unfit for serious employment."[1] In one hymn, Satchi, the daughter of Buloman, boasts of having eclipsed her rivals in the eyes of her husband.[2] A certain number of verses speak of the wives of the gods: "The praying cows, these wives of Agni, wish to obtain a proof of the virility of the god."[3]
In Sanskrit the word "finger" is feminine, and thus very often the fingers which handle the sacred mortar are called the ten wives of Agni.[4]
In short, other accounts leave us no room to doubt that in primitive India, as elsewhere, the great and the powerful have largely practised polygamy from Vedic times.[5]
That these customs have been those of Brahmanic India, the text of Manu in antiquity, and the reports of travellers in modern times, attest loudly enough. One verse of Manu regulates the right of succession of sons that a Brahmin may have by four wives belonging to different castes. "If a Brahmin has four wives belonging to four classes, in the direct order, and if they all have sons, this is the rule of inheritance. Let the son of the Brahmin (after having deducted the bull, the chariot, and the jewels) take three parts of the rest; let the son of the Kchatriya wife take two parts; that of the Vaisyâ, one part and a half; that of the Soudra, one part only."[6]
Another verse, much more singular, declares that the children of a second wife belong to the person who has lent the money to buy her:
"He who has a wife, and who, after having borrowed money from some one, marries another with it, derives no other advantage than the sensual pleasure; the children belong to the man who has given the money."[7] As for the king, the Code of Manu permits polygamy to him in the largest measure, at least under the form of concubinage. He ought to have a troop of wives, whose duty it is to fan him, and to pour water and perfumes over his august person.
