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 smiling at them and respecting them at the same time. If both the mothers have children of the same sex, it will not upset the Brahman in the least; he will say this was the will of the goddess Mata, it shows that she desires the new-born babies to be two loving brothers, or two loving sisters, as the case may be, in future. And if the children grow up, they will be acknowledged heirs to the properties of both mothers. In this case, the Brahman breaks the bonds of the marriage by the order of the goddess, is paid for doing so, and the whole affair is dropped altogether. But if the children are of different sexes these bonds cannot be broken, even if they are born cripples or idiots.