Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c6.102.1

v1.c6.102.1

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;