with the Hindus, the Parsees got to the same point as they regarding matrimony. The Hindu "shastras" (sacred books) enjoin marriage for a girl at nine years of age. Until fifty years ago the Parsee child had to endure this compulsion. It is different now. There are instances on record amongst the Parsees where children have been betrothed at their birth by their parents. At the present time, it is quite allowable for a girl to be unmarried until she is twenty or even twenty-five without any opprobrium descending upon her innocent head. It very rarely happens that a man chooses his own bride, or that the young people to be married fall in love with each other before marriage, although the family life of the Parsees is full of devoted affection and self-sacrifice on the part of the women. A Parsee marriage ceremonial is most interestingly pretty, and has two actual services in it. A great deal of money is spent, and presents exchanged. Dowries are given to bride and bridegroom, and a final settlement sometimes made upon the bride alone.

Parsee women are generally well-formed, olivecomplexioned, and of a soft, pleasing countenance. A religious superstition keeps their beautiful hair covered, otherwise they would rank amongst the most beautiful women of the day.

The women as well as the men wear the sacred shirt, and silk trousers, tying the sacred cord over the shirt. Their "sari," or outer drapery, is from six to twelve yards in length, of the most dainty silk, and, with a short-sleeved bodice to match, forms not only a very graceful but a charming costume. Ornaments of gold and gems on neck and arms completes the attire. The average Parsee wife possesses jewels worth from five hundred to twenty thousand pounds sterling, whilst the really well-to-do woman has vastly more.

Parsee women are to-day known to be very much in advance of their Hindu and Mohamedan sisters in

the way of education. Happily they have no trammels from their parents, who are delighted to observe that their sons and daughters are the equal of those of any nation in their knowledge of languages, music, &c., &c. What is so very pleasing, though, in Oriental peoples, is this knowledge obtainable is sought after, but it never dethrones knowledge already acquired. A Parsee girl will not feel that cooking is out of place because she has had a college education; she glories in the fact that she can cook as well as any other good housewife, and that she is able to economise even though rolling in wealth. Out of her many expenses for the day the poor are always remembered. Call it superstition if you will, but it is, to my mind, the greatest of Christian charity where the blind, the poor, and the aged are cared for and protected. You will see neither a Parsee drunkard nor a Parsee beggar on the streets. The men are law-abiding, the women a law-loving people. The Parsees do not thrust their poor relations broadcast upon the public, as is done in all European countries, and it is because men and women agree to work for the good of their own community. Persian women centuries ago have been at the head of armies, guiding and encouraging their soldiers to duty. Parsee women to-day are foremost in good deeds, imparting education to the uneducated, keeping together homes and families, shining in society as doctors, barristers, linguists, musicians, artists, nurses. What want we more? They live a natural life, enjoy their games, can count upon a girlhood as well as a womanhood, and are fast becoming splendid companions for their husbands ; it is no longer a rule but an oddity when a Parsee husband spends his evenings away from his home.

The Parsees are called the Parisians of the East, on account of their perfect manners; they are also called by Christians "the good Samaritans of the East," for no tale of woe goes unheard, and there are many

cases to-day of fact where English people and Eurasians are supported by the Parsees. Schools have been established all over India by them, so that their children may be educated; and Bombay revels in a women's club managed by Parsee ladies with very great

success.

Women are women all the world over, the tenderest plant of God's creation. No woman is without religion, and the woman of the Orient makes that religion the guiding star of her life; she does not put it on as a cloak for one day of the week alone, but her very meals and ablutions are religious ceremonials. It is because they practise what they preach, and implicitly follow out the teachings of their Master (Zoroaster) that they are a successful people.

Whether in times of festival or fasting, joy or sorrow, plague, famine, or pestilence, the Parsee woman is to the fore. The most ignorant of them (for there are some quite uneducated) have hearts, you can lead them as children, there is no guile. Society has not brought its baneful influence upon them yet-and may it never do so. We want pure, unselfish, loving, selfsacrificing spirits still. As long as Nature rules, India will glory in her women, whether they be Hindus or Mohamedans, Tamils or Parsees; but let artificiality and society manners come into our courts and we shall be as a people lost for ever.

INDIAN LITERATURE

BY MISS C. S. HUGHES

INDIAN literature finds its first reliable source in the Vedic songs of the early Aryan invaders of India. Beyond even these are folk-songs and legendary tales, whose source cannot now be traced, although they are found incorporated in the literature of a later period. So far there remains no evidence of any connected literary history prior to the entry of the Aryans into the land. These Aryans, travelling from some unknown home, where they spoke a language allied to the Aryan languages of Europe, left behind them, on their march towards India, some of their kin in Persia, the ancient Iran. To the land of their adoption they brought their own language, the Vedic Sanskrit, their own religious ideas, their own gods, deities, or bright ones, their own elected kings, poet-priests, and tribal customs. Their march across the bleak passes on the north-west frontiers, was, according to their Vedic hymns, one long, triumphal progress. Of their reverses and defeats the hymns are silent. Full of life and vigour, and with a firm belief in their own power and that of their gods, they record how they swept from before their path all opposing foes. Having defeated or thrust back the yellow races who in Central Asia opposed their march from the ancestral home, probably in Northern Europe, they despised the blackskinned people they met on the far side of the Himalayas. Chanting their war-songs, and trusting in their gods for aid, led by their chosen kings, and incited to

valour by the enthusiasm of their poet-priests, the Aryans advanced across the Indus, sung by them as the glorious Sindhu, the sound of whose rolling waters was heard even in the heavens. In the Vedic hymns the Indus is extolled as the river that comes roaring like a bull, flashing, sparkling, gleaming, unconquerable in her majesty, beautiful as a handsome, spotted mare.

The effusions of this early period, of which the hymn to the mighty river is an example, were collected together by the poet-priests into the Vedas or books of wisdom. From these Vedic hymns must be culled all that can be known of the mode of thought, the religious sentiments and social environment of the first historic invaders of India, who crossed the northwest passes some two thousand years before the Christian era.

The Vedic books are four in number; they are known as the Rig, Yajur, Sama, and Atharva Vedas. Of these the Sama consists mostly of selections from the Rig Veda, and the Yajur is a collection of hymns relating to the practical details of the sacrificial rites, so that the Atharvan and Rig Vedas remain the chief source from which can be obtained information of India in the earliest historic times.

The hymns of the Rig Veda now number 1028, a small part of the original Vedic outburst of song, for like all the early Indian literature the hymns were handed down by word of mouth, and the collections, or Sanhitas, as they were called, were but selections from the treasury of song.

In these hymns of the Rig Veda, the oldest of the four books of wisdom, much of the life-history of these warrior tribes, whose every action was performed under the guidance of their tribal deities, can be traced. These deities are implored to slay the aboriginal inhabitants of the land, who are described as black foes, to flay them of their skins, and to bestow on the