55
have ultimately to reconcile themselves to the inevitable results of their children’s inclinations. Thus one of his kings is angry with his daughter for having become wife toa husband without marriage and in defiance of the Shastras. But the priest who had secretly helped the young couple comes to bear witness to the fact that they were married summarily and that the father may have his ceremonies and rites at pleasure. What the lawyers eall the doctrine of fatu valet isin fact coolly applied to the case.
One universal Hindu idea from the oldest times has been that a woman is boundto marry, anda lifelong Hindu spinster is a creature of Utopia: The very idea of an adult spinster is foreign to the Hindu mind. But to Samal it is o natural idea. A young lady in one of his poems is secretly engaged to somebody, and her father wants to give her a husband of his own selection. The family is of the Banya caste, and the lady angrily tells her father: ‘I don’t want a vbusband. I have undertaken a vow of celibacy, and you should not speak a word that will derogate from the merits of the vow. Ido not aspire to marry.” The whole idea is original, and the appalling vow of celibacy is acomic reflection against the practice of vows as well as against the national institution of allowing no woman to grow up unmarried.
The love depicted in Sdémal’s poems is either the
