To complete our picture of the patriarchal family, we have the traditions of three distinct customs or rites affecting its internal economy. Two of these rites, the maintenance of the sacred house-fire, and the marriage ceremony, probably date back to a very remote period; and the third, the custom of adoption, though of later development, may be regarded, in its origin at least, as primitive. Fire is itself so wonderful in its appearance and effects, so good a servant, so terrible a master, that we cannot feel any surprise at its having attracted a great deal of attention in early times. The traces of fire-worship are so widely spread over the earth that there is scarcely a single race whose traditions are entirely devoid of them. But the sacred house-fire of the Aryans is interesting to us chiefly in its connection with other family rites in which it played an important part. This fire, which was perpetually kept burning on the family hearth, seems to have been regarded in some sort, as a living family deity, who watched over and assisted the particular family to which it belonged. It was by its aid that the food of the family was cooked, and from it was ignited the sacrifice or the funeral pyre. It was the centre of the family life; the hearth on which it burned was in the midst of the dwelling, and no stranger was admitted into its presence. That hearth was to each member of the household as it were an umbilicus orbis, or navel of the earth—hearth, only another form of earth.[53] When the members of the family met together to partake of their meals, a part was always first offered to the fire by whose aid the meal was prepared; the patriarch acted as officiating priest in this as in every other family ceremony; and to the patriarch’s wife was confided the especial charge of keeping the fire supplied with fuel.
Marriage.
By marriage, as we have seen, a woman became a member of her husband’s family. She ceased to be any longer a member of the household in which she was born, for the life of each family was so isolated that it would have been impossible to belong to two different families at once. So we find that the marriage ceremony chiefly consisted in an expression of this change of family by the wife. In general it was preceded by a treaty between the two families, a formal offer of marriage made by the intending husband’s family on his behalf, together with a gift to the bride’s family, which was regarded as the price paid for the bride. If all preliminary matters went forward favourably, then, on the day fixed for the marriage, the different members of the bridegroom’s family went to the household of the bride and demanded her. After some orthodox delay, in which the bride was expected to express unwillingness to go, she was formally given up to those who demanded her, the patriarch of her household solemnly dismissing her from it and giving up all authority over her. She was then borne in triumph to the bridegroom’s house; and, on entering it, was carried over the threshold, so as not to touch it with her feet; thus expressing that her entry within the house was not that of a mere guest or stranger. She was finally, before the house-fire, solemnly admitted into her husband’s family, and as a worshipper at the family altar.
Adoption.
This ceremony was subject to a great many variations amongst the different Aryan races; but in every one of them some trace of it is to be found, and this always apparently intended to express the same idea, the change of the bride’s family. Adoption, which in later times became extremely common among the Romans—the race which seems in Europe to have preserved most faithfully the old Aryan family type—originated in a sort of extension of the same theory that admitted of the wife’s entry into her husband’s family, as almost all the details of the ceremony of adoption are copied from that of marriage. Cases must have occurred pretty often where a man might be placed in such a position as to be without a family. He may have become alienated from his own kindred by the commission of some crime, or all his relatives may have died from natural causes or been killed in war. In the condition in which society was then, such a man would be in a peculiarly unenviable position. There would be no one in whom he could trust, no one who would be the least interested in him or bound to protect him. Thus wandering as an outlaw, without means of defence from enemies, and unable to protect his possessions if he chanced to have any, or to obtain means of subsistence if he had none, he would be very desirous of becoming a member of some other family, in order that he might find in it the assistance and support necessary for his own welfare. It might also sometimes happen, that owing to a want of male descendants some house might be in danger of extinction. Now the extinction of a family was a matter of peculiar dread to its members. Connected with the worship of the hearth was the worship of the ancestors of the family. It was the duty of each patriarch to offer sacrifices on stated occasions to the departed spirits of his ancestors; and it was considered as a matter of the utmost importance that these sacrifices should be kept up, in order to insure the happiness of those departed spirits after death. So important indeed was this rite held to be, that it was reckoned as one of the chief duties which each patriarch had to perform, and the family property was regarded as dedicated to this object in priority to every other. It would therefore be the chief care of each head of a household to leave male descendants, in order that the offerings for his own and his ancestors’ benefit might be continued after his death. The only person, however, capable of performing these rites was a member of the same family, one who joined in the same worship by the same household fire: so if all the males of a family were to die out, these rights must of necessity cease.
The marriage ceremony had already supplied a precedent for introducing members into a house who were not born in it. It was very natural, then, that this principle should be extended to the introduction of males when there was any danger of the male line becoming extinct. This was done by the ceremony of adoption, which was in many respects similar to that of marriage, being a formal renunciation of the person adopted by the patriarch of his original family, in case he was a member of one, and a formal acceptance and admission into the new family of his adoption, of which he was thenceforward regarded as a regular member. This ceremony exhibits in a very marked manner the leading peculiarity of the patriarchal household. We see how completely isolated, in theory, such a group was from the rest of the world; having its own distinct worship, in which no one but its own members were permitted to share, reverencing its own ancestors only, who might receive worship from none but their descendants. So jealously was this separation of families guarded, that it was impossible for a man or woman at the same time to worship at two family shrines. While displaying its isolation in the strongest light, adoption is nevertheless a mark of decay in the patriarchal family. It is an artificial grafting on the original simple stock; and however carefully men may have shut their eyes at first to its artificial nature, it must have had a gradual tendency to undermine the reverence paid to the principle of blood relationship.
Before we consider, however, the causes of decay of this form of society, which we shall do in the next chapter, there are some other indications of their manner of livelihood which will help us to understand the social condition of these Aryan patriarchal families. We have seen that, with the introduction of bronze into Europe, various changes took place in the manner of men’s lives. One of these is the regular domestication of animals. It is true that domestic animals were by no means unknown before the bronze age in Europe: but until that time this custom had not attained any great extension. In remains of settlements whose age is supposed to be before the introduction of bronze, by far the larger number of animals’ bones found are those belonging to wild species, while those belonging to tame species are comparatively rare. This shows that the principal part of the food of those people who lived before the bronze age was obtained by hunting. After the introduction of bronze, however, exactly the reverse is the case. In these later remains the bones of domestic animals become much more common, while those of wild animals are comparatively rare, which shows what an important revolution had taken place in men’s habits.
Introduction
of the
pastoral life.
It must also be remembered that many remains supposed to belong to the later stone age may, in fact, belong to societies that existed during the bronze age, but who had not yet adopted the use of bronze, or else from their situation were unable to obtain any. As yet so little is known of how this metal was obtained at that time, that it is impossible to say what situations would be least favourable for obtaining it; but considering that tin, of which bronze is partly composed, is only found in a very few places, the wonder is rather that bronze weapons are so frequent amongst the different remains scattered over Europe, than that they should be absent from some of them. Moreover, the races that inhabited Europe before the Aryans came there would afterwards remain collected together in settlements, surrounded by the invading population, for a considerable length of time before they had either been exterminated or absorbed by the more civilized race. These aborigines would adopt such of the arts and customs of the Aryans as were most within their reach. The increased population and the greater cultivation of the land which followed the Aryan invasion would make it more difficult to obtain food from hunting, and the aborigines would therefore be compelled to adopt domestication of animals as a means of support, which they would have little difficulty in doing, as they would be able to obtain a stock to start from, either by raids on their neighbours’ herds or, perhaps, by barter. But the manufacture of bronze weapons, being a much more complicated affair than the rearing of cattle, would take a much longer time to acquire. This perhaps may account for the remains found in the lake-dwellings, some of which show a considerable degree of social advance, but an entire ignorance of the use of bronze, while in the later ones bronze weapons are also found. We may, then, regard the domestication of animals, to the extent that it was practised by the Aryans in their Asiatic home, as a new thing in Europe, and as introduced by the Aryans. It was on their flocks and herds that these races chiefly depended for subsistence, and the importance of the chase as a means of livelihood was very much less with them than it was with the old hunter-tribes that formed the earlier population of Europe. This in itself was a great advance in civilization. It implied a regular industry, and the possession of cattle was not only a guarantee against want, but an inducement to a more regular and orderly mode of living.
There are no lessons so important to uncivilized nations as those of providence and industry, and the pastoral life required and encouraged both these qualities. It was necessary to store up at one time of year food to support the cattle during another period; to preserve a sufficient number of animals to keep the stock replenished. The cows too had to be milked at regular times, and every night the flocks and herds had to be collected into pens to protect them from beasts of prey, and every morning to be led out again to the pasture. All this shows the existence of a more organized and methodical life than is possible to a hunter-tribe. The pastoral life, moreover, seems to be one particularly suited to the patriarchal type of society. Each little community is capable of supplying its own wants, and is also compelled to maintain a certain degree of isolation. The necessity of having a considerable extent of country for their pasturage would prevent different families from living very near each other. In its simplest state, too, the pastoral life is a nomadic one; so that the only social connection which can exist among such a people is one of kinship, for having no fixed homes they can have no settled neighbours or fellow-countrymen. The importance attached to cattle in this stage of civilization is evidenced by the frequent use of words in their origin relating to cattle, in all the Aryan languages, to express many of the ordinary incidents of life. Not only do cattle occupy a prominent place in Aryan mythology, but titles of honour, the names for divisions of the day, for the divisions of land, for property, for money, and many other words, all attest by their derivation how prominent a position cattle occupied with the early Aryans. The patriarch is called in Sanskrit ‘lord of the cattle,’ the morning is ‘the calling of the cattle,’ the evening ‘the milking time.’ The Latin word for money, pecunia, and our English word ‘fee’ both come from the Aryan name for cattle. In Anglo-Saxon movable property is called ‘cwicfeoh,’ or living cattle, while immovable property, such as houses and land, is called ‘dead cattle.’ And so we find the same word constantly cropping up in all the Aryan languages, to remind us that in the pastoral life cattle are the great interest and source of wealth to the community, and the principal means of exchange employed in such commerce as is there carried on.