d,
according to their rank and beauty, from one to one hundred dollars
each. The common people procured theirs at a cheaper rate. Specific
directions are given, too, for the proper government of women. "Those
wives," says Mohammed, "whose perverseness ye may be apprehensive of,
rebuke, and remove them into separate apartments, and chastise
them."[B] When such precepts as these were laid down in the Koran,
which was considered a direct revelation from God, it is not surprising
that the severest punishment was inflicted on women who attempted to
exercise any control over themselves or their households. The will of
the proud, insolent Arab was supreme, whether his demands were
reasonable or otherwise; having bought his wives cheap, he might
maltreat or divorce them at pleasure. Like the Chinese, the Mohammedan
women are denied the hope of immortality. "Earthly women, when they die,
cease to have any existence; but men, if faithful to Mohammed, are to
enter paradise, and be associated with a _new_ race of transcendently
beautiful female beings." "The glories of eternity," says the Koran,
"will be eclipsed by the resplendent 'women of paradise,' created 'not
of clay, as mortal women are, but of pure musk, and free from all
natural impurities, defects, and inconveniencies incident to the sex;
... secluded from public view in pavilions of hollow pearl.'"[C]

A distinguished European writer observes: "The Hindoos seem to have
legislated with the greatest care and detail concerning women. Yet by no
people, legally speaking, is her individuality more entirely ignored;
and in no country is the slavery in which she lives, at once so
systematic, refined, and complete as it is in India, where the lawgiver
and the priest are one. The oppressive custom of life-long guardianship
is expressly ordained. By a girl, or by a woman advanced in years,
nothing must be done, even in her own dwelling-place, according to her
mere pleasure. In childhood must a female be dependent on her father, in
youth on her husband; her lord being dead, on her sons; if she have no
sons, on the near kinsman of her husband; if he left no kinsman, on
those of her father; if she have no parental kinsman, on the sovereign.
A woman must never seek independence."[D] Not permitted to have any
discretionary power over her own actions at any period of her life, but
held in every respect subject to the will of her husband, or some other
male guardian, she is nevertheless t