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JAINA GAZETTE.
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[NOTE:The writer must admit that widow-marriage is an evil. If it is a necessary evil, or must be adopted as a lesser evil to avoid others, it is not a measure to be recommended suggested as an antidote until and unless the better and preventive treatments in the shape of marriage reforms, educational reforms, Brahmcharya, purity of life,observance of the necessary rules of conduct of a shravaka, have been well and truly tried. Widow-marriage was a thing almost unknown in Indian society. There is absolutely no mention of it in the Jain Shastras. The religious enthusiast, and the social reformer, should not therefore think of it as a panacea before he has attempted the other necessary reforms and failed to achieve the results which he expects to find in the wake of widowmarriage.-Editor].
96
The effects of early marriage.
Here is what the Imperial Gazetteer of India in its latest edition has to say on this subject:
·1
As regards the individual, the main general results of marriage customs are those to be expected from the absence of free selection and from endogamous restriction, viz., increase in the power of transmitting characteristics ('prepotency'), a deterioration of physique, lessened resistance to disease, and possibly some relative impairment of fertility. The almost universal custom of marriage implies that practically all the immature adolescents of every generation have an equal opportunity of propagating their kind; and there is none of the salutary elimination effected in the west by the celibacy of large classes. The general average product must be lower and apart from the greater tendency to disease inherited and acquired, the duration of life is affected in another way. For there is probably a direct relation between early marriage and the duration of the reproductive functions, and the premature strain on the latter tends to their carlier cessation. The climacteric is advanced, with all the corresponding results of earlier degeneration, and we thus obtain a more rapid vital cycle involving a premature senility. As regards the community, Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
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