Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v2.c27.s5.21

v2.c27.s5.21

² Of all the religions which have diversified mankind, whatever man might select, woman should choose the Christian. This alone gives her just rank in the scale of creation, whether arising from the demotic principle which pervades our faith, or the dignity conferred on the sex in being chosen to be the mother of the Saviour of man. In turning over the pages of Manu we find many mortifying texts, which I am inclined to regard as interpolations ; as the following, so opposed to the beautiful sentiment above quoted : “ A wife, a son, a servant, a pupil, and a younger brother, may be corrected when they commit faults with a rope, or the small thong of a cane ” [viii. 299]. Such texts might lead us to adopt Ségur’s conclusions, that ever since the days of the patriarchs women were only brilliant slaves—victims, who exhibited, in the wreaths and floral coronets which bedecked them, the sacrifices to which they were destined. In the patriarchal ages their occupations were to season the viands, and bake the bread, and weave cloth for the tents : their recreations limited to respire the fresh evening air under the shade of a fig tree, and sing canticles to the Almighty. Such a fate, indeed, must appear to a Parisian dame, who passes her time between the Feydeau and Tivoli, and whose daily promenade is through the Champs Élysées, worse than death : yet there is no positive hardships in these employments, and it was but the fair division of labour in the primitive ages, and that which characterizes the Rajputni of the present day.