Introductory material (continued 15)

The great explorer Stanley did not see as much of the American savage as of the African, yet he had no difficulty in taking the American's correct measure. In his Early Travels and Adventures (41-43), he pokes fun at the romantic ideas that poets and novelists have given about Indian maidens and their loves, and then tells in unadorned terms what he saw with his own eyes—Indian girls with "coarse black hair, low foreheads, blazing coal-black eyes, faces of a dirty, greasy color"—and the Indian young man whose romance of wooing is comprised in the question, "How much is she worth?'"

One of the keenest and most careful observers of Indian life, the naturalist Bates, after living several years among the natives of Brazil, wrote concerning them (293):

"Their phlegmatic, apathetic temperament; coldness of desire and deadness of feeling; want of curiosity and slowness of intellect, make the Amazonian Indians very uninteresting companions anywhere. Their imagination is of a dull-gloomy quality, and they seemed never to be stirred by the emotions—love, pity, admiration, fear, wonder, joy, enthusiasm. These are characteristics of the whole race,"

In Schoolcraft (V., 272) we read regarding the Creeks that "the refined passion of love is unknown to any of them, although they apply the word love to rum or anything else they wish to be possessed of." A capital definition of Indian love! I have already quoted the opinion of the eminent expert George Gibbs that the attachment existing among the Indians of Oregon and Washington, though it is sometimes so strong as to lead to suicide, is too sensual to deserve the name of love. Another eminent traveller, Keating, says (II., 158) concerning the Chippewas:

"We are not disposed to believe that there is frequently among the Chippewas an inclination entirely destitute of sensual considerations and partaking of the nature of a sentiment; such may exist in a few instances, but in their state of society it appears almost impossible that it should be a common occurrence."

M'Lean, after living for twenty-five years among Indians, says, in writing of the Nascopies (II., 127):

"Considering the manner in which their women are treated it can scarcely be supposed that their courtships are much influenced by sentiments of love; in fact, the tender passion seems unknown to the savage breast."

From his observations of Canadian Indians Heriot came to the conclusion (324) that "The passion of love is of too delicate a nature to admit of divided affections, and its real influence can scarcely be felt in a society where polygamy is tolerated." And again (331): "The passion of love, feeble unless aided by imagination, is of a nature too refined to acquire a great degree of influence over the mind of savages." He thinks that their mode of life deadens even the physical ardor for the sex, but adds that the females appear to be "much more sensible of tender impressions." Even Schoolcraft admits implicitly that Indian love cannot have been sentimental and esthetic, but only sensual, when he says (Travels, etc., 231) that Indian women are "without either mental resources or personal beauty."

But the most valuable and weighty evidence on this point is supplied by Lewis A. Morgan in his classical book, The League of the Iroquois (320-35). He was an adopted member of the Senecas, among whom he spent nearly forty years of his life, thus having unequalled opportunities for observation and study. He was moreover a man of scientific training and a thinker, whose contributions to some branches of anthropology are of exceptional value. His bias, moreover, is rather in favor of the Indians than against them, which doubles the weight of his testimony. This testimony has already been cited in part, but in summing up the subject I will repeat it with more detail. He tells us that marriage among these Indians "was not founded on the affections … but was regulated exclusively as a matter of physical necessity." The match was made by the mothers, and

"not the least singular feature of the transaction was the entire ignorance in which the parties remained of the pending negotiations; the first intimation they received being the announcement of their marriage without, perhaps, ever having known or seen each other. Remonstrance or objections on their part was never attempted; they received each other as the gift of their parents."

There was no visiting or courting, little or no conversation between the unmarried, no attempts were made to please each other, and the man regarded the woman as his inferior and servant. The result of such a state of affairs is summed up by Morgan in this memorable passage:

"From the nature of the marriage institution among the Iroquois it follows that the passion of love was entirely unknown among them. Affections after marriage would naturally spring up between the parties from association, from habit, and from mutual dependence; but of that marvellous passion which originates in a higher development of the passions of the human heart and is founded upon the cultivation of the affections between the sexes they were entirely ignorant. In their temperaments they were below this passion in its simplest forms. Attachments between individuals, or the cultivation of each other's affections before marriage, was entirely unknown; so also were promises of marriage."

Morgan regrets that his remarks "may perhaps divest the mind of some pleasing impressions" created by novelists and poets concerning the attachments which spring up in the bosom of Indian society; but these, he adds, are "entirely inconsistent with the marriage institution as it existed among them, and with the facts of their social history." I may add that another careful observer who had lived among the Indians, Parkman, cites Morgan's remarks as to their incapacity for love with approval.

There is one more important conclusion to be drawn from Morgan's evidence. The Iroquois were among the most advanced of all Indians. "In intelligence," says Brinton (A.R., 82), "their position must be placed among the highest." As early as the middle of the fifteenth century the great chief Hiawatha completed the famous political league of the Iroquois. The women, though regarded as inferiors, had more power and authority than among most other Indians. Morgan speaks of the "unparallelled generosity" of the Iroquois, of their love of truth, their strict adherence to the faith of treaties, their ignorance of theft, their severe punishment for the infrequent crimes and offences that occurred among them. The account he gives of their various festivals, their eloquence, their devout religious feeling and gratitude to the Great Spirit for favors received, the thanks addressed to the earth, the rivers, the useful herbs, the moving wind which banishes disease, the sun, moon, and stars for the light they give, shows them to be far superior to most of the red men. And yet they were "below the passion of love in its simplest forms." Thus we see once more that refinement of sexual feeling, far from being, as the sentimentalists would have us believe, shared with us by the lowest savages, is in reality one of the latest products of civilization—if not the very latest.

THE UNLOVING ESKIMO

Throughout this chapter no reference has been made to the Eskimos, who are popularly considered a race apart from the Indians. The best authorities now believe that they are a strictly American race, whose primal home was to the south of the Hudson Bay, whence they spread northward to Labrador, Greenland, and Alaska.[254] I have reserved them for separate consideration because they admirably illustrate the grand truth just formulated, that a race may have made considerable progress in some directions and yet be quite below the sentiment of love. Westermarck's opinion (516) that the Eskimos are "a rather advanced race" is borne out by the testimony of those who have known them well. They are described as singularly cheerful and good-natured among themselves. Hall says "their memory is remarkably good, and their intellectual powers, in all that relates to their native land, its inhabitants, its coasts, and interior parts, is of a surprisingly high order" (I., 128). But what is of particular interest is the great aptitude Eskimos seem to show for art, and their fondness for poetry and music. King[255] says that "the art of carving is universally practised" by them, and he speaks of their models of men, animals, and utensils as "executed in a masterly style." Brinton indeed says they have a more artistic eye for picture-writing than any Indian race north of Mexico. They enliven their long winter nights with imaginative tales, music, and song. Their poets are held in high honor, and it is said they get their notion of the music of verse by sleeping by the sound of running water, that they may catch its mysterious notes.

Yet when we look at the Eskimos from another point of view we find them horribly and bestially unaesthetic. Cranz speaks of "their filthy clothes swarming with vermin." They make their oil by chewing seal blubber and spurting the liquid into a vessel. "A kettle is seldom washed except the dogs chance to lick it clean." Mothers wash children's faces by licking them all over.[256]

Such utter lack of delicacy prepares us for the statement that the Eskimos are equally coarse in other respects, notably in their treatment of women and their sexual feelings. It would be a stigma upon an Eskimo's character, says Cranz (I., 154), "if he so much as drew a seal out of the water." Having performed the pleasantly exciting part of killing it, he leaves all the drudgery and hard work of hauling, butchering, cooking, tanning, shoe-making, etc., to the women. They build the houses, too, while the men look on with the greatest insensibility, not stirring a finger to assist them in carrying the heavy stones. Girls are often "engaged" as soon as born, nor are those who grow up free allowed to marry according to their own preference. "When friendly exhortations are unavailing she is compelled by force, and even blows, to receive her husband." (Cranz, I., 146.) They consider children troublesome, and the race is dying out. Women are not allowed to eat of the first seal of the season. The sick are left to take care of themselves. (Hall, II., 322, I., 103.) In years of scarcity widows "are rejected from the community, and hover about the encampments like starving wolves … until hunger and cold terminate their wretched existence." (M'Lean, II., 143.) Men and women alike are without any sense of modesty; in their warm hovels both sexes divest themselves of nearly all their clothing. Nor, although they fight and punish jealousy, have they any regard for chastity per se. Lending a wife or daughter to a guest is a recognized duty of hospitality. Young couples live together on trial. When the husband is away hunting or fishing the wife has her intrigues, and often adultery is committed sans gêne on either side. Unnatural vices are indulged in without secrecy, and altogether the picture is one of utter depravity and coarseness.[257]

Under such circumstances we hardly needed the specific assurance of Rink, who collected and published a volume of Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, and who says that "never is much room given in this poetry to the almost universal feeling of love." He refers, of course, to any kind of love, and he puts it very mildly. Not only is there no trace of altruistic affection in any of these tales and traditions, but the few erotic stories recorded (e.g., pp. 236-37) are too coarse to be cited or summarized here. Hall, too, concluded that "love—if it come at all—comes after marriage." He also informs us (II., 313) that there "generally exists between husband and wife a steady but not very demonstrative affection;" but here he evidently wrongs the Eskimos; for, as he himself remarks (126), they

"always summarily punish their wives for any real or imaginary offence. They seize the first thing at hand—a stone, knife, hatchet, or spear—and throw it at the offending woman, just as they would at their dogs."

What could be more "demonstrative" than such "steady affection?"

INDIA—WILD TRIBES AND TEMPLE GIRLS

India, it has been aptly said, "forms a great museum of races in which we can study man from his lowest to his highest stages of culture." It is this multiplicity of races and their lack of patriotic co-operation that explains the conquest of the hundreds of millions of India by the tens of millions of England. Obviously it would be impossible to make any general assertion regarding love that would apply equally to the 10,000,000 educated Brahmans, who consider themselves little inferior to gods, the 9,000,000 outcasts who are esteemed and treated infinitely worse than animals, and the 17,000,000 of the aboriginal tribes who are comparable in position and culture to our American Indians. Nevertheless, we can get an approximately correct composite portrait of love in India by making two groups and studying first, the aboriginal tribes, and then the more or less civilized Hindoos (using this word in the most comprehensive sense), with their peculiar customs, laws, poetic literature, and bayadères, or temple girls.

In Bengal and Assam alone, which form but a small corner of this vast country, the aborigines are divided into nearly sixty distinct races, differing from each other in various ways, as American tribes do. They have not been described by as many and as careful observers as our American Indians have, but the writings of Lewin, Galton, Rowney, Man, Shortt, Watson and Kaye, and others supply sufficient data to enable us to understand the nature of their amorous feelings.

"WHOLE TRACTS OF FEELING UNKNOWN TO THEM"

Lewin gives us the interesting information (345-47) that with the Chittagong hill-tribes

"women enjoy perfect freedom of action; they go unveiled, they would seem to have equal rights of heritage with men, while their power of selecting their own husband is to the full as free as that of our own English maidens."

Moreover, "in these hills the crime of infidelity among wives is almost unknown; so also harlots and courtesans are held in abhorrence amongst them."

On reading these lines our hopes are raised that at last we may have come upon a soil favorable to the growth of true love. But Lewin's further remarks dispel that illusion:

"In marriage, with us, a perfect world springs up at the word, of tenderness, of fellowship, trust, and self-devotion. With them it is a mere animal and convenient connection for procreating their species and getting their dinner cooked. They have no idea of tenderness, nor of the chivalrous devotion that prompted the old Galilean fisherman when he said 'Give ye honor unto the woman as to the weaker vessel,' … The best of them will refuse to carry a burden if there be a wife, mother, or sister near at hand to perform the task." "There are whole tracts of mind, and thought, and feeling, which are unknown to them."

PRACTICAL PROMISCUITY

One of the most important details of my theory is that while there can be no romantic love without opportunity for genuine courtship and free choice, nevertheless the existence of such opportunity and choice does not guarantee the presence of love unless the other conditions for its growth—general refinement and altruistic impulses—coexist with them. Among the Chittagong hill-tribes these conditions—constituting "whole tracts of mind, and thought, and feeling"—do not coexist with the liberty of choice, hence it is useless to look for love in our sense of the word. Moreover, when we further read in Lewin that the reason why there are no harlots is that they "are rendered unnecessary by the freedom of intercourse indulged in and allowed to both sexes before marriage," we see that what at first seemed a virtue is really a mark of lower degradation. Some of the oldest legislators, like Zoroaster and Solon, already recognized the truth that it was far better to sacrifice a few women to the demon of immorality than to expose them all to contamination. The wild tribes of India in general have not yet arrived at that point of view. In their indifference to chastity they rank with the lowest savages, and usually there is a great deal of promiscuous indulgence before a mate is chosen for a union of endurance. Among the Oráons, as Dalton tells us (248), "liaisons between boys and girls of the same village seldom end in marriage;" and he gives strange details regarding the conduct of the young people which may not be cited here, and in which the natives see "no impropriety." Regarding the Butias Rowney says (142):

"The marriage tie is so loose that chastity is quite unknown amongst them. The husbands are indifferent to the honor of their wives, and the wives do not care to preserve that which has no value attached to it. … The intercourse of the sexes is, in fact, promiscuous."

Of the Lepchas Rowney says (139) that "chastity in adult girls previous to marriage is neither to be met with nor cared for." Of the Mishmees he says (163): "Wives are not expected to be chaste, and are not thought worse off when otherwise," and of the Kookies (186): "All the women of a village, married or unmarried, are available to the chief at his will, and no stigma attaches to those who are favored by him." In some tribes wives are freely exchanged. Dalton says of the Butan (98) that "the intercourse between the sexes is practically promiscuous." Rhyongtha girls indulge in promiscuous intercourse with several lovers before marriage. (Lewin, 121.) With the Kurmuba, "no such ceremony as marriage exists." They "live together like the brute creation." (W.R. King, 44.)

My theory that in practice, at any rate, if not in form, promiscuity was the original state of affairs among savages, in India as elsewhere, is supported by the foregoing facts, and also by what various writers have told us regarding the licentious festivals indulged in by these wild tribes of India. "It would appear," says Dalton (300),

"that most of the hill-tribes found it necessary to promote marriage by stimulating intercourse between the sexes at particular seasons of the year…. At one of the Kandh festivals held in November all the lads and lasses assemble for a spree, and a bachelor has then the privilege of making off with any unmarried girl whom he can induce to go with him, subject to a subsequent arrangement with the parents of the maiden."

Dalton gives a vivid description of these festivals as practised by the Hos in January, when the granaries are full of wheat and the natives "full of deviltry:"

"They have a strange notion that at this period men and women are so overcharged with vicious propensities, that it is absolutely necessary for the safety of the person to let off steam by allowing, for a time, full vent to the passions. The festival therefore becomes a saturnale, during which servants forget their duties to their masters, children their reverence for parents, even their respect for women, and women all notions of modesty, delicacy, and gentleness; they become raging bacchantes….

"The Ho population of the village forming the environs of Chaibasa are at other seasons quiet and reserved in manner, and in their demeanor toward women gentle and decorous; even in the flirtations I have spoken of they never transcend the bounds of decency. The girls, though full of spirits and somewhat saucy, have innate notions of propriety that make them modest in demeanor, though devoid of all prudery…. Since their adoption of clothing they are careful to drape themselves decently as well as gracefully, but they throw all this aside during the Mágh feast. Their natures appear to undergo a temporary change. Sons and daughters revile their parents in gross language, and parents their children; men and women become almost like animals in the indulgence of their amorous propensities. They enact all that was ever portrayed by prurient artists in a bacchanalian festival or pandean orgy; and as the light of the sun they adore and the presence of numerous spectators seem to be no restraint on their indulgence, it cannot be expected that chastity is preserved when the shades of night fall on such a scene of licentiousness and debauchery."

"MARVELLOUSLY PRETTY AND ROMANTIC"

Nor are these festivals of rare occurrence. They last three or four days and are held at the different villages at different dates, so the inhabitants of each may take part in "a long succession of these orgies." When Dalton declares (206) regarding these coarse and dissolute Hos, who thus spend a part of each year in "a long succession of orgies," in which their own wives and daughters participate, that they are nevertheless capable of the higher emotions—though he admits they have no words for them—he merely proves that long intercourse with such savages blunted his own sensibilities, or what is more probable—that he himself never understood the real nature of the higher emotions—those "tracts of feeling" which Lewin found missing among the hill-tribes. We are confirmed in this suspicion by noticing Dalton's ecstatic delight over the immoral courtship customs of the Bhúiyas, which he found "marvellously pretty and romantic" and describes as follows:

"In each village there is, as with the Oráons, an open space for a dancing ground, called by the Bhúiyas the Darbár; and near it the bachelors' hall…. here the young men must all sleep at night, and here the drums are kept. Some villages have a 'Dhangarin bássa,' or house for maidens, which, strange to say, they are allowed to occupy without anyone to look after them. They appear to have very great liberty, and slips of morality, as long as they are confined to the tribe, are not much heeded. Whenever the young men of the village go to the Darbár and beat the drums the young girls join them there, and they spend their evenings dancing and enjoying themselves without any interference on the part of the elders.

"The more exciting and exhilarating occasions are when the young men of one village proceed to visit the maidens of another village, or when the maidens return the call. The young men provide themselves with presents for the girls, generally consisting of combs for the hair and sweets, and going straight to the Darbár of the village they visit, they proclaim their arrival loudly by beating their drums and tambourines. The girls of that village immediately join them. Their male relations and neighbors must keep entirely out of view, leaving the field clear for the guests. The offerings of the visitors are now gallantly presented and graciously accepted and the girls at once set to work to prepare a dinner for their beaux, and after the meal they dance and sing and flirt all night together, and the morning dawns on more than one pair of pledged lovers. Then the girls, if the young men have conducted themselves to their satisfaction, make ready the morning meal for themselves and their guests; after which the latter rise to depart, and still dancing and playing on the drums, move out of the village followed by the girls, who escort them to the boundary. This is generally a rock-broken stream with wooded banks; here they halt, the girls on one side, the lads on the other, and to the accompaniment of the babbling brook sing to each other in true bucolic style. The song on these occasions is to a certain extent improvised, and is a pleasant mixture of raillery and love-making….

"The song ended, the girls go down on their knees, and bowing to the ground respectfully salute the young men, who gravely and formally return the compliment, and they part.

"The visit is soon returned by the girls. They are received by the young men in their Darbár and entertained, and the girls of the receiving village must not be seen….

"They have certainly more wit, more romance, and more poetry in their composition than is usually found among the country folk in India."

LIBERTY OF CHOICE

All this may indeed be "marvellously pretty and romantic," but I fail to see the least indication of the "higher emotions." Nor can I find them in some further interesting remarks regarding the Hos made by the same author (192-93). Thirty years ago, he says, a girl of the better class cost forty or fifty head of cattle. Result—a decrease in the number of marriages and an increase of immoral intimacies. Sometimes a girl runs away with her lover, but the objection to this is that elopements are not considered respectable.

"It is certainly not from any yearning for celibacy that the marriage of Singbhum maidens is so long postponed. The girls will tell you frankly that they do all they can to please the young men, and I have often heard them pathetically bewailing their want of success. They make themselves as attractive as they can, flirt in the most demonstrative manner, and are not too coy to receive in public attentions from those they admire. They may be often seen in well-assorted pairs returning from market with arms interlaced, and looking at each other as lovingly as if they were so many groups of Cupids and Psyches, but with all this the 'men will not propose.' Tell a maiden you think her nice-looking, she is sure to reply 'Oh, yes! I am, but what is the use of it, the young men of my acquaintance don't see it.'"

Here we note a frankly commercial view of marriage, without any reference to "higher emotions." In this tribe, too, the girls are not allowed the liberty of choice. Indeed, when we examine this point we find that Westermarck is wrong, as usual, in assigning such a privilege to the girls of most of these tribes. He himself is obliged to admit (224) that

"in many of the uncivilized tribes of India parents are in the habit of betrothing their sons…. The paternal authority approaches the patria potestas of the ancient Aryan nations."

The Kisans, Mundas, Santals, Máriás, Mishmis, Bhils, and Yoonthalin Karens are tribes among whom fathers thus reserve the right of selecting wives for their sons; and it is obvious that in all such cases daughters have still less choice than sons. Colonel Macpherson throws light on this point when he says of the Kandhs:

"The parents obtain the wives of their sons during their boyhood, as very valuable domestic servants, and their selections are avowedly made with a view to utility in this character."[258]

Rowney reports (103) that the Khond boys are married at the age of ten and twelve to girls of fifteen to sixteen; and among the Reddies it is even customary to marry boys of five or six years to women of sixteen to twenty. The "wife," however, lives with an uncle or relation, who begets children for the boy-husband. When the boy grows up his "wife" is perhaps too old for him, so he in turn takes possession of some other boy's "wife".[259] The young folks are obviously in the habit of obeying implicitly, for as Dalton says (132) of the Kisans, "There is no instance on record of a youth or maiden objecting to the arrangement made for them." With the Savaras, Boad Kandhs, Hos, and Kaupuis, the prevalence of elopements shows that the girls are not allowed their own choice. Lepcha marriages are often made on credit, and are breakable if the payment bargained for is not made to the parent within the specified time. (Rowney, 139.)[260]

SCALPS AND FIELD-MICE

While among the Nagas, as already stated, the women must do all the hard work, they have one privilege: tribal custom allows them to refuse a suitor until he has put in their hands a human skull or scalp; and the gentle maidens make rigorous use of this privilege—so much so that in consequence of the difficulty of securing these "gory tokens of love" marriages are contracted late in life. The head need not be that of an enemy: "A skull may be acquired by the blackest treachery, but so long as the victim was not a member of the clan," says Dalton (39), "it is accepted as a chivalrous offering of a true knight to his lady," Dalton gives another and less grewsome instance of "chivalry" occurring among the Oráons (253).

"A young man shows his inclination for a girl thus: He sticks flowers in the mass of her back-hair, and if she subsequently return the compliment, it is concluded that she desires a continuance of his attention. The next step may be an offering to his lady-love of some nicely grilled field-mice, which the Oráons declare to be the most delicate of food. Tender looks and squeezes whilst both are engaged in the dance are not much thought of. They are regarded merely as the result of emotions naturally arising from pleasant contiguity and exciting strains; but when it comes to flowers and field-mice, matters look serious."

A TOPSY-TURVY CUSTOM

Coyness as well as primitive gallantry has its amusing phases among these wild tribes. The following description seems so much like an extravaganza that the reader may suspect it to be an abstract of a story by Frank Stockton or a libretto by Gilbert; but it is a serious page from Dalton's Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal (63-64). It relates to the Garos, who are thus described:

"The women are on the whole the most unlovely of the sex, but I was struck with the pretty, plump, nude figures, the merry musical voices and good-humored countenances of the Garos girls. Their sole garment is a piece of cloth less than a foot in breadth that just meets round the loins, and in order that it may not restrain the limbs it is only fastened where it meets under the hip at the upper corners."

But if they have not much to boast of in the way of dress, these girls enjoy a privilege rare in India or elsewhere of making the first advances.

"As there is no restriction on innocent intercourse, the boys and girls freely mixing together in the labors of the field and other pursuits, an amorous young lady has ample opportunity of declaring her partiality, and it is her privileged duty to speak first…. The maiden coyly tells the youth to whom she is about to surrender herself that she has prepared a spot in some quiet and secluded valley to which she invites him…. In two or three days they return to the village and their union is then publicly proclaimed and solemnized. Any infringement of the rule which declares that the initiative shall in such cases rest with the girl is summarily and severely punished."

For a man to make the advances would be an insult not only to the girl but to the whole tribe, resulting in fines. But let us hear the rest of the topsy-turvy story.

"The marriage ceremony chiefly consists of dancing, singing, and feasting. The bride is taken down to the nearest stream and bathed, and the party next proceeds to the house of the bridegroom, who pretends to be unwilling and runs away, but is caught and subjected to a similar ablution, and then taken, in spite of the resistance and the counterfeited grief and lamentation of his parents, to the bride's house."

It is true that this inversion of the usual process of proposing and acting a comedy of sham coyness occurs only in the case of the poor girls, the wealthy ones being betrothed by their parents in infancy; but it would be interesting to learn the origin of this quaint custom from someone who has had a chance to study this tribe. Probably the girl's poverty furnishes the key. The whole thing seems like a practical joke raised to the dignity of an institution. The perversion of all ordinary rules is consistently carried out in this, too, that "if the old people refuse they can be beaten into compliance!" That the loss of female coyness is not a gain to the cause of love or of virtue is self-evident.

PAHÁRIA LADS AND LASSES

Thus, once more, we are baffled in our attempts to find genuine romantic love. Of its fourteen ingredients the altruistic ones are missing entirely. What Dalton writes (248) regarding the Oráons,

"Dhúmkúria lads are no doubt great flirts, but each has a special favorite among the young girls of his acquaintance, and the girls well know to whose touch and pressure in the dance each maiden's heart is especially responsive," will not mislead any reader of this book, who will know that it indicates merely individual preference, which goes with all sorts of love, and is moreover, characteristically shallow here; for, as Dalton has told us, these village flirtations "seldom end in marriage."

The other ingredients that primitive love shares with romantic love—monopoly, jealousy, coyness, etc., are also, as we saw, weak among the wild tribes of India. Westermarck (503) indeed fancied he had discovered the occurrence among them of "the absorbing passion for one." "Colonel Dalton," he says, "represents the Pahária lads and lasses as forming very romantic attachments; 'if separated only for an hour,' he says, 'they are miserable.'" In reality Dalton does not "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."

No. 234: "Although all (my) possessions were consumed in the village fire, yet is (my) heart rejoiced, (when it was put out) he took the bucket as it passed from hand to hand (from my hand)."

No. 299: "She stares, without having an object, gives vent to long sighs, laughs into vacant space, mutters unintelligible words—surely she must bear something in her heart."

No. 302: "'Do give her to the one she carries in her heart. Do you not see, aunt, that she is pining away?' 'No one rests in my heart' [literally; whence could come in my heart resting?]—thus speaking, the girl fell into a swoon."

No. 345: "If it is not your beloved, my friend, how is it that at the mention of his name your face glows like a lotos bud opened by the sun's rays?"

No. 368: "Like illness without a doctor—like living with relatives if one is poor, like the sight of an enemy's prosperity—so difficult is it to endure separation from you."

No. 378: "Whatever you do, whatever you say, and wherever you turn your eyes, the day is not long enough for her efforts to imitate you."

No. 440: "…She, whose every limb was bathed in perspiration, at the mere mention of his name."

No. 453: "My friend! tell me honestly, I ask you: do the bracelets of all women become larger when the lover is far away?"

No. 531: "In whichever direction I look I see you before me, as if painted there. The whole firmament brings before me as it were a series of pictures of you."

No. 650: "From him proceed all discourses, all are about him, end with him. Is there then, my aunt, but one young man in all this village?"

While these poems may have been sung mostly by bayadères, there are others which obviously give expression to the legitimate feelings of married women. This is especially true of the large number which voice the sorrows of women at the absence of their husbands after the rains have set in. The rainy season is in India looked on as the season of love, and separation from the lover at this time is particularly bewailed, all the more as the rains soon make the roads impassable.

No. 29: "To-day, when, alone, I recalled the joys we had formerly shared, the thunder of the new clouds sounded to me like the death-drum (that accompanies culprits to the place of execution)."

No. 47: "The young wife of the man who has got ready for his journey roams, after his departure, from house to house, trying to get the secret for preserving life from wives who have learned how to endure separation from their beloved."

No. 227: "In putting down the lamp the wife of the wanderer turns her face aside, fearing that the stream of tears that falls at the thought of the beloved might drop on it."

No. 501: "When the voyager, on taking leave, saw his wife turn pale, he was overcome by grief and unable to go."

No. 623: "The wanderer's wife does indeed protect her little son by interposing her head to catch the rain water dripping from the eaves, but fails to notice (in her grief over her absent one) that he is wetted by her tears."

These twenty-one poems are the best samples of everything contained in Hâla's anthology illustrating the serious side of love among the bayadères and married women of India. Careful perusal of them must convince the reader that there is nothing in them revealing the altruistic phases of love. There is much ardent longing for the selfish gratification which the presence of a lover would give; deep grief at his absence; indications that a certain man could afford her much more pleasure by his presence than others—and that is all. When a girl wails that she is dying because her lover is absent she is really thinking of her own pleasure rather than his. None of these poems expresses the sentiment, "Oh, that I could do something to make him happy!" These women are indeed taught and forced to sacrifice themselves for their husbands, but when it comes to spontaneous utterances, like these songs, we look in vain for evidence of pure, devoted, high-minded, romantic love. The more frivolous side of Oriental love is, on the other hand, abundantly illustrated in Hâla's poems, as the following samples show:

No. 40: "O you pitiless man! You who are afraid of your wife and difficult to catch sight of! You who resemble (in bitterness) a nimba worm—and yet who are the delight of the village women! For does not the (whole) village grow thin (longing) for you?"

No. 44: "The sweetheart will not fail to come back into his heart even though he caress another girl, whether he see in her the same charms or not."

No. 83: "This young farmer, O beautiful girl, though he already has a beautiful wife, has nevertheless become so reduced that his own jealous wife has consented to deliver this message to you."

The last two poems hint at the ease with which feminine jealousy is suppressed in India, of which we have had some instances before and shall have others presently. Coyness seems to be not much more developed, at least among those who need it most:

No. 465: "By being kind to him again at first sight you deprived yourself, you foolish girl, of many pleasures—his prostration at your feet and his eager robbing of a kiss."

No. 45: "Since youth (rolls on) like the rapids of a river, the days speed away and the nights cannot be checked—my daughter! what means this accursed, proud reserve?"

No. 139: "On the pretext that the descent to the Goda (river) is difficult, she threw herself in his arms. And he clasped her tightly without thereby incurring any reproach." (See also No. 108.)

No. 121: "Though disconsolate at the death of her relatives, the captive girl looked lovingly upon the young kidnapper, because he appeared to her to be a perfect (hero). Who can remain sulky in the face of virtues?"

Such love as these women felt is fickle and transient:

No. 240: "Through being out of sight, my child, in course of time the love dwindles away even of those who were firmly joined in tender union, as water runs from the hollow of the hand."

No. 106: "O heart that, like a long piece of wood which is being carried down the rapids of a small stream is caught at every place, your fate is nevertheless to be burnt by some one!"

No. 80: "By being out of sight love goes away; by seeing too often it goes away; also by the gossip of malicious persons it goes away; yes, it also goes away by itself."

"If the bee, eager to sip, always seeks the juices of new growths, this is the fault of the sapless flowers, not of the bee."

Where love is merely sensual and shallow lovers' quarrels do not fan the flame, but put it out:

"Love which, once dissolved, is united again, after unpleasant things have been revealed, tastes flat, like water that has been boiled."

The commercial element is conspicuous in this kind of love; it cannot persist without a succession of presents:

No. 67: "When the festival is over nothing gives pleasure. So also with the full moon late in the morning—and of love, which at last becomes insipid—and with gratification, that does not manifest itself in the form of presents."

The illicit, impure aspect of Oriental love is hinted at in many of the poems collected by Hâla. There are frequent allusions to rendezvous in temples, which are so quiet that the pigeons are scared by the footsteps of the lovers; or in the high grain of the harvest fields; or on the river banks, so deserted that the monkeys there fill their paunches with mustard leaves undisturbed.

No. 19: "When he comes what shall I do? What shall I say and what will come of this? Her heart beats as, with these thoughts, the girl goes out on her first rendezvous." (Cf. also Nos. 223 and 491.)

No. 628: "O summer time! you who give good opportunities for rendezvous by drying the small ditches and covering the trees with a dense abundance of leaves! you test-plate of the gold of love-happiness, you must not fade away yet for a long time."

No. 553: "Aunt, why don't you remove the parrot from this bed-chamber? He betrays all the caressing words to others."

Hindoo poets have the faculty, which they share with the Japanese, of bringing a whole scene or episode vividly before the eyes with a sentence or two, as all the foregoing selections show. Sometimes a whole story is thus condensed, as in the following:

"'Master! He came to implore our protection. Save him!' thus speaking, she very slyly hastened to turn over her paramour to her suddenly entering husband." (See also No. 305 and Hitopadesa, p. 88.)

SYMPTOMS OF MASCULINE LOVE

Since Hindoo women, in spite of their altruistic training, are prevented by their lack of culture or virtue (the domestic virtuous women have no culture and the cultured bayadères have no virtue) from rising to the heights of sentimental love, it would be hopeless to expect the amazingly selfish, unsympathetic and cruel men to do so, despite their intellectual culture. Among all the seven hundred poems culled by Hâla there are only two or three which even hint at the higher phases of love in masculine bosoms. Inasmuch as No. 383 tells us that even "the male elephant, though tormented by great hunger, thinking of his beloved wife, allows the juicy lotos-stalk to wither in his trunk," one could hardly expect of man less than the sentiment expressed in No. 576: "He who has a faithful love considers himself contented even in misfortune, whereas without his love he is unhappy though he possess the earth." Another poem indicating that Hindoo men may share with women a strong feeling of amorous monopolism is No. 498:

"He regards only her countenance, and she, too, is quite intoxicated at sight of him. Both of them, satisfied with one another, act as if in the whole world there were no other women or men."

But as a rule the men are depicted as being fickle, even more so than the women. A frequent complaint of the girls is that the men forget whom they happen to be caressing and call them by another girl's name. More frequent still are the complaints of neglect or desertion. One of these, No. 46, suggests the praises of night sung in the mediaeval legend of Tristan and Isolde:

"To-morrow morning, my beloved, the hard-hearted goes away—so people say. O sacred night! do lengthen so that there will be no morning for him."

At first sight the most surprising and important of Hâla's seven hundred poems seems to be No. 567:

"Only over me, the iron-hearted, thunder, O cloud, and with all your might; be sure that you do not kill my poor one with the hanging locks."

Here, for once, we have the idea of self-sacrifice—only the idea, it is true, and not the act; but it indicates a very exceptional and exalted state for a Hindoo even to think of such a thing. The self-reproach of "iron-hearted" tells us, however, that the man has been behaving selfishly and cruelly toward his sweetheart or wife, and is feeling sorry for a moment. In such moments a Hindoo not infrequently becomes human, especially if he expects new favors of the maltreated woman, which she is only too willing to grant:

No. 85: "While with the breath of his mouth he cooled one of my hands, swollen from the effect of his blow, I put the other one laughingly around his neck."

No. 191: "By untangling the hair of her prostrate lover from the notches of her spangles in which it had been caught, she shows him that her heart has ceased to be sulky."

References to such prostrations to secure forgiveness for inconstancy or cruelty are frequent in Hindoo poems and dramas, and it is needless to say that they are a very different thing from the disinterested prostrations and homage of modern gallantry. True gallantry being one of the altruistic ingredients of love, it would be useless to seek for it among the Hindoos. Not so with hyperbole, which being simply a magnifying of one's own sensations and an expression of extravagant feeling of any kind, forms, as we know, a phase of sensual as well as of sentimental love. The eager desire for a girl's favor makes her breath and all her attributes seem delicious not only to man but to inanimate things. The following, with the finishing touches applied by the German translator, approaches modern poetic sentiment more closely than any other of Hâla's songs:

No. 13: "O you who are skilled in cooking! Do not be angry (that the fire fails to burn). The fire does not burn, smokes only, in order to drink in (long) the breath of (your) mouth, perfumed like red pâtela blossoms."

In the use of hyperbole it is very difficult to avoid the step from the sublime to the ridiculous. The author of No. 153 had a happy thought when he sang that his beloved was so perfect a beauty that no one had ever been able to see her whole body because the eye refused to leave whatever part it first alighted on. This pretty notion is turned into unconscious burlesque by the author of No. 274, who complains,

"How can I describe her from whose limbs the eyes that see them cannot tear themselves away, like a weak cow from the mud she is sticking in."

Hardly less grotesque to our Western taste is the favorite boast (No. 211 et passim) that the moon is making vain efforts to shine as brightly as the beloved's face. It is easier for us to sympathize with the Hindoo poets when they express their raptures over the eyes or locks of their beloved:

No. 470: "Other beauties too have in their faces beautiful wide black eyes, with long lashes, but they cannot cast such glances as you do."

No. 77: "I think of her countenance with her locks floating loosely about it as she shook her head when I seized her lip—like unto a lotos flower surrounded by a swarm of (black) bees attracted by its fragrance."

Yet even these two references to personal beauty are not purely esthetic, and in all the others the sensual aspect is more emphasized:

No. 556: "The brown girl's hair, which had succeeded in touching her hips, weeps drops of water, as it were, now that she comes out of the bath, as if from fear of now being tied up again."

No. 128: "As by a miracle, as by a treasure, as in heaven, as a kingdom, as a drink of ambrosia, was I affected when I (first) saw her without any clothing."

No. 473: "For the sake of the dark-eyed girls whose hips and thighs are visible through their wet dresses when they bathe in the afternoon, does Kama [the god of love] wield his bow."

Again and again the poets express their raptures over exaggerated busts and hips, often in disgustingly coarse comparisons—lines which cannot be quoted here.[275]

LYRICS AND DRAMAS

In his History of Indian Literature (209), Weber says that

"the erotic lyric commences for us with certain of the poems attributed to Kalidasa." "The later Kavyas are to be ranked with the erotic poems rather than with the epic. In general this love-poetry is of the most unbridled and extravagantly sensual description; yet examples of deep and truly romantic tenderness are not wanting."

Inasmuch as he attributes the same qualities to some of the Hâla poems in which we have been unable to find them, it is obvious that his conception of "deep and truly romantic tenderness" is different from ours, and it is useless to quarrel about words. Hâla's collection, being an anthology of the best love-songs of many poets, is much more representative and valuable than if the verses were all by the same poet. If Hindoo bards and bayadères had a capacity for true altruistic love-sentiment, these seven hundred songs could hardly have failed to reveal it. But to make doubly sure that we are not misrepresenting a phase of the history of civilization, let us examine the Hindoo dramas most noted as love-stories, especially those of Kalidasa, whose Sakuntala in particular was triumphantly held up by some of my critics as a refutation of my theory that none of the ancient civilized nations knew romantic love. I shall first briefly summarize the love-stories told in these dramas, and then point out what they reveal in regard to the Hindoo conception of love as based, presumably, on their experiences.

I. THE STORY OF SAKUNTALA

Once upon a time there lived on the banks of the Gautami River a hermit named Kauçika. He was of royal blood and had made so much progress with his saintly exercises of penitence that he was on the point of being able to defy the laws of Nature, and the gods themselves began to fear his power. To deprive him of it they sent down a beautiful apsara (celestial bayadères) to tempt him. He could not resist her charms, and broke his vows. A daughter was born who received the name of Sakuntala, and was given in charge of another saint, named Kanva, who brought her up lovingly as if she had been his own daughter. She has grown up to be a maiden of more than human beauty, when one day she is seen by the king, who, while hunting, has strayed within the sacred precincts while the saint is away on a holy errand. He is at once fascinated by her beauty—a beauty, as he says to himself, such as is seldom found in royal chambers—a wild vine more lovely than any garden-plant—and she, too, confesses to her companions that since she has seen him she is overcome by a feeling which seems out of place in this abode of penitence.

The king cannot bear the idea of returning to his palace, but encamps near the grove of the penitents. He fears that he may not be able to win the girl's love, and she is tortured by the same doubt regarding him. "Did Brahma first paint her and then infuse life into her, or did he in his spirit fashion her out of a number of spirits?" he exclaims. He wonders what excuse he can have for lingering in the grove. His companion suggests gathering the tithe, but the king retorts: "What I get for protecting her is to be esteemed higher than piles of jewels." He now feels an aversion to hunting. "I would not be able to shoot this arrow at the gazelles who have lived with her, and who taught the beloved to gaze so innocently." He grows thin from loss of sleep. Unable to keep his feelings locked up in his bosom, he reveals them to his companion, the jester, but afterward, fearing he might tell his wives about this love-affair, he says to him:

"Of course there is no truth in the notion that I coveted this girl Sakuntala. Just think! how could we suit one another, a girl who knows nothing of love and has grown up perfectly wild with the young gazelles? No, my friend, you must not take a joke seriously."

But all the time he grows thinner from longing—so thin that his bracelet, whose jewels have lost all their lustre from his tears, falls constantly from his arm and has to be replaced.

In the meantime Sakuntala, without lacking the reserve and timidity proper to the girls of penitents, has done several things that encouraged the king to hope. While she avoided looking straight at him (as etiquette prescribed), there was a loving expression on her face, and once, when about to go away with her companions, she pretended that her foot had been cut by a blade of kusagrass—but it was merely an excuse for turning her face. Thus, while her love is not frankly discovered, it is not covered either. She doubts whether the king loves her, and her agony throws her into a feverish state which her companions try in vain to allay by fanning her with lotos leaves. The king is convinced that the sun's heat alone could not have affected her thus. He sees that she has grown emaciated and seems ill. "Her cheeks," he says,

"have grown thin, her bosom has lost its firm tension, her body has grown attenuated, her shoulders stoop, and pale is her face. Tortured by love, the girl presents an aspect as pitiable as it is lovable; she resembles the vine Mâdhavi when it is blighted by the hot breath of a leaf-desiccating wind."

He is watching her, unseen himself, as she reclines in an arbor with her friends, who are fanning her. He hears her say: "Since the hour when he came before my eyes … the royal sage, ah, since that hour I have become as you see me—from longing for him;" and he wonders, "how could she fear to have any difficulty in winning her lover?" "The little hairs on her cheek reveal her passion by becoming erect," he adds as he sees her writing something with her nails on a lotos leaf. She reads to her companions what she has written: "Your heart I know not; me love burns day and night, you cruel one, because I think of you alone."[276] Encouraged by this confession, the king steps from his place of concealment and exclaims: "Slender girl, the glowing heat of love only burns you, but me it consumes, and incessant is the great torture." Sakuntala tries to rise, but is too weak, and the king bids her dispense with ceremony. While he expresses his happiness at having found his love reciprocated, one of the companions mutters something about "Kings having many loves," and Sakuntala herself exclaims: "Why do you detain the royal sage? He is quite unhappy because he is separated from his wives at court." But the king protests that though he has many women at court, his heart belongs to no other but her. Left alone with Sakuntala, he exclaims:

"Be not alarmed! For am not I, who brings you adoring homage, at your side? Shall I fan you with the cooling petals of these water-lilies? Or shall I place your lotos feet on my lap and fondle them to my heart's content, you round-hipped maiden?"

"God forbid that I should be so indiscreet with a man that commands respect," replies Sakuntala. She tries to escape, and when the king holds her, she says: "Son of Puru! Observe the laws of propriety and custom! I am, indeed, inflamed by love, but I cannot dispose of myself." The king urges her not to fear her foster father. Many girls, he says, have freely given themselves to kings without incurring parental disapproval; and he tries to kiss her. A voice warns them that night approaches, and, hearing her friends returning, Sakuntala urges the king to conceal himself in the bushes.