Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c11.103

v2.c11.103

Christian ideas are not at work, have nothing about it of what Krauss sees in the “child through sin”, but rather might there not be a glimmer of the primitive meaning of the magically dangerous? And such customs as the handing over of the bride to the wedding-guests may well, in so far as it is not hospitality towards the guests, in many cases have as first purpose the most thorough securing of the husband against the mysterious powers that are thus tricked. Many wedding customs, such as the well-known flight of the bride, her struggles, the pitched fight with the bridegroom, the keeping back of the bride, and so on, have been traced back to marriage by capture. Here and there it may be that one at least of the reasons is to be found in this. But originally probably there was often the purpose of throwing dust in the evil spirits’ eyes. Anyhow there are a few, very few, cases where force has to be used on the bridegroom. So it is among the Garos (Maj. A. Playfair, *The Garos*, Lond., 1909, p. 67; Crooke, *Pop. Relig. and Folk-Lore*, etc., i, 121 f.; Westermarck, 158 f.; Finck, *Prim. Love*, 649). It must be noted that among them only the girl may propose marriage, and if a love-blinded young man lets himself be carried away into doing such a thing, it is a great insult to the whole family. *Zeitschr. f. Ethnol.*, Bd. 5, p. 268 (after Dalton). Also among the gipsies in India we find the bridegroom’s “mock refusal” at the wedding. Devendra N. Das, *Sketches of Hindoo Life*, p. 238. Among them the girl has sexual freedom, and makes her own choice in marriage. Ibid. 237. In the end we find it true here too that man, above all, more primitive man, is after all no memory-mechanism. Even among the beasts the male must often get the female as his hunting-booty, and overcome her while she struggles, and so on. And every woman is a Sabine, as Olaf in Johannes Linnankoski’s great novel *Laulu tulipunaisesta kukasta* (Song of the Fire-red Flower) says; she wishes to be carried off. Is it likely that so strong an instinct in more primitive man—for imitation, for play, for the symbolical and the use of his powers of imagination—would have slumbered at the wedding above all?