Woman under the ethnic religions — Reading Notes

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Authors: Smith, Moses, Mrs., 1835-1929 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2024 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Women and religion; Women -- Religious life Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

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Words 7,891

Reading time 35 min

Text sections 2

Woman under the ethnic religions — Reading Notes can be approached with a clearer sense of reading commitment from its source measurements: 7,891 words, 35 min estimated reading time, and 2 detected text sections.

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Source: Project Gutenberg record #74879

An 1893 missionary congress paper examining how Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Islam shaped women's status through religious doctrine and practice, with close attention to scriptural passages and historical context.

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hat among the ancient Hebrews. Husband and wife were equal in all domestic, social and religious life. “The Brahmans have themselves preserved the record of women engaging in philosophical discussions, and disconcerting their most celebrated doctors by the depths of their objections.”[7] Some of the Vedic hymns were composed by women. By degrees the condition of woman has deteriorated until by the law of their religion she is “now consigned to a degradation probably without a parallel in the history of the race.” It is true, Buddha, in the sixth century before Christ, taught that men and women were equal, but even his influence has never been strong enough to reform the Brahmanical laws about women. The Hindus have a saying: “Education is good, as milk is good, but milk given to a snake becomes venom, and education given to a woman becomes poison.”

[7] J. Murray Mitchell, LL. D.

A quotation from the personal experience of Prof. T. M. Lindsay, D. D., so pertinently sums up the Hindu creed about women that I quote it. “I remember asking a learned Vedantist, who had spent two days in teaching me something about his belief――a man who had read Spinoza, Berkeley and Hegel――whether he could give me any definite proposition which all the people who were Hindus could accept. He very readily said, ‘That woman is a wicked animal. That the cow is a holy animal.’” No brilliant presentation of Vedic learning, no poetic picture of Brahman or Buddhist philosophy so recently heard in the Parliament of Religions, will prevent the world from arraigning Hinduism for cherishing, in the sacred name of religion, the grossest vices, and basely degrading woman and all society. “By their fruits ye shall know them.”

[Sidenote: Religions of China.]

In the Empire of China, under a government distinguished for its stability and justness, among a people spoken of before Christ as “Those who dwell apart,” and known from the time of Ptolemy as just, mild, frugal and industrious, comprising one-fourth the human race; three religions of confessed power, not as rivals, but as co-ordinate and supplemental, have for many centuries sought to solve the problem of life, death and immortality. The time has been long enough, the conditions favorable for a perfect experiment. Confucianism, the oldest of the three, gave what is probably the best code of morals man ever gave to men. Confucius was himself an earnest reformer. The late Dr. Legge, professor of Chinese in the University of Oxford, says: “Confucius saw the terrible wretchedness of his people and set himself to find a remedy. Yet to the one principal cause of the misery of the masses, polygamy and the low social condition of women, he gave no thought.” In his treatise on human relations, in that of husband and wife, he regards the wife as the servant of the husband and enjoins absolute obedience. During all these forty-three centuries, while Confucius has done much for good government and has set some high moral standards for men, women have reaped no benefit from the teachings of the sage.

Lao-tsze, the founder of Taoism, a religion of no little power in China, made no effort to elevate the people, and his religious system does not recognize the existence of woman. In the beginning, the work of Taoism, was to repress the passions.

“_Not to act_ is the source of all power,”[8] was an ever present thesis. To-day Taoism is a system of magic and spiritism.

[8] Ten Great Religions. James Freeman Clark.

[Sidenote: Buddhism.]

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Mrs. Moses Smith's 1893 paper, delivered before the World's Congress of Missions in Chicago, opens with a pointed shift in perspective: after two weeks of hearing 'philosophies of religion profound and subtile,' she proposes to examine 'the practical workings of some of these religions and their effect on the life and destiny of man.' The lens is explicitly comparative and evaluative, grounded in the conviction that 'religion is the supreme force in history' and that a religion's treatment of women reveals its true character. Smith draws on a range of sources—from the Vedas to the Koran—and quotes contemporary scholars like Marcus Dodd and Dean Milman, but her own voice is consistently moral and reformist.

Brahmanism and the Weight of Centuries

Smith devotes considerable attention to Brahmanism, which she calls 'the most venerable and possibly the most powerful Ethnic religion.' She traces its arc from 'a simple nature worship' to a 'sacerdotalism with caste and idol worship' that became 'an oppressive tyranny.' The language is deliberately stark: the religion 'degenerated' and 'wrought unhindered on the people' for fifteen centuries. Smith's account of Buddhism's emergence—as a reform movement led by 'a king’s son, Gautama Buddha'—is brief but sets up a pattern of contrast between original ideals and later corruption. She notes that each system 'evinces profound thought and lofty ideals' yet insists that the practical test is 'the conditions of society, temporal and spiritual.' The reader is left to infer that Brahmanism's legacy for women is largely negative, though the excerpts do not detail specific practices.

Islam and the Text of Women's Lives

Smith's treatment of Islam is the most detailed and the most critical. She begins with a biographical sketch of Mohammed, acknowledging his 'great sincerity and purity' in domestic life with Khadija, but then sharply contrasts his later polygamy and 'grossest crimes.' The pivot is telling: Smith uses the Koran itself as evidence. She quotes Sura 4 ('Men shall have pre-eminence above women') and the permission to 'rebuke and remove them into separate apartments and chastise them.' The word 'chastise' is glossed with a reference to Dr. Jessup's prediction that wife-beating will continue 'so long as Islam as a faith prevails.' Polygamy and easy divorce are presented as institutionalized degradation: a husband need only say 'Thou art divorced,' and a wife is 'practically a chattel.' The anecdote of a Mohammedan pricing a wife 'about the same as for a mule' drives the point home with brutal concreteness.

The Rhetoric of Contrast and the Missionary Lens

Smith's argumentative strategy relies on sharp juxtapositions. She sets the 'lofty ideals' of a religion against its 'practical workings,' and the 'beautiful' domestic life of Mohammed with Khadija against his later polygamy. The effect is to foreground hypocrisy or failure. Her own position is never in doubt: she writes as a Christian missionary, and the paper's occasion—the World's Congress of Missions—makes that context explicit. Yet she does not simply condemn; she also cites approvingly the Koran's statement that 'Whoso doeth good works and is a believer, whether male or female, shall be admitted to Paradise,' only to note that 'the practical exegesis' reduces woman's good works to 'obedience to the husband.' This move—quoting a text and then undercutting its apparent generosity—is a recurring rhetorical device.

Diction, Voice, and the Shape of an Argument

Smith's prose is formal and oratorical, suited to a congress paper. She uses balanced clauses ('It may be wholesome, if not so agreeable'), biblical allusions ('By their fruits ye shall know them'), and periodic sentences that build to a moral point. Her vocabulary is precise: religions are 'eminent for profound philosophy' but also for 'tremendous power' and 'oppressive tyranny.' The word 'ethnic' in the title signals a category—non-Christian, non-Jewish religions—that was common in 1890s missionary discourse. Smith's voice is authoritative, drawing on history, scripture, and contemporary scholarship, but it is also personal: she speaks of 'our Lord Jesus Christ' and 'we' as missionary workers. The paper's structure—moving from Brahmanism to Buddhism to Islam—creates a cumulative argument about the failure of these systems to uplift women, though the excerpts break off before any conclusion.

Readers should approach this text as a primary source in the history of missionary thought and comparative religion. Smith's evidence is selective and her judgments firm, but the paper offers a clear window into how late-nineteenth-century American Protestant women framed the status of women in other cultures. Pay attention to the way she uses quotations—from sacred texts and from scholars—and to the rhetorical moves that connect religious doctrine to social practice. The paper is short, but its argument is dense with implication.

That old missionary paper about women under the eastern faiths stayed with me—not for its answers, but for how tenderly it traced their silences. It reminded me of another quiet voice, one that also wept over what religion does to the broken. I kept thinking of The Bible, King James version, Book 24: Jeremiah — Themes and Context, and how both felt less like doctrine and more like a long, grieving exhale.