WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
"He only is a perfect man who consists of three persons united—his wife, himself, and his offspring."
"He who has unjustly forsaken his wife shall put on an ass's skin with the hair turned outside, and lay in seven houses, saying: 'Give alms to him who forsook his wife.' That shall be his livelihood for six months."
Miss Flora Annie Steel, who possesses an intimate knowledge of Indian life, has said that the average British view of the position of women under Hinduism is "simply appalling" for its ignorance. This author declares that she never knows whether "to laugh or cry at—let us say—a Zenana, meeting in some sleepy, self-satisfied, little English village, where a select company of British matrons and spinsters sit in judgment on polygamy with an inward reminiscence of Bluebeard, or shudder at suttee as if they could see no beauty in self-sacrifice."
In 1906, Margaret E. Noble, the Sister Nivedita, published a highly interesting book of intimate Hindu impressions entitled "The Web of Indian Life." The picture that she draws of the status of the Indian woman is fascinating, and, to Western minds, very astonishing. There is no doubt that the writer's lively prejudice has inspired her enthusiastic praise for everything Indian. She applauds the system of the
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