ZENA'NA, a word of Persian origin, signifying that part of the domain of a native gentleman of India occupied by the women of his family. In Bengal, where is the typical zenana, the dwelling consists of two houses built each round its own court. The one on the street, where dwell the father, sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons, has large, lofty, well-furnished rooms which open to the outer air. In the rear building the first floor is for cow-sheds, storage and cook rooms; above are cells, 10 to 12 ft. square, each having one door and one small grated window opening upon piazzas, which, in one, two, or three tiers, surround the inner court. Faint breath of heaven it is which, mingled with they odors from below, reaches these rooms. The only furniture of these dismal cells, even when the appointments of the gentlemen's rooms are sumptuous, are a bed stead with a strip of mat upon it, a chest, a brass cup, and sometimes another small mat to spread on the brick floor. When a son marries he brings his little bride to his father's house, and thus sometimes 50 women, each being an only wife to some one of the male occupants of the outer house, are domiciled in the zenana. Polygamy is rare, though
permitted. To each wife one of the cells above mentioned is assigned in which to rear her children, but at the time of a birth she is deprived of the poor comfort it might afford. She is removed to a cow-shed below, where, on a straw mat spread on the floor of beaten earth, with only a mat-screen between her and the animals, she must remain for 28 days, without doctor or nurse, or any one to speak to her but a low-caste coolie woman. This treatment begins usually when the little mother is not yet 11 years old. The zenana lady would rather die than be seen by a man other than her own husband; therefore a husband cannot enter the zenana to visit his own wife until all the other women have hidden within their respective cells.