The billows of the Ganges were dotted with pearly foam born of the leaping of fishes frightened at hearing the roar of the waters that broke on the rugged, rocky shore. On the bank was a hermitage crowded with holy men devoting their time to the performance of sacred rites — chanting, self-denial, self-torture, study, fasting and sacrifice. They would take purified water only, and that in measured sips. Their bodies wasted under a diet of bulbs, roots, fruits, and moss. A loin-cloth made of bark formed their scanty raiment.

The father of the hermitage was named Yajnavalkya. After he had bathed in the sacred stream and had begun to rinse his mouth, a little female mouse dropped from a hawk’s beak and fell into his hand. When he saw what she was, he laid her on a banyan leaf, repeated his bath and mouth-rinsing, and performed a ceremony of purification. Then through the magic power of his holiness he changed her into a girl, and took her with him to his hermitage.

As his wife was childless he said to her: “Take her, my dear wife. She has come into life as your daughter, and you must rear her carefully.” So the wife reared her and spoiled her with petting. As soon as the girl reached the age of twelve, the mother saw that she was ready for marriage, and said to her husband: “My dear husband, how can you fail to see that the time is passing when your daughter should marry?”

And he replied: “You are quite right, my dear. The saying goes:

Before a man is gratified,

These gods must treat her as a bride-

The fire, the moon, the choir of heaven;

In this way, no offense is given.

Holiness is the gift of fire;

A sweet voice, of the heavenly choir,

The moon gives purity within:

So is a woman free from sin.

Before nubility, ‘tis said

That she is white; but after, red;

Before her womanhood is plain,

She is, though naked, free from stain.

The moon, in mystic fashion, weds

A maiden when her beauty spreads;

The heavenly choir, when bosoms grow;

The fire, upon the monthly flow.

To wed a maid is therefore good

Before developed womanhood;

Nor need the loving parents wait

Beyond the early age of eight.

The early signs one kinsman slay,

The bosom takes the next away;

Friends die for passion gratified;

The father, if she ne’er be bride.

For if she bides a maiden still,

She gives herself to whom she will;

Then marry her in tender age:

So warns the heaven-begotten sage.

If she, unwed, unpurified,

Too long within the home abide,

She may no longer married be:

A miserable spinster, she.

A father then, avoiding sin,

Weds her, the appointed time within

(Where’er a husband may be had)

To good, indifferent, or bad.

Now I will try to give her to one of her own station. You know the saying:

Where wealth is very