India's Religious Rites Have
Crystallized Long Ago.
Whoever has seen a Hindu wedding in 1879,
saw it as it was celebrated in ancient Aryavarta many centuries ago.
- - - - - - -
A few days before we left Bombay we read in a small local newspaper
two announcements of marriages: the first the marriage of a
Brahman heiress, the second of a daughter of the fire-worshipers.
The first announcement was something to the following effect:
"The family of Bimbay Mavlankar, etc., etc., are preparing for a
happy event. This respectable member of our community, unlike
the rest of the less fortunate Brahmans of his caste, has found
a husband for his grand-daughter in a rich Gujerat family of the
same caste. The little Rama-bai is already five, her future
husband is seven. The wedding is to take place in two months
and promises to be brilliant."
The second announcement referred to an accomplished fact. It
appeared in a Parsi paper, which strongly insists on the necessity
of giving up "disgusting superannuated customs," and especially
the early marriage. It justly ridiculed a certain Gujerati newspaper,
which had just described in very pompous expressions a recent
wedding ceremony in Poona. The bridegroom, who had just entered
his sixth year "pressed to his heart a blushing bride of two and
a half!" The usual answers of this couple entering into matrimony
proved so indistinct that the Mobed had to address the questions
to their parents: "Are you willing to have him for your lawful
husband, O daughter of Zaratushta?" and "Are you willing to be
her husband, O son of Zoroaster?" "Everything went as well as it
could be expected," continued the newspaper; "the bridegroom was
led out of the room by the hand, and the bride, who was carried
away in arms, greeted the guests, not with smiles, but with a
tremendous howl, which made her forget the existence of such a
thing as a pocket-handkerchief, and remember only her feeding-bottle;
for the latter article she asked re-peatedly, half choked with sobs,
and throttled with the weight of the family diamonds. Taking
it all in all, it was a Parsi marriage, which shows the progress
of our speedily developing nation with the exactitude of a weather
glass," added the satirical newspaper.
Having read this we laughed heartily, though we did not give full
credit to this description, and thought it a good deal exaggerated.
We knew Parsi and Brahman families in which were husbands of ten
years of age; but had never heard as yet of a bride who was a
baby in arms.
- - - - -
It is not without reason that the Brahmans are fervent upholders
of the ancient law which prohibits to everyone, except the
officiating Brahmans, the study of Sanskrit and the reading of
the Vedas. The Shudras and even the high-born Vaishyas were in
olden times to be executed for such an offence. The secret of
this rigour lies in the fact that the Vedas do not permit matrimony
for women under fifteen to twenty years of age, and for men under
twenty-five, or even thirty.
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