Risley, Herbert H.; Crooke, William [Editor]: The people of India: being an attempt to trace the progress of the national mind in its various aspects, as reflected in the nation’s literature from the earliest times to the present day ; with copious extracts from the best writers (Calcutta [u.a.], 1915)

18"

CASTE AND MARRIAGE

v, q<; it is, breaks on,
At this point the historical record, such as it is,

and conjectPure Lone can divine the precise ^msr-vat.
motives which induced the Brahmans o savagery which
later age to revive that custom ot Pn" closer contact

their ancestors had expressly conaem ^ ^ sacerdotal
with more barbarous races; the: gro _ueo.ested, to get
spirit; the desire, as Sir Henry Maine b« sug^ ^
rid of the inconvenient lien whicn tne contributed
husband's property ;-all these motives re y ^ been ^ re.
to the result. But when widow-sacrin ^ been

introduced, it is primd facie unlikely irui distinguishes the
enforced with that rigid consistency wn ^ widoW the

true savage ; and, in fact, the texts Prescriuf denial and patient
milder alternative of a life of ascetic According
waiting to join the husband who has gone & kss

to some authorities, they also recognize ^ q{ re.

excellent path than the two former, the

marriage. , „„trnvprsv as to the

I will not attempt to enter upon the cont^er>>

precise meaning of the passage in Parasa a^s c^^x
Institutes, on which the modern advocates ot prope ^ 8acra.
widow marriage rely, still less to discuss its mental d0ctrme.
applicability to the present age of the won . ■ irrespeCtivc
It seems more profitable to state the ca faV0Ured the growth
of isolated texts, would in any case have q{ the highest
of the modern custom which lorbids the w ^ extending
castes to marry again, and which shows & ^ suppressing
itself far beyond its present limits ana ""^^ community.
widow marriage throughout the entire ln the

Some, at any rate, of these "uses are not ... tQ cir.
first place, the anxiety of the early Hindu^ Jquestionably
cumscribe a woman's rights to property wnose interest it
tend to forbid her to join her lot to a ma ^ ^
would be to assert and extend .those g sam£ tirne the
members of her husband's family At require her to
growth of the doctrine of spiritual benefit wo ^ husband's
devote her life to the annual performance arise from
sraddh* Technical obstacles to her re-marnceremony
the Brahmanical theory of marriage itsei. rification of
being regarded as a sacrament ordained or ^ ^ woman
women, and its essential portion being tn.8 . to transfer
by her father to herhusband, the effect ot the g-----

• TagoriL^Uctures, 1879, PP- l8?' ,88'