Such the Afghan woman can be. The love which she gets--and gives--echoes in the poetry of Lawrence Hope. “You are all that is lovely and light, Aziza,--whom I adore, And, waking after the night, I am weary with dreams of you. Every nerve in my heart is tense and sore As I rise to another morning apart from you. I would burn for a thousand days, Aziza, whom I adore, Be tortured, slain, in unheard of ways If you pitied the pain I bore. … Give me your love for a day, A night, an hour; If the wages of sin are death, I am willing to pay. What is my life but a breath Of passion burning away? Away from an unplucked flower? Oh! Aziza, whom I adore, Aziza, my one delight, Only one night--I will die before day, And trouble your life no more.” [Illustration: BORAH LADY FROM SURAT] The Hindu Woman in Marriage ἀλλ᾿ ἐννοεῖν χρὴ τοῦ το μὲν γυναῖχ᾿ ὅτι ἒφυμεν ὡς πρὸς ἄνδρας οὐ μαχουμίνα ἔ πει τα δ᾿ οὕνεκ᾿ ἀρχόμεσθ᾿ ἐκ κρεισσόνων καὶ ταῦ τ᾿ ἀκούειν κἄτι τῶνδ᾿ ἀλγίονα. _Antigone_, ll. 61 _seq._ “But we must reflect first that we were born a woman, Not such as to strive against men: and then that as we are ruled by them that are the stronger, we must obey in these things and in things yet sorer.” Chapter III THE HINDU WOMAN IN MARRIAGE Marriage under the Hindu system is by no means easy to describe as in actual fact it is. The definitions and classifications given in the legal textbooks or Scriptures of the Hindus are little better than abstractions--deductions from assumed premises of a theological kind, with only a slender tie to the actual life of Hindu societies. The difficulties of practice arise from the vast complexities and fluid conditions of the great masses of peoples and races, with divergent levels of culture and inconsistent ideas, that compose the aggregate which for convenience is distinguished from all others by the collective name of Hinduism. For Hinduism is, of course, in no real sense a church or creed. It has no definite tenets and no articles of dogma. The acceptance of a certain social system, centring upon the existence of hereditary priesthoods with divinely-given powers of interposition and interpretation, is its final criterion. This system and its practical consequences once accepted, the man is free to believe and follow what creeds or philosophies he may please.