And it is the same with man. Men and women are alike subject to the eternal laws. And they are alike subject to the laws of man; in no material points, hardly even in minor points, does the law discriminate against women.
The law as regards marriage and inheritance and divorce will come each in its own place. It is curiously the same both for the man and the woman.
The criminal law was the same for both; I have tried to find any difference, and this is all I have found: A woman's life was less valuable than a man's. The price of the body, as it is called, of a woman was less than that of a man. If a woman were accidentally killed, less compensation had to be paid than for a man. I asked a Burman about this once.
'Why is this difference?' I said. 'Why does the law discriminate?'
'It isn't the law,' he said, 'it is a fact. A woman is worth less than a man in that way. A maidservant can be hired for less than a manservant, a daughter can claim less than a son. They cannot do so much work; they are not so strong. If they had been worth more, the law would have been the other way; of course they are worth less.'
And so this sole discrimination is a fact, not dogma. It is a fact, no doubt, everywhere. No one would deny it. The pecuniary value of a woman is less than that of a man. As to the soul's value, that is not a question of law, which confines itself to material affairs. But I suppose all laws have been framed out of the necessities of mankind. It was the incessant fighting during the times when our laws grew slowly into shape, the necessity of not allowing the possession of land, and the armed wealth that land gave, to fall into the weaker hands of women, that led to our laws of inheritance.
Laws then were governed by the necessity of war, of subjecting everything else to the ability to fight. Consequently, as women were not such good fighters as men, they went to the wall. But feudalism never obtained at all in Burma. What fighting they did was far less severe than that of our ancestors, was not the dominant factor in the position, and consequently woman did not suffer.
She has thus been given the inestimable boon of freedom. Freedom from sacerdotal dogma, from secular law, she has always had.