Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c14.10

v2.c14.10

way put on a level with the so very contemptible, and often mysterious woman, or to be in any way like her. There is, therefore, in truth a much stronger motive needed, for making a lying-in woman of the husband, than the wish to see the children of his wife looked on as his own. Superstition filled with the thought of the precious self holds all the primitive peoples in its bonds, and an even relatively important freedom from it, such, for instance, as we meet with in the book of the two Seligmann’s on the Veddas, or as is here and there reported of the Aino, arouses the greatest astonishment. On the other hand the universal development of marriage by way of hetærism and matriarchate cannot be proved. For then all the peoples with the Couvade would have to be patriarchal now, and before they had the men’s lying-in they must have had mother-right. But even the first of these two does not hold, to say nothing whatever of the proof of the second. And the selfishness of the man is a truly “cosmic” element. I should like, then, as against this explanation and the other one to be immediately discussed, to point to some words of Fr. S. Krauss that are to be found somewhere in a note on the customs and habits of the South Slavs, and are worth more than many a long ethnological treatise. They are somewhat as follows: “If to-morrow the men had to bear the children, then the social question would be solved at one stroke—mankind would at once die out.” Children are indeed often very valuable to primitive man; but he does not take to the child-bed for *their* sake. But this is just what Starcke holds: “The well-being of the child is the object; the father’s powers of endurance are displayed on such occasions, and might thus be assured to the child, for no one who was deficient in courage and endurance would submit to this custom” (*Primit. Family*, p. 52). Primitive man is indeed not so careful and self-forgetting for the sake of his offspring. We are, it is true, often told of the foolish fondness shown, or said to be shown, by savages towards their growing children. But when we are told how general it is for the new-born to be killed off, and when we think how despised the father would become, if he took much heed of a brat like this, usually left only to the care of women, or even of fate—then we cannot believe that he would hand over his very important self to the shame and the discomforts, and even the pains of a couvade, only that it may go well for the little helpless creature. The statement in Dobrizhoffer from the relatively highly developed Abipones is worth nothing. No; superstitious fear of the harm that might come to a man’s own much-threatened personality, this only is the root. *Primos in orbe deos fecit timor*, as we may read also in the MBh., xii, 15.13-19; K, iii, 28.16. Dark beings and forces lurk round the father, who is likewise made