THE TRIUMPH OF BRAHMANISM 293
Mark the disguest Manu shows with regard to the Shudra woman.
Mark what Manu says about the food of the Shudra. He says it is as impure as semen or urine.
These two laws have produced the caste system. Prohibition of intermarriage and prohibition against interdining are two pillars on which it rests. The caste system and the rules relating to intermarriage and interdining are related to each other as ends to means. Indeed by no other means could the end be realized.
The forging of these means shows that the creation of the caste system was end and aim of Brahmanism. Brahmanism enacted the prohibitions against intemarriage and interdining. But Brahmanism introduced other changes in the social system and if the purposes underlying these changes are those which I suggest them to be, then it must be admitted that Brahmanism was so keen in sustaining the caste system that it did not mind whether ways and means employed were fair or unfair, moral or immoral. I refer to the laws contained in the Code of Manu regarding marriage of girls and the life of widows.
See the law that Manu promulgates regarding the marriage of females.
IX. 4. Reprehensible is the father who gives not (his daughter) in marriage at the proper time.
IX. 88. To a distinguished, handsome suitor of equal caste should a father give his daughter in accordance with the prescribed rule, though she have not attained (the proper age), i.e. although she may not have reached puberty.
By this rule Manu enjoins that a girl should be married even though she may not have reached the age of puberty i.e. even when she is a child.
Now with regard to widows Manu promulgates the following rule.
V. 157. At her pleasure let her (i.e. widow) emaciate her body, by living voluntarily on pure flowers, roots and fruits; but let her not, when her lord is deceased, even pronounce the name of another man.
V. 161. But a widow, who from a wish to bear children, slights her deceased husband by marrying again, brings disgrace on herself here below, and shall be excluded from the seat of her lord (in heaven).
V. 162. Offspring begotten on a woman by any other than her husband, is here declared to be no progeny of hers; no more than a child, begotten on the wife of another man belongs to the begetter; nor is a second husband any where prescribed for a virtuous woman.