Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c5.29

v1.c5.29

¹ How unwelcome girls are among the various peoples and tribes has been, of course, often described. It will be enough to refer to Ploss-Bartels, *Das Weib in der Natur- und Völkerkunde* 4, i, 247 ff., ii, 473; and Westermarck, *The History of Human Marriage* 3, London, 1901, p. 311 ff.; Elsie Clews Parsons, *The Old-Fashioned Woman*, 201 ff. On India see, for instance, Rāmabai Sarasvati, *The High Caste Hindu Woman*, and Billington, *Woman in India*, p. 1 ff.; James Tod, *Rajasthan* (that is, *Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan*, popular ed., Calcutta), i, 670 ff.; S. C. Bose, *The Hindoos as They Are* (1881), pp. 24, 28, 216 ff.; Bulloram Mullick, *Home Life in Bengal*, p. 68, 103. The Arabs before Mohammed seem to be the most brutal among the barbarians, for they simply buried girl-children alive. Hauri, *Der Islam*, p. 8; Finck, *Primitive Love and Love Stories*, p. 32; Schweiger-Lerchenfeld, *Die Frauen des Orients*, 63 f.; Hartmann, *Zeitsch. d. Vereins f. Volkskunde*, Bd. ii, p. 240; Welhausen, *Göttinger Nachrichten*, 1893, p. 458; and, above all, *Anthropos*, Bd. iii, p. 62 ff. A sentence in this last may be given here, which could have been written of far too many other places on the earth: Il est d'usage parmi les Bedouins que quand un garçon vient au monde, il est annoncé à la famille et à tous les voisins par des cris de joie qui se répètent d'une tente à l'autre, mais quand c'est une fille qui vient augmenter le nombre des membres de la famille on garde le silence le plus absolu, accompagné de toutes les marques de la tristesse, qu'on laisse voir à tout le monde (p. 65). When we find here too the statement that many beat the poor wife that has brought a girl into the world, we may also refer perhaps to Fr. S. Krauss, *Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven* (1885), p. 540 f., and also to p. 592 ff. According to McLennan's theory (*Primitive Marriage*, especially p. 75 ff.) that once all the peoples of the world were exogamous owing to girl-killing, all tribes and hordes must then have done away with their daughters—an unexampled piece of nonsense. As an opposite example, the Abipones of Paraguay may be named, who