Volume II Part 16 (1/2)
The wives of people of rank are always confined to their apartments from motives of jealousy; those of a middle cla.s.s are a kind of upper servants deprived of liberty; and the wives of the lower orders are mere domestic drudges. The handsomest women are usually purchased for the courts and princ.i.p.al mandarins.
”We can readily,” says a respectable writer, ”give credit to the custom of a landlord taking the wife of a ryat or peasant, as a pledge for rent, and keeping her till the debt is discharged (in the kingdom of Nepaul;) since we know, on the best authority, that their wise polished neighbours, the Chinese, have found it necessary to enact a prohibitory statute against lending wives and daughters on hire.” [65]
Another writer observes, ”Since the philosophical inquiry into the condition of the weaker s.e.x, in the different stages of society, published by Millar, [66] it has been universally considered as an infallible criterion of barbarous society, to find the women in a state of great degradation. Scarcely among savages themselves is the condition of women more wretched and humiliating than among the Chinese. A very striking picture of the slavery and oppression to which they are doomed, but too long for insertion in this place, is drawn by M. Vanbraam. [67] Mr. Barrow informs us, that among the rich, the women are imprisoned slaves; among the poor, drudges; 'many being,' says he, 'compelled to work with an infant upon the back, while the husband, in all probability, is gaming,--I have frequently seen women,' he adds, 'a.s.sisting to drag a sort of light plough, and the harrow. The easier task, that of directing the machine, is left to the husband.' [68] The Chinese value their daughters so little, that when they have more children than they can easily maintain, they hire the midwives to stifle the females in a basin of water as soon as they are born.' [69] Nothing can exceed the contempt towards women which the maxims of the most celebrated of their lawgivers express. 'It is very difficult,' said Confucius himself, 'to govern women and servants; for if you treat them with gentleness and familiarity, they lose all respect; if with rigour, you will have continual disturbance.'
”Women are debarred almost entirely from the rights of property; and they never inherit. Among the worst savage nations, their daughters are sold to their husbands, and are received and treated as slaves. [70] When society has made a little progress, the purchase-money is received only as a present, and the wife, nominally at least, is not received as a slave.
Among the Chinese, the daughter, with whom no dowry is given, it uniformly exchanged for a present; and so little is the transaction, even on a purchase, disguised, that Mr. Barrow has no scruple to say, 'the daughters may be said to be invariably sold.' [71] He a.s.sures us, that 'it is even a common practice among the Chinese to sell their daughters, that they may he brought up as prost.i.tutes.' [72] [73]
BIRMAN EMPIRE. This extensive dominion comprehends the state of Pegu, Ava, Arracan, and Siam. Women are not secluded from the society of men, but they are held in great contempt. Their evidence is undervalued in judicial proceedings. The lower cla.s.ses sell their women to strangers, who do not, however, seem to feel themselves degraded. In Pegu, Siam, Cochin China, and other districts, adultery is regarded as honourable. Herodotus mentions a people called Gendanes, where the debas.e.m.e.nt of the female character is such, that their misconduct is an occasion of boasting and a source of distinction.
HINDOOSTAN. The following extracts, from the letters of the Baptist missionaries, in India, will speak volumes, and might, if it were necessary, be corroborated by a thousand similar citations.
At an early period of the Baptist mission to India, Dr. Carey communicated the following interesting account to a friend:--”As the burning of women with their husbands is one of the most singular and striking customs of this people, and also very ancient, as you will see by the _Reek Bede_, which contains a law relating to it, I shall begin with this. Having just read a Shanscrit book, called _Soordhee Sungraha_, which is a collection of laws from the various Shasters, arranged under their proper heads, I shall give you an extract from it, omitting some sentences, which are mere verbal repet.i.tions. Otherwise, the translation may be depended on as exact. The words prefixed to some of the sentences are the names of the original books from which the extracts are made.
”_Angeera._ After the husband's death, the virtuous wife who burns herself with him, [74] is like an Asoondhatee, [75] and will go to bliss.--If she be within one day's journey of the place where he dies, and indeed virtuous, the burning of his corpse shall be deferred one day for her arrival.
”_Brahma Pooran_. If the husband die in another country, the virtuous wife shall take any of his effects; for instance, a sandal, and binding it on her thigh, shall enter the fire with it. [76]
”_Reek, Bede._ If a wife thus burn with her husband, it is not suicide; and her relations shall observe three days' uncleanness for her; after which her _Shraddha_ [77] must he properly performed.--If she cannot come to the place, or does not receive an account of her husband's death, she shall wait the appointed ten days of uncleanness, [78] and may afterwards die in a separate fire.--If she die in a separate fire, three days' uncleanness will be observed; after which the _Pinda_ must be performed.--After the uncleanness on account of the husband is over, the _Shraddha_ must be performed according to the commandment.--Three days after his death, the _Dospinda_ [79] must be made, and after ten days the regular _Shraddha_.
”_Goutam. Brahmmanee_ can only die with her husband, on which account she cannot burn in another fire. When a woman dies with her husband, the eldest son, or nearest relation, shall set fire to the pile; whose office also it is to perform the _Dospinda_, and all the obsequies. He who kindles the fire shall perform the _Dospinda_: [80] but her own son, or nearest relations, must perform the _Shraddha_.--If a woman burn separately, only three days' uncleanness will be observed for her; but if in the same fire ten days.
”_Asouch Shunkar_. If another person die before the last day of uncleanness for a death or birth, then the uncleanness on account of the second person's death will be included in the first, and the time not lengthened out.
”_Bishnoo Pooran_. If the husband die in war, only present uncleanness, or till bathing, will be observed for him: if, therefore, the wife burn with him only one night's uncleanness will be observed for her; but, if in a separate fire, three days; and in that case the husband's _Pinda_ will be at the end of three days.--If the husband and wife burn in one fire, they will obtain separate offerings of the _Shraddha_.--If a woman die with her husband voluntarily, the offerings to her, and all her obsequies will be equal to his.--If they die within a _t.i.thee_, or lunar day, the offerings will be made to both at the same time.--If the person be _Potect_, or sinful; that is, has killed a _Brahmman_, or drinks spirituous liquors, or has committed some sin in his former life, on account of which he is afflicted with elephantiasis, consumption, leprosy, &c. [81] all will be blotted out by his wife burning with him, after proper atonement has been made. [82]--A woman with a young child, or being pregnant, cannot burn with her husband.--If there be a proper person to educate the infant, she may be permitted to burn.--If any woman ascend the pile, and should afterward decline to burn, through love of life or earthly things, she shall perform the penance _Prazapatya_, and will then be free from sin.'” [83]
The following statement is taken from the more recent communication of another of the Baptist missionaries to India:--
”Jan. 9, 1807. A person informing us that a woman was about to be burnt with the corpse of her husband near our house, I, with several of our brethren, hastened to the place; but, before we could arrive, the pile was in flames. It was a horrible sight. The most shocking indifference and levity appeared among those who were present: I never saw anything more brutal than their behaviour. The dreadful scene had not the least appearance of a religious ceremony, It resembled an abandoned rabble of boys in England, collected for the purpose of worrying to death a cat or a dog. A bamboo, perhaps twenty feet long, had been fastened at one end to a stake driven in the ground, and held down over the fire by men at the other. Such were the confusion, the levity, the bursts of brutal laughter, while the poor woman was burning alive before their eyes, that it seemed as if every spark of humanity was extinguished by this cruel superst.i.tion. That which added to the cruelty was, the smallness of the fire. It did not consist of so much wood as we consume in dressing a dinner: no, not this fire that was to consume the living and the dead! I saw the legs of the poor creature hanging out of the fire, while her body was in flames. After a while they took a bamboo, ten or twelve feet long, and stirred it, pus.h.i.+ng and beating the half-consumed corpse, as you would repair a fire of green wood, by throwing the unconsumed pieces into the middle. Perceiving the legs hanging out, they beat them with the bamboo for some time, in order to break the ligatures which fastened them at the knees; (for they would not have come near to touch them for the world.) At length, they succeeded in binding them upwards into the fire; the skin and muscles giving way, and discovering the knee-sockets bare, with the b.a.l.l.s of the leg bones; a sight this, which, I need not say, made me thrill with horror; especially when I recollected that this hopeless victim of superst.i.tion was alive but a few minutes before. To have seen savage wolves thus tearing a human body limb from limb, would have been shocking; but to see relations and neighbours do this to one with whom they had familiarly conversed not an hour before, and to do it with an air of levity, was almost too much for me to bear! Turning to the Brahmman who was the chief actor in this horrid tragedy, a young fellow of about twenty-two, and one of the most hardened that ever I accosted, I told him that the system which allowed of these cruelties, could no more proceed from G.o.d than darkness from the sun; and warned him, that he must appear at the judgment-seat of G.o.d, to answer for this murder. He, with a grin, full of savage contempt, told me that 'he gloried in it, and felt the highest pleasure in performing the deed.' I replied, 'that his pleasure might be less than that of his Master; but seeing it was in vain to reason with him, I turned to the people, and expostulated with them. One of them answered, that 'the woman had burnt herself of her own free choice, and that she went to the pile as a matter of pleasure.'--'Why, then, did you confine her down with that large bamboo?'--'If we had not, she would have run away'--'What, run away from pleasure!' I then addressed the poor lad, who had been thus induced to set fire to his mother. He appeared about nineteen. 'You have murdered your mother! your sin is great. The sin of the Brahmman, who urged you to it, is greater; but yours is very great.'--'What could I do? It is the custom.'--'True, but this custom is not of G.o.d; but proceedeth from the devil, who wishes to destroy mankind.
How will you bear the reflection that you have murdered your only surviving parent?' He seemed to feel what was said to him; but, just at this instant, that hardened wretch, the Brahmman, rushed in, and drew him away, while the tears were standing in his eyes. After reasoning with some others, and telling them of the Saviour of the world, I returned home with a mind full of horror and disgust.
”You expect, perhaps, to hear that this unhappy victim was the wife of some Brahmman of high cast. She was the wife of a barber who dwelt at Serampore, and had died that morning, leaving the son I have mentioned, and a daughter about eleven years of age. Thus has this infernal superst.i.tion aggravated the common miseries of life, and left these children stripped of both their parents in one day! Nor is this an uncommon case. It often happens to children far more helpless than these; sometimes to children possessed of property, which is then left, as well as themselves, to the mercy of those who have decoyed their mother to their father's funeral pile.” [84]
CEYLON. ”Idolatrous procession. Each carriage has four wheels of solid wood, and requires two hundred men to drag it. When they are dragged along the streets, on occasions of great solemnity, women, in the phrensy of false devotion, throw themselves down before the wheels, and are crushed to death by their tremendous weight; the same superst.i.tious madness preventing the ignorant crowd from making any attempt to save them.” [85]
SUMATRA. ”The modes of marriage,” says Mr. Marsden, ”according to the original inst.i.tutions of these people, are by _jujur_, by _arnbel anak_, or by _Semando_. The jujur is a certain sum of money, given by one man to another, as a consideration for the person of his daughter, whose situation, in this case, differs not much from that of a slave to the man she marries, and to his family; his absolute property in her depends, however, upon some nice circ.u.mstances. Besides the _botang jupu,_ (or main sum,) there are certain appendages, or branches, one of which, the _tali kulo_, or five dollars, is usually, from motives of delicacy or friends.h.i.+p, left unpaid; and so long as that is the case, a relations.h.i.+p is understood to subsist between the two families, and the parents of the woman have a right to interfere on occasions of ill treatment; the husband is also liable to be fined for wounding her: with other limitations of absolute right. When that sum is finally paid, which seldom happens but in cases of violent quarrel, the _tali kulo_, (tie of relations.h.i.+p,) is said to be _putus_, (broken,) and the woman becomes to all intents the slave of her lord. She has then no t.i.tle to claim a divorce in any predicament; and he may sell her, making only the first offer to her relations.”
Speaking of another part of the _country_, (Batta,) he says, ”the men are allowed to marry as many wives as they please or can afford, and to have half a dozen is not uncommon. The condition of the women appears to be no other than that of slaves, the husbands having the power of selling their wives and children.” [86]
JAVA. At Bantam, and in other parts of the island, fathers betroth their children at a very early age, lest they should be taken from them to supply the harems of kings, or be sold for slaves on the death of the fathers by the monarch, who is heir of all his subjects. [87]
Among all the nations of Southern Asia, and the East Indian and South Sea Islands, the women are despised and oppressed; the wives and daughters of every cla.s.s are offered to strangers, and compelled to prost.i.tute themselves. They are moreover used with the utmost cruelty by their husbands, and not permitted to eat, or even to sit down, in the presence of the men; and yet, with marvellous inconsistency, many nations allow themselves to be governed by women, who sometimes reign with despotic authority.
NEW HOLLAND. ”The aboriginal inhabitants of this distant region are, indeed, beyond comparison, the most barbarous on the surface of the globe.
The residence of Europeans has been wholly ineffectual; the natives are still in the same state as at our first settlement. Every day are men and women to be seen in the streets of Sydney and Paramatta naked as in the moment of their birth. In vain have the more humane of the officers of the colony endeavoured to improve their condition: they still persist in the enjoyment of their ease and liberty in their own way, and turn a deaf ear to any advice upon this subject.” [88]
”They observe no particular ceremony in their marriages, though their mode of courts.h.i.+p is not without its singularity. When a young man sees a female to his fancy, he informs her she must accompany him home; the lady refuses; he not only enforces compliance with threats, but blows; thus the gallant, according to the custom, never fails to gain the victory, and bears off the willing, though struggling pugilist. The colonists, for some time, entertained the idea that the women were compelled, and forced away against their inclinations; but the young ladies informed them, that this mode of gallantry was the custom, and perfectly to their taste.” [89]