reveals more true attachment and devotion to her husband than does the Hindu wife. There is a beautiful saying, “Man is strength, woman is beauty; he is the reason that governs and she is the wisdom that moderates.”
In the Mahrabarata we find this definition of a woman—