At all events, her wedding should not be delayed beyond her tenth year. Longer procrastination entails upon the delinquent the guilt and infamy of infanticide. The distress and perplexity of a poor Kulin when his daughter attains the marriageable age are therefore inexpressible. He cannot give her away to a less dignified person than himself for fear of a lasting disgrace. His equals and superiors will not receive her without a large pan or dowry. To postpone the ceremony would be to fall under the lash of the Shasters. In this difficulty, necessity forces him often to procrastinate; and he prefers the silent rebukes of Manu and Narada to the living reproaches of his contemporaries. His only resource at last is to entreat some old Kulin, who has already made several profitable bargains in his life, to commiserate the misfortunes of an indigent fellow dignitary, and by adding to his long list of monied wives another piteous girl, to save a titled family from impending ruin. Compassion to a suffering brother may induce the superannuated polygamist to extricate him from his deplorable plight, especially since, at such an age, there is little prospect of his making a more lucrative husbandry of himself. In this way the Kulin father may free himself from his difficulty by giving away his young daughter as an additional partner of a decrepit brother dignitary. Parents have also been known, in their distress and perplexity, to present their daughters, with all the solemnities of a religious ceremony, to persons on their deathbeds, in order to evade the Shastric condemnation of suffering female offspring to remain asanscrita, or destitute of the matrimonial sacrament, and to avert the odium of offering them to inferior orders.
Kulinism is thus the very hotbed of Hindu polygamy, and of all its attendant evils. Venality or pity towards distressed brethren incites these hungry nobles to multiply their wives without number. The female suffering hereby occasioned needs not be detailed. The Kulin bridegrooms can scarcely keep house with their numberless wives, who are therefore obliged to reside under the protection of their own paternal relations. The husbands fix their head-quarters where their fathers-in-law are rich enough to settle lands and houses upon them, and sometimes visit the others in rotation. The majority of their wives seldom chance to see them—never perhaps share in their affection. To be tied to a husband of so many wives must of itself be a sufficient infliction; scarcely ever to enjoy his society must be a still severer doom; and yet few Kulin girls are exempt from either misfortune. Many a Kulin’s son cannot tell the exact number of his step-mothers and half-brothers!
