Publisher's Synopsis
THE writer, who is the authoress of Love and Life behind the Purdah, Sun Babies, and several other books, has an almost unique acquaintance with Eastern and Western life. A Christian Parsee, educated at Oxford, and a student of law at Lincoln's Inn, she has devoted her life to the relief and help of her sisters shut up behind the purdahs. The present volume consists of studies of Indian women. A passage on p. 32 affords a key to all that the book contains, where we read: "The Hindu woman acknowledges no claims save those of religion. No social, no communal claims. Her worship of the gods, her husband, her children, they are all the same, part of her religion, and they make her life." Miss Sorabji devotes separate chapters to an Indian woman's relations to her gods, her husband, and her children. Her sketch of a religious woman in Chapter VI is good. "Truth-named," in Chapter VII., is an example of the best type of an Indian holy man. The author excuses herself for introducing him into "a book of women" on the ground that priests and women are allies all the world over, and "in India particularly is the influence noticeable." The strongest chapters which the book contains are the fourth to the eighth inclusive, but the book as a whole is worth reading. Its chief value lies in the general impression which it gives of Indian womanhood, its surroundings and ideals.
- The East and the West, Volume 6 [1908]
