the dancing girl, the _gunika_ as they called her, was the recognized teacher to young princes of manners and of chivalry. Those days are past; but even now the dancing girls, by the admission even of a missionary,[1] “are the most accomplished women among the Hindus. They read, write, sing and play as well as dance.” They dress well and modestly, they know the arts of pleasing, and their success is in the main due to the contrast by which they transcend the ordinary woman and to the illusions they can give. They do not, therefore, merely fulfil a need but also represent an ideal. Even apart from their art and its high imaginative value, as almost the only living art in India, they respond in a larger sense to a real need of society. To stifle a class of women, living their own lives in independence, graceful, accomplished, often clever, to degrade them, to make them outcastes and force them into shameful by-ways, is not merely to sin against charity; it is also a blunder against life. [1] The Rev. M. Phillips, “Evolution of Hinduism,” 1903. [Illustration: NAIKIN IN KANARA] The existence of such a class, regarded in the light of ultimate truths, may fall far short of the perfect state. But the remedy in any country lies not in their repression and degradation, the most disastrous of all attempts. It lies in the freedom and education of the married woman. When the married woman also is freed from the oppression of narrow codes and the dull monotony of house-work, when she too is able to be accomplished and graceful, witty and artistic, free to choose as she pleases and to be true to her nature, then no doubt the professional beauty must by the mere weight of facts become extinct. But what nation, what society will risk the experiment? and what conditions can make it possible? This at least is clear that where a rigid matrimonial system, supported by all the sanctions of religion and inspired by a tradition of asceticism, is fast entrenched and fortified, where woman is limited and narrowed to the duties of a housekeeper or a mother, there the fulfilment of the deeper cravings of human emotion and the satisfaction of artistic sensibilities will depend upon a class that has in it much which is not ignoble. Woman’s Dress “Upon my right hand did stand the Queen in a vesture of gold wrought about in divers colours.” _Psalm XLV._ [Illustration: GIPSY WOMAN] Chapter VIII WOMAN’S DRESS