Eager Above All That Every Religious
Ceremony Should Fill Their Pockets, The Brahmans Never Stopped At
Disfiguring Their Ancient Sacred Literature; And Not To Be Caught,
They Pronounced Its Study Accursed.
Amongst other "criminal
inventions," to use the expression of Swami Dayanand, there is a
text in the Brahmanical books, which contradicts everything that
is to be found in the Vedas on this particular matter:
I speak
of the Kudva Kunbis, the wedding season of all the agricultural
classes of Central Asia. This season is to be celebrated once in
every twelve years, but it appears to be a field from which Messieurs
les Brahmans gathered the most abundant harvest. At this epoch,
all the mothers have to seek audiences from the goddess Mata, the
great mother - of course through her rightful oracles the Brahmans.
Mata is the special patroness of all the four kinds of marriages
practised in India: the marriages of adults, of children, of babies,
and of specimens of humanity that are as yet to be born.
The latter is the queerest of all, because the feelings it excites
are so very like gambling. In this case, the marriage ceremony
is celebrated between the mothers of the future children. Many a
curious incident is the result of these matrimonial parodies. But
a true Brahman will never allow the derision of fate to shake his
dignity, and the docile population never will doubt the infallibility
of these "elect of the gods." An open antagonism to the Brahmanical
institutions is more than rare; the feelings of reverence and
dread the masses show to the Brahmans are so blind and so sincere,
that an outsider cannot help smiling at them and respecting them
at the same time.
If both the mothers have children of the same sex, it will not
upset the Brahman in the least; he will say this was the will of
the goddess Mata, it shows that she desires the new-born babies to
be two loving brothers, or two loving sisters, as the case may be,
in future. And if the children grow up, they will be acknowledged
heirs to the properties of both mothers. In this case, the Brahman
breaks the bonds of the marriage by the order of the goddess, is
paid for doing so, and the whole affair is dropped altogether. But
if the children are of different sexes these bonds cannot be broken,
even if they are born cripples or idiots.
- - - - - -
While I am dealing with the family life of India, I had better
mention some other features, not to return to them any more. No
Hindu has the right to remain single. The only exceptions are, in
case the child is destined to monastic life from the first days
of his existence, and in case the child is consecrated to the
service of one of the gods of the Trimurti even before he is born.
Religion insists on matrimony for the sake of having a son, whose
duty it will be to perform every prescribed rite, in order that
his departed father may enter Swarga, or paradise.
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