Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c11.101.3

v2.c11.101.3

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.