ABSTRACT
THE wife! The wife in ancient India! With what a shining aureole is she crowned there! From the hymns
of the Veda to the elegies of Vikramaditya's contemporaries, what productions of Sanskrit literature have not celebrated her! Such names as Sita, Damayanti, Savitri, heroines of conjugal tenderness, have inspired the epic poets with their most living creations.' What were the customs and the laws
which developed the admirable types and prepared the acts of devotion revealed to us in their sublime delicacy in the Ramayana and Mahabharata ? The religious rights of woman amongst the Aryans testified to the elevated rank which she occupied in the Vedic family. We have seen her participating in the ceremonies of family worship and directing the religious instruction of her children. Elsewhere, in the study consecrated to the young girl and to marriage, the nuptial hymn of Surya showed us the woman as queen in her home. The titles of chief, pati, of master of the house, grihapati, attributed to the husband, expressed not tyranny but protection; and the wife, she, also, called patni, grihapatni, shared with her husband the privileges of an authority of which he only spared her the dangers.
