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women abandoning their blind or infirm husbands, and going off with strange men. A very considerable proportion, in fact, of Eastern stories turn upon the alleged wickedness and profligacy and intrigues of women. This most unjust estimate of “the sex” seems to have been universal in Asiatic countries from every remote times and probably was introduced into Europe through the Crusades. Not a few of the mediæval Monkish tales represent women in a very unfavourable light, and this is also the case in our early English jest-books, which were compiled soon after the invention of printing. In the oldest Indian literature, however, especially the two grand epics, “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata,” occur several notable tales of noble women, such as “Dushyanta and Sakuntala,” and the charming romance of “Nala and Damayanti;” and in another work, the “Adventures of the Ten princes,” (“Dasa Kumara Charita,”) the fine story of Gomiui, who is held up as a pattern to her sex.
