for men to marry, but "popular custom defies the law. Boys of ten and
twelve are now doomed to be married to girls of seven to eight years
of age." This early marriage system is "at least five hundred years
older than the Christian era." As superstitious custom compels poor
parents to marry off their daughters by a given age "it very
frequently happens that girls of eight or nine are given to men of
sixty or seventy, or to men utterly unworthy of the maidens."[261]

MONSTROUS PARENTAL SELFISHNESS

In an article on "Child Marriages in Bengal,"[262] D.N. Singha
explains the superstition to which so many millions of poor girls are
thus ruthlessly sacrificed. "It is," he says,

"a well-nigh universal conviction among Hindoos that
every man's soul goes to a hell called Poot, no matter
how good he may have been. Nothing but a son's fidelity
can release or deliver him from it, hence all Hindoos
are driven to seek marriage as early as possible to
make sure of a son." "A son, the fruit of marriage,
saves him from perdition, so that the one purpose of
marriage is to leave a son behind him."[263] A
daughter's son may take his son's place: hence the
eagerness to marry off the girls young. In other words,
in order to save themselves from a hell hereafter the
brutal fathers drive their poor little daughters to a
hell on earth. And what is worse, public opinion
compels them to act in this cruel manner; for, as the
same writer informs us, the man who suffers his
daughter to remain unmarried till she is thirteen or
fourteen years old is "subjected to endless annoyances,
beset with stinging remarks, unpleasant whisperings and
slanderous gossip. No orthodox Hindoo will allow his
son to accept the hand of such a grown-up girl."

How preventive of all possibility of free choice or love such a custom
is may be inferred from another brief extract from the same article:

"The superstitious notion of a Hindoo parent that it is
a sin not to give his daughter in marriage before she
ceases to to be a child impels him urgently to get her
a husband before she has passed her ninth or tenth
year. He sends out to match-makers and spares no pains
to discover a bridegroom in some family of rank equal
or superior to his own. Having found a boy ... he
endeavors to secure him by entreaty or by large offers