Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c5.353

v1.c5.353

may have been found in isolated cases among the Aryan Indians also. The Aino just mentioned believe that, in the far past, girls enjoyed full freedom in sexual intercourse (Anthropos, Bd. v, p. 770). Among them it is not so, but it is so among a vast number of peoples and tribes of older times and of to-day, and in the most different lands. The Kanakas have a tradition that originally a man had always but one wife (Anthropos, ii, p. 385), a shrewd blow against current “proofs” of the development of marriage, by way of promiscuity and other horrors, into monogamy. Those who play about with survivals often seem quite to have forgotten that man, and above all, more primitive man and the child, has not only his actual experience and his memory (which is, however, exceedingly weak) of it, but still more a heart filled with yearnings, an inquisitive understanding, and unchecked powers of imagination. And in the name of Heaven what would be the good of poor mortal man making himself gods, legendary heroes, and saints, if they could not do things which the everyday child cannot allow himself to do!