192 MARRIAGE AND HEREDITY 



that a girl must be given in marriage before the age 

 of puberty, and the conventional shame attaching to 

 a family in which this ordinance has been neglected 

 makes every father anxious to dispose of his daughter 

 at a very early age. Ordinarily the lowest age for 

 marriage is eight years, but Manu allows a girl to be 

 married earlier if a suitable husband can be found/ 

 and the contract is not dissolved even by the husband's 

 death. Formerly widows were expected to sacrifice 

 themselves upon the funeral pyre of their husbands, 

 but in 1829 this practice was abolished. Terrible as 

 it was, the law of suttee was perhaps more merciful 

 to the victim than the social convention which has 

 taken its place. For the Hindu widow, even if she 

 be of tender years, is now an outcast from society. 

 Some thirty years ago the scandal of child-widows in 

 India induced the English Government to pass a law 

 allowing them to remarry, but the Act, being opposed 

 to religious sentiment, has practically remained a dead 

 letter,^ and the Hindu widow is condemned to life- 

 long degradation and wretchedness. Nor may any 

 woman hope to evade her responsibilities by remain- 

 ing single. Besides being betrothed before she is of 



' Banerjee's Hindu Law of Marriage. 

 > Ibid. 



