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-- Impressions of America say that this feature also impresses me unfavorably. It would seem that there is a lack of something - you may call it wisdom, love power of selection, or what you will – lying at the bottom of this fact. The truth, however, must be conceded, that thousands of persons who marry and start out in the separate and independent way of which I have spoken, apart from the family of the husband, soon, for some cause, grow tired of each other, and are separated by the strong hand of your legal civilization by divorce. With us what you call divorce is not known, except in the lowest class of society, which class is not of the Arvan origin - in other words, not real Hindu. What I mean to say, with more explicitness, is, that Hindu jurisprudence and sacred books do not provide for or recognize divorce. The reason of this, which I may not do more than state, is found in our conception of the ground and reasons for marriage and the family tie. These are sacred and inviolable, and they hold through all circumstances, and cannot be weakened nor set aside. Marriage in our view is spiritual as well as physical mate hood. The husband and wife are one and indivisible in this view; they have not two roads, and two destinies, and separate attractions, and different objects, whether of desire or of devotion. They are one in thought, in purpose, in religious devotion, in sacred relations, with a destiny in the true light that is also not divided. It is, of course, impossible to bring before our limited view in this earthly state, the full and perfect relations, and the blissful conditions of the perfected souls of men and women, but the Hindu widow is forever a wife, and prays every day that in that future of perfect bliss, she may join her husband, and believes that she will.
This does not mean in any physical sense, but that the perfection which is attained by the religious observances and soul growth of the husband shall also be hers, so that the unity in the marriage relations, in the spiritual interpretation of them, is perpetual. But we, the Jainas of India, also teach that in the perfect
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