Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 386

346
CLEANLINESS AND ECONOMY
She cannot lavish too much affection on her father-in-
and should she
law, her mother-in-law, and her husband
perceive that they are squandering all the family substance
in extravagance, she would be wrong to complain and still
more wrong to oppose them.
She should always be ready to perform the various
duties of her house, and to perform them diligently.
Let her bathe every day, rubbing saffron on her body.
Let her attire be clean, her eyelids tinged with antimony,
and her forehead marked with red pigment. Let her hair
be well combed and adorned. Thus shall she be like unto
the goddess Lakshmi.
Before her husband let her words fall softly and sweetly
from her mouth and let her devote herself to pleasing
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him every day more and more.
She must be careful to sweep her house every day, to
smooth the floor with a layer of cow-dung, and to decorate
She must keep the cooking vessels
it with white tracery.
clean, and must be ready with the meals at the proper hours.
If her husband be gone out to fetch supplies of wood,
leaves, or flowers to perform the sandhya, or for any other
purpose, she shall watch for the moment of his return and
shall go to meet him.
She shall go before him into the
house, shall hand him a stool to sit down upon, and shall
serve up the food prepared to his taste.
She shall inform him in time of what is wanted in the
house, and shall manage with care what he brings home.
Prudent in her conversation, she must be careful, in
conversing with gurus, sannyasis, strangers, servants, and
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other persons, to adopt a tone suitable to the position of
each.
In exercising in her house the authority given to her
by her husband, she must do so gently and intelligently.
She must, as in duty bound, use for the expenses of
her household all the money with which her husband
entrusts her, not taking any of it surreptitiously for herself
or for her parents, or even, without her husband's permis-
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works of charity.
She must never meddle with the affairs of others, nor
lend ear to stories of the good luck or misfortune which
sion, for
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has befallen others.