Among Hindus in general it is rare to hear of two wives in one house, but the concubinage of cities is facilitated by the temples possessing Deva dasa women devoted to the gods. In Hindu law, a man ought not to take an additional wife save under certain justifying circumstances. These are —his wife's exhibiting want of chastity ; habitual disobedience or disrespect towards him ; bad temper ; bad health ; barrenness ; or should she for a period of ten years produce only daughters. The consent of the Hindu wife, without any dis qualifying causes on her side, also of itself warrants re-marriage. The absence of these justifying causes will not, however, invalidate a second marriage. A wife who has been super seded by a second marriage, whether justifiably or not, should continue to reside with her husband. If he oblige her to leave him, she should reside with his relatives or her own. In either case the husband is bound to maintain her.
It will thus be seen that, by the law, a Hindu may marry as many wives, and by custom keep as many concubines, as be may choose. Sivaji, the last maharaja of Tanjore, married eighteen wives on one day, but this was caused by a mere accident. The raja had sent to his native place for some young women, intending to marry one and give the others in marriage to his nobles ; but on their arrival, and becoming aware of his intention, they declared that as they came to marry him, they would do so or not marry at all, but all would at once destroy themselves. In mythological history, it is stated Fiat the ancient king Dasaratha, the father of Rama, had 60,000 wives.
Notices of polygamy are more frequently met with in the stories of the Hindu gods than seen among the modern Hindus. The majority of the heroes in the writings of Kalidasa are described as polygamists. At present, generally speaking, a Hindu marries only one wife; and after her death another, if he can afford it. In Madras, a city of 400,000 people, there were (in 1860) only three instances in the higher classes of Hindus living with three wives, and these they had married successively on account of. the want- of children. Concubinage among the higher ranks of Hindu society in Madras is not and is gener selections from among the dancing girls of pagodas. In the interior, the petty rajas and zamindars marry two wives, and sometimes keep concubines at the same time. Also the marriage laws of the Hindus who follow the rules of Marumakatayam and Aliya Santana, and the customs of sonic of the Coorg, Reddi, Canarese, Gujar, and Jat races, lead to polygamy and con cubinage; but the Teling, Mahratta, Kurmi, Kunbi, Bengali, and Rajput are monogamic. In Bengal, however, a Brahman race, the Kuhn, are regarded by other Brahmans as of the highest social rank, and they eagerly give their daughters to the Kulins, amongst whom are men with many wives. About 1860, the pandit Iswara Chandra Vidya sagar published a pamphlet in Bengali denoun cing polygamy, and gave the names of twelve Kuhn Brahmans with forty to eighty wives.
Polygamy is practised both on the mainland and in Torres Straits, and Mr. 11PGillivray had heard of a man with four wives. According to the will of the father, and without regard to dis parity of age, the future husband may be, and often is, an old man with several wives. When the man thinks proper, he takes his wife to live with him without any further ceremony •, but before this she has probably associated with the young men,—such, if conducted with a moderate degree of secrecy, not being considered as an offence, although if continued after marriage it would be visited by the husband (if powerful enough) upon both the offending parties with the severest punishment.
The Abbe Em. Domenech tells us that polygamy prevails amongst the Indians of North America.
In the large towns of China and Japan, con cubinage seems to prevail to a greater extent than it is met with in the of Southern Asia. In Japan, the practice, so soon as a woman is married, of staining her teeth black, and thus destroying one of woman's greatest ornaments, can only have the effect of making the wife less attractive to the husband, and forcing his affec tions elsewhere. And in the concubinage of China there is not found among the young women whom they select, any of the deformed feet which the richer classes of the people create for the girls who are to be the wives of their households.
Mr. T. T. Meadows writes strongly on the injurious effects on Chinese women which the right to have many wives occasions. In China the extent to which wives are, by law and custom, in the power of their husbands, would produce deplorable effects, but for the almost unlimited power which law and opinion give mothers over their sons of every rank and age. So also the institution of polygamy is largely counterbalanced by the desire of all the men to marry early, in order to secure a progeny of sons as soon as ' possible. The condition of the Chinese woman is
most pitiable : suffering, privation, contempt, all kinds of misery and degradation, seize on her iu the cradle, and accompany her pitilessly to the tomb. Her very birth is commonly regarded as a Immiliation and a disgrace to tho family, an evident sign of the malediction of heaven. If she be not immediately suffocated, she is regarded and treated as a creature radically despicable, and scarcely belonging to the human race. Pan houi - pan, celebrated among Chinese writers, though a woman, endeavours in her works to humiliate her own se; by reminding them con tinually of the inferior rank they occupy in the creation. When a son is. born,' she says, 'lie sleeps upon a bed; he is clothed with robes, and plays with pearls; every one obeys his princely cries. But when a girl is born, she sleeps upon the ground, is wrapped up in a cloth, plays with a tile, and is incapable of acting virtuously or viciously. She has nothing to think of but preparing food, making wine, and not vexing her parents.' in ancient times, in China, instead of rejoicing when a child was born, if it happened to be a girl they left it for three whole days on a heap of rags on the ground, and the family did not manifest the slightest interest in so insignificant an event. This public and private servitude of women--a servitude that opinion, legislation, and manners have sealed with their triple seal—has become in some measure the corner stone of Chinese society. The young girl lives shut up in the house where she was born, occu pied exclusively with the cares of housekeeping, treated by everybody, and especially by her brothers, as a menial, from whom they have a right to demand the lowest and most painful services. The amusements and pleasures of her age are quite unknown to her ; her whole educa tion consists in knowing how to use her needle ; she neither learns to read nor to write ; there exists for her neither school nor house of educa tion ; she is condemned to vegetate in the most complete and absolute ignorance, and no one ever thinks of or troubles himself about her till the time arrives when slre. is to he married. Nay, the idea of her nullity is carried so far, that even in this, the most important and decisive event in the life of a woman, she passes for nothing; the con sulting her in any way, or informing her of so much as of the name. of her husband, would be considered as most superfluous and absurd. In China a woman counts for nothing. The law ignores her existence, or notices her merely to load her with fetters, to complete her servitude, and confirm her legal incapacity. Her husband, or rather her lord and master, can strike her with impunity, starve her, sell her, or, what is worse, let her out for a longer or shorter period, as is a common practice in the province of Chekiang. Polygamy aggravates the sufferings of the Chinese wife. When she is no longer young, when she has no children or none of the male sex, her husband takes a second wife, of whom she becomes in some measure the servant. The household is then the scat of continual war, full of jealousies, animosities, quarrels, and not un frequently of battles. When they are alone they have at lean the liberty of weeping in secret over the cureless sorrows of their destiny. The little Chineso girl born in a Christian family is not murdered, as is often the case among the pagans. Religion is there to watch over her at her birth, to take her lovingly in its arms and say, Here in a child created in the image of God, and predestined, like you, to immortality. 'rho Chinese bride is seldom seen by the husband until she leaves the sedan chair in which she is conveyed, with her belongings, to his house. Mandarin ducks are introduced at marriages as patterns of connubial felicity. In the little feet of the Chinese women the four small toes appear grown into the foot, the great toe, left in its natural position. The fore part of the foot is so tightly bound with strong, broad ligatures, that all the growth is forced into height instead of length and breadth, and forms a thick lump at the ankle; the under part measures scarcely 4 inches long and lf inches wide. The foot is constantly bound up in white linen or silk, and strong, broad ribbons, and stuck in a very high-heeled shoe. The crippled fair ones trip about with tolerable quickness ; to be sure, they waddle like geese, but they manage to get up and down stairs without the help of a stick. Infanticide, of which the husbands are the only perpetrators, is not uncommon ; but female children only are murdered, and those immediately after their birth. This horrible crime meets with no punishment from the laws of the country ; a father being the sovereign lord of his children, he may extin guish life whenever he perceives, or pretends, that a prolongation of it would only aggravate the sufferings of his offspring.