. Indian life in town and country . appeal vividly to thecharitable eye, and represent their stock-in-tradeas professional beggars. Kings amongst themare the fakirs, and other religious mendicants,who clothe their nakedness in ashes, roam theland in thousands, and batten on the superstition Men-at-Arms and Some Others 97 of the people. These have no self-inflicted de-formity to parade; inherent holiness is their cue,and their craft a complete knowledge of the weak-ness of womankind. Impudent, lazy, good-for-nothing rogues, many of them grow fat, and dofar worse things in the course of their ab
. Indian life in town and country . appeal vividly to thecharitable eye, and represent their stock-in-tradeas professional beggars. Kings amongst themare the fakirs, and other religious mendicants,who clothe their nakedness in ashes, roam theland in thousands, and batten on the superstition Men-at-Arms and Some Others 97 of the people. These have no self-inflicted de-formity to parade; inherent holiness is their cue,and their craft a complete knowledge of the weak-ness of womankind. Impudent, lazy, good-for-nothing rogues, many of them grow fat, and dofar worse things in the course of their abominablecareers, practising their arts and seductions, andunder the specious guise of asceticism living thelives of debauchees and blackmailers. India is a strange country of contrasts; and oneof the strangest of them is the stark poverty of thestarving, industrious peasant, and the sleek im-pudence of the lazy, improvident beggar, whomasquerades as a holy man and lives comfortablyon the charity of the neediest nation in the CHAPTKR VII IvADIE^S I<AST LADIES first, we say in the West; in theKast it is lyadies last. That sums upsuccinctly the difference in the domestic ideas ofthe two civilisations. There are one hundred and forty millions of wo-men in India, and their sphere is the is literally correct of about ten millions, andmetaphorically so of the rest. They are not evenaccorded a back seat in society, for in the presenceof men they are not permitted to be seated. Thewhole duty of woman is to worship and wait uponher husband (who is her lord and master in itsmost exacting sense), and to bear him sons. Insome classes, she had better be barren than bearonly daughters. And if she is a high-caste Hindu,the very wisest thing she can do is to die whenher husband does, for after that she becomes acursed superfluity in the community. This againis literal. Five sixths of the upper ten millions of Indianwomen live secluded in hareem or zenana; theterms are s
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