The Harim and the Purdah: Studies of Oriental WomenCooper, Elizabeth
Religion
The Harim and the Purdah: Studies of Oriental Women
Cooper, Elizabeth
East Asia -- Social life and customs; Women -- East Asia
There are many rules of etiquette prescribed for the young girl-wife if
she would show that she has been properly trained by her parents. For
example, she must never speak of her husband by name, nor may she use a
word with the same syllable as her husband’s first name. A friend of
mine has a husband whose name begins with the same syllable as that used
in the word sugar. She always speaks of sugar as “the substance you put
in your tea,” and she generally refers to her husband as “he.” Nor would
the man say “my wife,” but “my house,” or some word denoting the home. A
man in Hyderabad met his doctor on the street and said, “I wish you
would come and see me. My house has a boil on its neck.”
This same wife would not sit in the presence of her mother-in-law or her
husband if others were present. It would show extreme lack of respect;
nor would she speak if her husband were in the room. We called upon the
wife of a high official of Bangalore, who came into the room with her
daughter-in-law and her young daughter, an extremely pretty girl. The
daughter-in-law would not sit down in the presence of her husband’s
mother, nor did she speak, and looked extremely awkward and
self-conscious, as she stood with her sari drawn across her mouth and
watched us with her big black eyes. The little daughter played the
veena, the national instrument, and as she sat upon the rug, gorgeously
arrayed in an elaborate red and gold sari, with jewellery on arms, neck,
ankles, toes, and with diamonds in each tiny nostril, she made a picture
never to be forgotten.
In some of the big households where the sons bring their wives to live
beneath the family roof-tree, the married quarters are not large enough
to allow a separate room for each couple, and the women sleep in one
room and the men in another. The mother has the right of assigning the
couples who are to inhabit the married quarters for the week. But even
the eagle eye of the mother-in-law cannot always watch the young people,
and many a girl-wife steals across the courtyard to find her husband,
who is waiting for her in the shadows. A crowd of young men in a school
were asked to give their idea of what was the most beautiful music in
the world. One answered, “The song of the bul-bul,” another, “The
plaintive strains of the zither,” a third, “The cry of the night bird,”
but a young bridegroom said, “The music of my wife’s anklets as she
tries to suppress their sound when she steals to meet me in the
moonlight.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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