The origin and authority for early marriage are worthy of inquiry. Like so many Hindu customs, it claims a quasi-divine authority, and is based on certain reasons which, from the Hindu point of view, are of great weight. “Reprehensible,” says Manu, “is the father who gives not his daughter in marriage at the proper time.” And all commentators say the proper time is before the age of puberty.... A high legal authority, Mr. Justice Moothoswami Iyer, recently said, “According to custom now obtaining, a Brahmin girl is bound to marry, for fear of social degradation, before she attains maturity. Marriage is of the nature of a sacrament which no Brahmin is at liberty to neglect without forfeiting his caste.”... Thus a religious or sacramental purpose has been operative here, as in most other departments of Hindu life and thought.... There has been one strong incentive to early marriage, which in the past might be urged in its justification. The unsettled, precarious conditions of life, from the remotest times until the establishment of British power, encouraged parents to have their children married as soon as possible. (Rev. E. Storrow, “Our Sisters in India.” Revell.) CHILD-WIVES, PERSIA The usual age for a Mohammedan girl to marry is thirteen or fourteen, but in many places they marry as early as eight.... Poor little girl wives! They are taken away from home before they are grown up, and although they are now married women they cannot help behaving as children. There was one young wife of a Government official who received her visitors with the utmost dignity and propriety, and then could not resist the temptation to pinch the old black woman who was handing the tea and make her jump.... [Illustration: A LITTLE GOANESE BRIDE IN INDIA] Even when the children grow older their mothers, grown-up children themselves, do not know how to manage them.... One woman bit her little boy’s hand till it bled badly. He was about seven, and had cried to have his best coat on when he went to see the missionary. Another woman bit the cheek of a poor little consumptive girl of eight or nine so that there was a great bruise and the skin was broken. She told a neighbor, with a laugh, that she had got angry with the child because she was tiresome about taking her medicine, which was very nasty. There is no command in the Koran that girls should be married so young, but the mothers declare that it was the command of Mohammed, and certainly he himself set the example by marrying a girl of nine....