Râmakrishna's Wife.
Another charge which Mozoomdar seems to consider as proved against Râmakrishna is what he calls his almost barbarous treatment of his wife. What he means is evidently that he forgot or neglected her till she was seventeen years of age. But this can hardly be called barbarous in India, where it is a recognised custom that a girl of five years of age, as his wife was when he married her, should remain at her parents' house for years before she migrated to the house of her husband and his parents. And that a man in a state such as Râmakrishna is described to have been in should decline to live maritalement, is again by no means unusual in Eastern, nay, in Western countries also.
Vivekânanda told us that when at the age of seventeen his wife went to find him, he received her with real kindness, and that she was quite satisfied to live with him on his own terms, if he would only enlighten her mind and make her to see and to serve God. Such a relationship is by no means without a precedent, and cannot be called barbarous, for volenti non fit injuria. Strange to say, I received not many days ago a letter from an American lady who had gone to visit Râmakrishna's widow, Mrs. S. C. Ole Bull, the widow of the famous violin player, and deeply interested in the religious movements in India. On July 11, 1898, she writes from Srînâgar in Kashmir: 'We were the first foreigners who were allowed to see Sarada-devî, the widow of Râmakrishna. She called us her children, and saying that our visit to her was of the
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