Kasbi, [391] Tawaif, Devadasi.--The caste of dancing-girls and
prostitutes. The name Kasbi is derived from the Arabic kasab,
prostitution, and signifies rather a profession than a caste. In India
practically all female dancers and singers are prostitutes, the Hindus
being still in that stage of the development of intersexual relations
when it is considered impossible that a woman should perform before the
public and yet retain her modesty. It is not so long that this idea
has been abandoned by Western nations, and the fashion of employing
women actors is perhaps not more than two or three centuries old in
England. The gradual disappearance of the distinctive influence of
sex in the public and social conduct of women is presumably a sign of
advancing civilisation, and is greatest in the West, the old standards
retaining more and more vitality as we proceed Eastward. Among the
Anglo-Saxon races women are almost entirely emancipated from any
handicap due to their sex, and direct their lives with the same
freedom and independence as men. Among the Latin races many people
still object to girls walking out alone in towns, and in Italy the
number of women to be seen in the streets is so small that it must
be considered improper for a young and respectable woman to go about
alone. Here also survives the mariage de convenance or arrangement
of matches by the parents; the underlying reason for this custom,
which also partly accounts for the institution of infant-marriage,
appears to be that it is not considered safe to permit a young girl
to frequent the society of unmarried men with sufficient freedom to
be able to make her own choice. And, finally, on arrival in Egypt
and Turkey we find the seclusion of women still practised, and only
now beginning to weaken before the influence of Western ideas. But
again in the lowest scale of civilisation, among the Gonds and other
primitive tribes, women are found to enjoy great freedom of social
intercourse. This is partly no doubt because their lives are too hard
and rude to permit of any seclusion of women, but also partly because
they do not yet consider it an obligatory feature of the institution of
marriage that a girl should enter upon it in the condition of a virgin.