the exactitude
of a weather glass," added the satirical newspaper.

Having read this we laughed heartily, though we did not give full credit
to this description, and thought it a good deal exaggerated. We knew
Parsi and Brahman families in which were husbands of ten years of
age; but had never heard as yet of a bride who was a baby in
arms.----

It is not without reason that the Brahmans are fervent upholders of
the ancient law which prohibits to everyone, except the officiating
Brahmans, the study of Sanskrit and the reading of the Vedas. The
Shudras and even the high-born Vaishyas were in olden times to be
executed for such an offence. The secret of this rigour lies in the fact
that the Vedas do not permit matrimony for women under fifteen to twenty
years of age, and for men under twenty-five, or even thirty. Eager
above all that every religious ceremony should fill their pockets, the
Brahmans never stopped at disfiguring their ancient sacred literature;
and not to be caught, they pronounced its study accursed. Amongst other
"criminal inventions," to use the expression of Swami Dayanand, there is
a text in the Brahmanical books, which contradicts everything that is
to be found in the Vedas on this particular matter: I speak of the Kudva
Kunbis, the wedding season of all the agricultural classes of Central
Asia. This season is to be celebrated once in every twelve years, but
it appears to be a field from which Messieurs les Brahmans gathered
the most abundant harvest. At this epoch, all the mothers have to seek
audiences from the goddess Mata, the great mother--of course through her
rightful oracles the Brahmans. Mata is the special patroness of all the
four kinds of marriages practised in India: the marriages of adults, of
children, of babies, and of specimens of humanity that are as yet to be
born.

The latter is the queerest of all, because the feelings it excites are
so very like gambling. In this case, the marriage ceremony is celebrated
between the mothers of the future children. Many a curious incident is
the result of these matrimonial parodies. But a true Brahman will
never allow the derision of fate to shake his dignity, and the docile
population never will doubt the infallibility of these "elect of the
gods." An open antagonism to the Brahmanical institutions is more
than rare; the feelings of reverence and dread the masses show to the
Brahmans are so blind and so sincere, that an outsider cannot help