The right to become a polygamist, should he prefer it for any
reason, must unsettle any man's heart, and be a barrier to true and
permanent affection. That right to be thus unsympathetic and
fickle, and to inflict this terrible wrong upon her whom he ought to
cherish and cleave to, “forsaking all others, as long as they both
should live,.” Menu fully grants in the following ordinance of his
Code: “A wife who drinks any spirituous liquors, who acts immorally,
who shows hatred to her lord, who is incurably diseased, who
is mischievous, who wastes his property, may at all times be superseded
by another wife; a barren wife may be superseded by another
in the eighth year; she whose children are all dead, in the tenth;
she who brings forth only daughters, in the eleventh; she who
speaks unkindly, without delay; but she who, though afflicted with
illness, is beloved and virtuous, must never be disgraced, though
she may be superseded by another wife with her own consent.”—Code
VIII, Sec. 204.
Here is wide range enough from which to select a cause of dissatisfaction, in any hour of alienation or dislike. No tribunal or process is required; the husband is sole judge and executor of this facile law; and in a single day the virtuous and faithful lady may find herself superseded by some youthful addition to her home, or become a discarded outcast, without pity or redress on earth.
I have been often asked to what extent polygamy prevails in India. For reasons already manifest, it is not easy to give a sufficient answer to this inquiry. I fear it is more general than is supposed. Of course the crime is limited by its expense. It is a luxury that poor men cannot well afford; yet even they are not innocent of successional polygamy: they often forsake or change their wives, and then take others. Among the rich it is very common. Indeed, with that class it is viewed rather as an exhibition of wealth and splendor, and cases are not rare where ten or a dozen ladies may be found in the zenana of a Rajah or Nawab.
There are varieties in the law and usage of the different religionists of India in this regard, but all of them allow the practice. The Parsee faith and usage limits polygamy to a second wife, and
