Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c11.101.4

v2.c11.101.4

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