WOMEN OF INDIA-2.

(Delivered at the Shakespeare Club House, in Pasadena, California, on January 18, 1900)

( For Recap -Read Part-1. )

THE LECTURE :-

I must begin by saying that you may have to bear with me a good deal, because I belong to an Order of people who never marry; so my knowledge of women in all their relations, as mother, as wife, as daughter and sister, must necessarily not be so complete as it may be with other men.

And then, India, I must remember, is a vast continent, not merely a country, and is inhabited by many different races.

The nations of Europe are nearer to each other, more similar to each other, than the races in India.

You may get just a rough idea of it if I tell you that there are eight different languages in all India.

Different languages — not dialects — each having a literature of its own.

The Hindi language, alone, is spoken by 100,000,000 people; the Bengali by about 60,000,000, and so on.

Then, again, the four northern Indian languages differ more from the southern Indian languages than any two European languages from each other.

They are entirely different, as much different as your language differs from the Japanese, so that you will be astonished to know, when I go to southern India, unless I meet some people who can talk Sanskrit, I have to speak to them in English.

Furthermore, these various races differ from each other in manners, customs, food, dress, and in their methods of thought.

Swami Vivekananda
To be continued  ...