THE OLD STORY OF SELFISHNESS

It might be maintained that the symptoms of true affection-altruistic devotion to the verge of self-sacrifice-are revealed, at any rate, in the conjugal love of Savitri and of Damayanti. Savitri follows the god of death as he carries away her husband's spirit, and by her devotion and entreaties persuades Yama to restore him to life; while Damayanti (whose story we did not finish) follows her husband, after he has gambled away all his kingdom, into the forest to suffer with him. One night, while she sleeps, he steals half of her only garment and deserts her. Left alone in the terrible forest with tigers and snakes, she sobs aloud and repeatedly faints away from fear. "Yet I do not weep for myself," she exclaims; "my only thought is, how will you fare, my royal master, being left thus all alone?" She is seized by a huge snake, which coils its body around her; yet "even in this situation she thinks not so much of herself as she bewails the fate of the king." A hunter saves her and proceeds to make improper advances, but she, faithful to her lord, curses the hunter and he falls dead before her. Then she resumes her solitary roaming in the gloomy forest, "distressed by grief for her husband's fate," unmindful of his cruelty, or of her own sad plight.

It is needless to continue the tale; the reader cannot be so obtuse as not to notice the moral of it. The stories of Savitri and of Damayanti, far from exemplifying Hindoo conjugal devotion, simply afford fresh proof of the hoggish selfishness of the male Hindoo. They are intended to be object-lessons to wives, teaching them-like the laws of Manu and the custom of widow burning-that they do not exist for their own sakes, but for their husbands. Reading the stories in the light of this remark, we cannot fail to note everywhere the subtle craft of the sly men who invented them. If further evidence were needed to sustain my view it would be found in the fact related by F. Reuleaux, that to this day the priests arrange an annual prayer-festival" of Hindoo women at which the wife must in every way show her subjection to her

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husband and master. She must wash his feet, dry them, put a wreath around his neck, and bring offerings to the gods, praying that he may prosper and live long. Then follows a meal for which she has prepared all his favorite dishes. And as a climax, the story of Savitri is read, a story in which the wife lives only for the husband, while he, as he rudely tells her-after all her devotion-lives only for his parents!

If these stories were anything else than slyly planned object-lessons calculated to impress and subjugate the women, why is it that the husband is never chosen to act the selfsacrificing part? He does, indeed, sometimes indulge in frantic outbursts of grief and maudlin sentimentality, but that is because he has lost the young woman who pleased his senses. There is no sign of soul-love here; the husband never dreams of devoting his life to her, of sacrificing it for her sake, as she is constantly exhorted to do for his sake. In a word, masculine selfishness is the keynote of Hindoo life. "When in danger, never hesitate to sacrifice your goods and your wife to save your life," we read in the Hitopadesa (25); and No. 4112 of Bochtlingk's Hindu Maxims declares bluntly that a wife exists for the purpose of bearing sons, and a son for the purpose of offering sacrifices after his father's death. There we have masculine selfishness in a nutshell. Another maxim declares that a wife can atone for her lack or loss of beauty by faithful subjection to her husband. And in return for all the devotion expected of her she is utterly despised-considered unworthy of an education, unfit even to profess virginity-in a word, looked on "as scarcely forming a part of the human species." In the most important event in her life -marriage-her choice is never consulted. The matter is, as we have seen, left to the family barber, or to the parents, to whom questions of caste and wealth are of infinitely more importance than personal preferences. When those matters are arranged the man satisfies himself concerning the inclinations of the chosen girl's kindred, and when assured that he will not suffer the affront of a refusal" from them he proceeds with the offer and the bargaining. "To marry or to buy a girl are synonymous terms in this country," says Du

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bois (I., 198); and he proceeds to give an account of the bargaining and the disgraceful quarrels this leads to.

BAYADERES AND PRINCESSES AS HEROINES

Under such circumstances the Hindoo playwrights must have found themselves in a curious dilemma. They were sufficiently versed in the poetic art to build up a plot; but what chance for an amorous plot was there in a country where there was no courtship, where women were sold, ignored, maltreated, and despised? Perforce the poets had to neglect realism, give up all idea of mirroring respectable domestic life, and take refuge in the realms of tradition, fancy, or liaisons. It is interesting to note how they got around the difficulty. They either made their heroines bayaderes, or princesses, or girls willing to be married in a way allowing them their own choice, but not reputed respectable. Bayaderes, though not permitted to marry, were at liberty to choose their temporary companions. Cûdraka indulges in the poetic license of making Vasantasena superior to other bayaderes and rewarding her in the end by a regular marriage as the hero's wife number two. By way of securing variety, apsaras, or celestial bayaderes, were brought on the scene, as in Kalidasa's Urvasi, permitting the poet to indulge in still bolder flights of fancy. Princesses, again, were favorite heroines, for various reasons, one of which was the tradition concerning the custom called Svayamvara or " Maiden's Choice" -a princess being "permitted," after a tournament, to "choose" the victor. The story of Nala and Damayanti has made us familiar with a similar meeting of kings, at which the princess chooses the lover she has determined on beforehand, though she has never seen him. Apart from the fantasticality of this episode, it is obvious that even if the Svayamvara was once a custom in royal circles it did not really insure to the princesses free choice of a rational kind. Brought up in strict seclusion, a king's daughter could never have seen any of the men competing for her. The victor might be the least sympathetic to her of all, and even if she had a large

number of suitors to choose from, her selection could not be based on anything but the momentary and superficial judgment of the eye. But for dramatic purposes the Svayamvara was useful.

VOLUNTARY UNIONS NOT RESPECTABLE

In Sakuntala, Kalidasa resorts to the third of the expedients I have mentioned. The king weds the girl whom he finds in the grove of the saints in accordance with a form which was not regarded as respectable-marriage based on mutual inclination, without the knowledge of the parents. The laws of Manu (III., 20-34) recognized eight kinds of marriage (1) gift of a daughter to a man learned in the Vedas, (2) gift of a daughter to a priest; (3) gift of a daughter in return for presents of cows, etc.; (4) gift of a daughter, with a dress. In these four the father gives away his daughter as he chooses. In (5) the groom buys the girl with presents to her kinsmen or herself; (6) is voluntary union; (7) forcible abduction (in war); (8) rape of a girl asleep, or drunk, or imbecile. In other words, of the eight kinds of marriage recog. nized by Hindoo law and custom only one is based on free choice, and of that Manu says: "The voluntary connection of a maiden and a man is to be known as a Gandharva union, which arises from lust." It is classed among the blamable marriages. Even this appears not to have been a legal form before Manu. It is blamable because contracted without the consent or knowledge of the parents, and because, unless the sacred fire has been obtained from a Brahman to sanctify it, such a marriage is merely a temporary union. Gandharvas, after whom it is named, are singers and other musicians in Indra's heaven, who, like the apsaras, enter into unions that are not intended to be enduring, but are dissoluble at will. Such marriages (liaisons we call them) are frequently mentioned in Hindoo literature (e.g., Hitopadesa, p. 85). Malati (30) chides her friend for advising her to make a secret marriage, and later on exclaims (75): "I am lost! What a girl must not do, my friend counsels me." The orthodox view is

unfolded by the Buddhist nun Kamándaki (33) : "We hear of Duschyanta loving Sakuntala, of Pururavas loving Urvasi but these cases look like arbitrary action and cannot be commended as models." In Sakuntala, too, the king feels it incumbent on him to apologize to the girl he covets, when she bids him not to transgress the laws of propriety, by exclaiming that many other girls have thus been taken by kings without incurring parental disapproval. The directions for this form of courtship given in the Kama Soutra indicate that Sakuntala had every reason to appeal to the rules of propriety, social and moral. Kalidasa spares us the details.

The king's desertion of Sakuntala after he had obtained his self-indulgent object was quite in accordance with the spirit. of a Gandharva marriage. Kalidasa, for dramatic purposes, makes it a result of a saint's curse, which enables him to continue his story interestingly. A poet has a right to such license, even though it takes him out of the realm of realism. Hindoo poets, like others, know how to rise above sordid reality into a more ideal sphere, and for this reason, even if we had found in the dramas of India a portrayal of true love, it would not prove that it existed outside of a poet's glowing and prophetic fancy. There is a Hindoo saying, "Do not strike a woman, even with a flower;" but we have seen that these Hindoos often do physically abuse their wives most cruelly, besides subjecting them to indescribable mental anguish, and mental anguish is much more painful and more prolonged than bodily torture. Fine words do not make fine feelings. From this point of view Dalton was perhaps right when he asserted that the wild tribes of India come closer to us in their love-affairs than the more cultured Hindoos, with their "unromantic heart-schooling." We have seen that Albrecht Weber's high estimate of the Hindoo's romantic sentiment does not bear the test of a close psychological analysis. The Hindoo may have fewer uncultivated traits of emotion than the wild tribesmen, but they are in the same field. Hindoo civilization rose to splendid heights, in some respects, and even the great moral principle of altruism was cultivated; but it was not applied to the relations between the sexes, and