Mother right in India

THE author of the monograph, Mother-right in India, has asked me to write an introduction. I do this with great pleasure, but I will confine myself to the utmost possible brevity, thus enabling the reader to approach this vivid source of information as directly as possible and without delay.

Being thoroughly acquainted with the history of the book, as well as with its contents, I give my assurance that it will be both suggestive and inspiring to the scientifically trained reader.

The author has bravely undertaken to investigate the entire complex of problems grouped round the question of the Matriarchal System in India, and has handled the analysis of it in the full light of cultural and historical ethnology. As a historian he bases his conclusions on well proved testimony and a wide range of books which he has utilized on a with equal diligence and consideration. New light has thus been thrown on the much-discussed phenomena of child-marriage, hypergamy, dis regard of unmarried girls and widows, the burning of the latter, the caste-system, and even the religious significance of vegetarianism in India. It is an important and, I do not hesitate to say, a decisive word which Ehrenfels contributes to the explanation of these and similar basic problems of Indian culture and sociology.

The author himself lays stress on the fact that final explanations should not and could not be expected in the discussion of many side-issues, and that ample room is still open for further scientific discussion and investi gation, especially of ethnographic field-investigation, still so important in many parts of India.