Given such an utter subordination of woman, it is self-evident that there would be no question of her choosing a husband. It is the father’s duty to marry his daughter; and he need not wait till she has reached puberty: “A father must give his daughter in marriage to a young man of agreeable appearance, and of the same rank, according to the law, although she may not have attained the age of eight years, at which he ought to marry her.”[566] However, if the father neglects the prime duty of marrying his daughter, the law ordains that the latter shall proceed to do it. Marriage is a sacred duty: “Let a girl, although adult, wait three years; but after that period, let her choose a husband of the same rank as herself.”[567] The girl is then free, and her husband in marrying her owes no payment to the father: “The father has lost all authority over his daughter in delaying for her the time of becoming a mother.”[568] Girls cannot be married too soon; at eight years old they are given a husband of twenty-eight; at twelve years, a man of thirty.[569] Some verses, in contradiction to that which I have just now quoted, forbid the father from receiving any gratuity whatever in marrying his daughter, not even a cow or a bull: “All gratuity, small or large, constitutes a sale.”[570] But the prohibition to sell his daughter, though still very little observed, is evidently of posterior date; and in India, as in all other countries, the daughter has been esteemed at first as merchandise. The law imposes at times very curious restrictions on a man who is intending to marry. He must not take a girl with red hair, or bearing the name of a constellation, of a river, a bird, or a serpent.[571] He must not, under pain of hell, marry before his elder brother.[572] Above all, he must not marry below his rank. To marry a woman belonging to the servile class is, for the Brahmin or the Kchatriya, an enormous crime, which lowers him to the rank of the Soudras.[573] It is an unpardonable sin: “For him who drinks the foam of the lips of a Soudra, or who has a child by her, there is no expiation declared by the law.”[574] He descends to the infernal abode, and his son loses caste. As for the son of a Brahmanic woman and a Soudra, he is a Tchandala, the vilest of mortals.[575] The young Brahmin, after having received the authorisation of his spiritual director, and having purified himself by a bath, must marry a woman of his own class, who is well made, who has a fine down over her body, fine hair, small teeth, limbs of a charming sweetness, and the graceful movement of a swan or a young elephant.[576] But, however the wife may be chosen, she is held in a state of servile submission. “A wife,” says the Code, “can never be set free from the authority of her husband; neither by sale nor by desertion.” “Once only a young girl is given in marriage; once only the father says, I give her.”[577]