and the sin must be expiated by a life of suffering and penance.  As long as a widow lives she must serve as a slave to the remainder of the family, she must wear mourning, be tabooed from society, be deprived of all pleasures and comforts, and practice never-ending austerities, so that after death she may escape transmigration into the body of a reptile, an insect or a toad.  She cannot marry again, but is compelled to remain in the house of her husband’s family, who make her lot as unhappy and miserable as possible.

The Brahmins prohibit the remarriage of widows, but in 1856 Lord Canning legalized it, and that was one of the causes of the mutiny.  The priests and conspirators told the native soldiers that it was only a step toward the abolition of all their rites and customs.  The law, however, is a dead letter, and while there have been several notable marriages of widows, the husband and wife and the entire family have usually been boycotted by their relatives, neighbors and friends; husbands have been ruined in business and subjected to every humiliation imaginable.

If you will examine the census statistics you will be astonished at the enormous number of widows in India.  Out of a total of 144,000,000 women in 1901, 25,891,936 were widows, of whom 19,738,468 were Hindus.  This is accounted for by child marriage, for it is customary for children five years of age and upwards to become husbands and wives.  At least 50 per cent of the adherents of Brahminism are married before they are ten years old and 90 per cent before they are fifteen.  This also is an ancient custom and is due to several reasons.  Fathers and mothers desire to have their children settled in life, as we say, as early as possible, and among the families of friends they are paired off almost as soon as they are born.  The early marriage, however, is not much more than a betrothal, for after it takes place, usually with great ceremony, the children are sent back to their homes and remain under the care of their parents until they reach a proper age, when the wife is conducted with great rejoicing to the home of her husband, and what is equivalent to another marriage takes place.  This occurs among the highly educated and progressive Hindus.  They defend the custom as wise and beneficial on the theory that it is an advantage for husband and wife to be brought up together and have their characters molded by the same influences and surroundings.  In that way, they argue, much unhappiness and trouble is prevented.  But in India, as everywhere else, the mortality is greatest among children, and more than 70 per cent of the deaths reported are of persons under ten years of age.  Those who are married are no more exempt than those who are not, which explains the number of widows reported, and no matter how young a girl may be when her husband dies she can never have a second.

Widowers are allowed to marry again and most of them do.  There are only 8,110,084 widowers in all India as against nearly 26,000,000 widows.