Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c6.102

Language: English

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It is true we have reports from by no means few mother-right peoples and tribes that among them the husband has nothing whatever to say about the children. But such exceptions, even if they be very many, cannot upset the general rule. A matriarchate because of the fatherhood being uncertain is an utterly ungrounded hypothesis (except perhaps for certain very clearly determined cases). How little heed was given even by our forefathers, who stood so high in sexual matters, the Old Germans, to the question whether they were actually the father to their children, is shown in detail by Dargun, *Mutterrecht u. Raubehe*, in the third chapter; and on p. 45 he gives a valuable passage (which, indeed, sounds rather like a witticism) from the Westphalian peasant laws, according to which the man who was not able to satisfy his amorous wedded wife had to take her himself to another one. Cf. Grimm, *Deutsche Rechtsaltertümer*, ed. by Heusler and Hübner, 1899, vol. i, p. 613 ff. “Of the Arabs we are told there is a form of marriage according to which a man says to his wife when menstruation is over, Send a message to such an one, and beg him to have intercourse with you.’ And he himself refrains from intercourse with her until it is manifest that she is with child by the man in question. The husband acts this way in order that his offspring may be noble.” Starcke, *Prim. Fam.*, pp. 123–124. Also the Chukchi in Siberia get their wives to be made pregnant by others;

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and it is reported of certain Koryaks that they were wont to get the Russian postman as a stud-bull (Hartland, ii, 181). Childless Bantu bring their brother to their wife; and among the Wakamba in Africa rich men who have no offspring give one of their wives to a friend, that there may be offspring (Hartland, ii, 214, 196). The best-known case is Sparta, where a law ordered the elderly owner of a young wife to mate a young and lusty likely father with her (Hartland, i, 322; ii, 134). On this and on begetting by proxy among the Greeks in general, and among others of the older peoples, cp. Engels, *Ursprung d. Familie*, 49; Henne am Rhyn, *Die Frau in der Kulturgesch.*, 193 ff.; Starcke, loc. cit., 124; O. Schrader, *Die Indogermanen*, p. 93; Ed. Meyer, *Gesch. d. Altertums*, i, 3³, pp. 28–30, and what is there said. It is on very good grounds that Hartland can say that the examples are “innumerable” where the husband, to get children, brings in another man in his stead (ii, 247).—Now proper men above all others are the priest, the chief, the ruler. Above and beyond this, as already said, he confers an honour on the commonalty thereby. So among the Eskimos a man and his wife look on themselves as lucky when a shaman takes pity in this way on the family. They believe that the son of a holy man with such power over the spirits will outstrip other mortals in excellence and good fortune. The Greenlanders even paid the Angekoks for such services (Starcke, 123; *Westermarck* 3, 80;

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Hartland, ii, 141; Elsie Clews Parsons, *The Old-Fashioned Woman*, p. 87; Müller-Lyer, *Phasen der Liebe*, p. 22 f.). And from the woman, who is almost everywhere in the world unclean and a bringer of destruction, and her husband, set into danger by her, spirits and evil It is to this view that a good proportion of the twelve kinds of sons enumerated in the law books owes its being. They are also named in the Mahābh., i, 120.32-34, and the account given here, too, has a singularly mild tone towards the "pretty sins" of the woman, and differs considerably from the account in the law writings. As bandhudāyada, that is, as sons who are kinsmen (belong to the family) and are entitled to inherit, are named: 1st, svayamjāta (one begotten by the husband himself, aurasa); 2nd, praṇīta (brought by the wife to the husband, and, as the commentary declares in agreement with çl. 35-36, begotten by the free grace of a better man); 3rd, parikrīta (bought, according to Nil. begotten with the wife by another, who has been paid for the seed; which in view of i, 105.2 is certainly right); 4th, paunarbhava (the son of a re-married woman)¹; 5th, kānīna (unmarried woman's child); 6th,