Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v2.c27.s5.14

v2.c27.s5.14

The Seclusion of Women.—Like the ancient German or Scandinavian, the Rajput consults her in every transaction; from her ordinary actions he draws the omen of success, and he appends to her name the epithet of devi, or ‘godlike.’ The superficial observer, who applies his own standard to the customs of all nations, laments with an affected philanthropy the degraded condition of the Hindu female, in which sentiment he would find her little disposed to join. He particularly laments her want of liberty, and calls her seclusion imprisonment. Although I cordially unite with Ségur, who is at issue with his compatriot Montesquieu on this part of discipline, yet from the knowledge I do possess of the freedom, the respect, the happiness, which Rajput women enjoy, I am by no means inclined to deplore their state as one of captivity. The author of the Spirit of Laws, with the views of a closet philosopher, deems seclusion necessary from the irresistible influence of climate on the passions; while the chivalrous Ségur, with more knowledge of human nature, draws the very opposite conclusion, asserting all restraints to be injurious to morals. Of one thing we are certain, seclusion of females could only originate in a moderately advanced stage of civilization. Amongst hunters, pastors, and cultivators, the women were required to aid in all external pursuits, as well as internal economy. The Jews secluded not their women, and the well, where they assembled to draw water, was the place where marriages were contracted, as with the lower classes in Rajputana. The inundations of the Nile, each house of whose fertile valleys was isolated, is said to have created habits of secluding women with the Egyptians; and this argument might apply to the vast valleys of the Indus and Ganges first inhabited, and which might have diffused example with the spread of population. Assuredly, if India was colonized from the cradle of nations, Central Asia, they did not thence bring these notions within the Indus; for the Scythian women went to the opposite extreme, and were polyandrists.¹ The desire of eradicating those impure habits, described by Herodotus, that the slipper at the tent-door should no longer be a sign, may have originated the opposite extreme in a life of entire seclusion. Both polygamy and polyandry originated in a mistaken view of the animal economy, and of the first great command to people the earth : the one was general amongst all the nations [611] of antiquity ; the other rare, though to be found in Scythia, India, and even amongst the Natchez, in the new world ; but never with the Rajput, with whom monogamy existed during the patriarchal ages of India, as amongst the Egyptians.² Of all the nations of the world who have habituated the female to a restricted intercourse with society, whether Grecian, Roman, Egyptian, or Chinese, the Rajput has given least cause to provoke the sentiment of pity ; for if deference and respect be proofs of civilization, Rajputana must be considered as redundant in evidence of it. The uxoriousness of the Rajput might be appealed to as indicative of the decay of national morals ; " chez les barbares (says Ségur) les femmes ne sont rien : les mœurs de ces peuples s'adoucissent-t'-elles, on compte les femmes pour quelque chose : enfin, se corrompent-elles, les femmes sont tout " ; and whether from this decay, or the more probable and amiable cause of seeking, in their society, consolation for the loss of power and independence, the women are nearly everything with the Rajput.