Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c11.101

Language: English

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The first and main reason for this phenomenon, as also for the so-called “romantic reserve” of the newly wedded connected therewith, that is, the secret visits of the young husband, is to be sought, however, elsewhere than in that union of spirit-beings with the earthly woman. Nor does “marriage by capture” (McLennan and others), “paying the price of maidenhead” (Ploss-Bartels and others), “furthering fruitfulness” (Günther, 85-86), or the various other suggestions of this kind meet the case. The feeling of the sinfulness of coition which Westermarck calls in is too little prevalent, and also in the main of too late a period to give an explanation. Thus we ask: Why is coition outside wedlock not dangerous because of its uncleanness? And why is continence only kept for so short a time? To me the matter presents itself thus: The coition which we call unlawful, lechery or fornication, is in general practised without any hesitation among very many peoples and tribes. It is no more than a pleasant sport, and of no importance. Thus the mysterious powers do not give any heed to it, either. But marriage is a thing of great importance, indeed it is a downright injury done to nature and the beings which hold sway in the darkness of nature, and especially in woman. Up to now they have been the owners of the woman. Now a man becomes her private owner. This is a robbery done to them.

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Thus with marriage—but not with sexual intercourse outside marriage—the man is threatened by the sharpest malice of magical powers. But the demons are very stupid. So they only watch the door (*Jāt.*, ii, 79, introduct.; Dubois-Beauchamp ³, p. 499; *Zeitschr. d. Ver. f. Volksk.*, 11, p. 268; *Zeitschr. f Ethnol.*, Bd. 30, p. 353; Ploss-Bartels, i, 560), believe that if the child has an ugly name, or is spoken of slightingly, then nothing will happen, and so on. If then the newly wedded refrain at the beginning, these simple fools of spirits imagine that it will go on in this way. Among many peoples and tribes a short time only of chastity is enough to trick the evil powers, among others due trouble must be taken. Thus it is that those, too, who have not been long married come together by stealth, or in the forest, in the open, for the spirits only watch the house and what goes on in it, especially in such a case as this. In other places, indeed, the young married couple must for a long time keep themselves carefully shut in, particularly by night, but this, too, is only because of the spirits who are then so powerful. See, for example, Weber’s *Ind. Studien*, v, 331, 347; Garnett, i, 241-2, 324; ii, 257; Mantegazza, 256; McLennan, 181, 186-7; Westermarck, 151-2; *Anthropos*, iii, 185.

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When the demands on the woman’s purity are more highly developed, there is furthermore the superstitious dread before the mystery of the first blood, which gives an opening for the demons—the first cause of the so-called “right” of the first night. This last also is primitive, and at first an evil necessity; the slave and the stranger, the latter as a foe or one of no account, not indeed, as the fable has grown up, as the representative of the god, are called in for the task; the kinsfolk or the girl herself has to see to the defloration as a duty; it falls to the lot of the shaman, the priest, or of the chief or ruler, who is more or less proof against the spirits. In the case of the Tobias nights, the thought may then at an early stage have been present, that through self-denial or even self-torture the demons (and the gods also) are won over; there may also be other ideas. But we must not forget that it is the husband who is the one threatened by the greatest danger; others are not so strongly, or not at all, affected by the mysterious powers as such. Thus the Kamchadale widow must first lie with another man so that the ghost of her first husband may not kill his successor (Hartland, *Prim. Patern.*, ii, 183); and the husband of the adulteress among some tribes on Lake Nyassa cannot approach her again before another man has lain with her ritually (Hartland, ii, 122). Hence, too, the girl’s “preliminary husband”, used as a lightning-conductor. See R. Wilhelm, *Chines.

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Volksmärchen*, p. 236. And so on for other cases. A like superstition is very likely at work in the case of the “first night” also, but certainly in other cases belonging here. Among the South Slavs instead of the bridegroom it is the groom’s men, the mother-in-law, and the sister who during the first night share the bed of the newly wedded wife. Krauss, *Sitte u. Brauch*, 382, 456. And if we find that among them the young wife must not, for a whole year, refer to her husband by his name, this has probably a like cause: the name, in accordance with a well-known belief found all over the world, as part of a person’s being, gives a hold to the hostile powers; the young husband must at first, therefore, keep a strict incognito. To see so confidently in this only the trace of earlier “hetærism”, as is the custom, seems to me very ill-founded. “Evil, harm” and “sin” often coincide in thought and in speech. The Russian “gryekh” (“sin”), too, denotes likewise “harm, hurt”. Might not in the same way the corresponding South Slav word, provided always that purely