Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c15.12

v2.c15.12

¹ Cp. Majjhimanik., i, 190; WZKM, xvi, 100 ff.; xxvii, 474 ff.; Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion (1899), i, 100; Ploss-Bartels 4, ii, 244; Rich. Andree, Ethnogr. Parallelen, i, 159 ff.; Schrader, Die Indogermanen, p. 108. While the champions of woman-capture look on this institution as a survival from the time of that method of getting wives (e.g. Dargun, Mutterrecht u. Raubehe, etc., 90 ff., 108 f.), Max Müller, Mantegazza (Geschlechtsverhältnisse, 276 ff.), Henne am Rhyn (p. 20) see the grounds, probably more rightly, in jealousy. But is this enough, particularly as the more primitive peoples often show so little of that "passion"? Since the tabu relation is indeed found between father-in-law and daughter-in-law, but still more between mother-in-law and son-in-law, where yet the danger of sexual intercourse is smaller, a derivation from mother-right would seem much more likely; the mother, either as the actual owner of her daughter, or as representative of the clan would have the most reason to look with hostile eyes on the man taking this property away. Among many Vishnuitic sects the daughter-in-law must never speak to her mother-in-law. Dubois-Beauchamp, p. 349. This, indeed, is easier to understand. But this tabu institution is otherwise still very much in the dark. But what is seen clearly seems to be this, that powerful superstitious ideas must form the main background. The explanation also which K. Th. Preuss gives in Die geistige Kultur der Naturvölker 2, p. 73 does not seem to satisfy.