e is able to draw
from the right path, not a fool {237} only, but even a sage." And the
"Code of Hindu Laws," drawn up by order of the Indian Government for
the guidance of judges, declares:

"A man both by day and by night must keep his wife so much in
subjection that she by no means is the mistress of her own actions.
If the wife have her own free will, notwithstanding she be sprung
from a superior caste, she will behave amiss. A woman is not to be
relied on."

"Confidence is not to be placed in a woman. If one trust a woman,
without doubt he must wander about the streets as a beggar."

In accordance with these ideas the life of the Hindu woman has been
divided into "the three subjections." In childhood she must be subject
to her father; in marriage to her husband; in widowhood to her sons
or--most miserable of all!--lacking a son, to her husband's kinsmen.
Her husband is supposed to stand to her almost in the relation of a
god. "No sacrifice is allowed to women apart from their husbands,"
says Manu, "no religious rite, no fasting. In so far only as a wife
honors her husband so far is she exalted in Heaven." And a recent
Hindu writer says, "To obey the husband is to obey the Vedas (the
Hindu scriptures). To worship the husband is to worship the gods."

Hinduism and the caste system, hard on the men, are doubly hard on the
women. The women may no more rise above their caste than the male
members of the family; and they are predestined to take up life's most
serious duties before their fleeting childhood has spent itself. No
wonder they look old before they are thirty!

If any one doubts the prevalence of child-marriage in India, a trip
through the country will very quickly dispel his doubts. A law enacted
by the British Government a few years ago decrees that while the
marriage ceremonies may be performed at any age, the girl shall not go
to her husband as his wife until she is twelve years old; but it is
doubtful if even this mild measure is strictly enforced. In Delhi I
attended an elaborate {238} and costly Hindu wedding-feast and was
told that the bride was "eleven or twelve" and would go to her
husband's home (he lives with his father, of course) the following
week. My travelling servant told me that he was married when he was
sixteen and his wife ten, though she remained two years longer with
her parents before coming to him. The first American lady I met in
India was telling of a wedding she