II. Hebrew Marriage.
The Hebrews seem to have been alone among the Semites in adopting monogamy, at least in general practice. Moreover, the Bible tells us that concubinage was not forbidden to God’s chosen people. In speaking of the daughter sold by her father to a rich man, the book of Exodus used language sufficiently explicit on this point—“If she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed: to sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power. And if he have betrothed her unto his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters. But if he take to him another wife, her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish.”[560] The book of Genesis indeed tells us that “a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh;”[561] but this famous verse seems to indicate the violence of the love rather than monogamic and indissoluble marriage.
Doubtless the subjection of the Jewish woman was not extreme, as it is in Kabyle; it was, however, very great. Her consent to marriage was necessary, it is true, when she had reached majority, but she was all the same sold to her husband. We must note, nevertheless, that she had a recognised right of ownership, and that the property of the husband was security for that of the wife and for her dowry; but the husband none the less held the wife in strict dependence. The song of the virtuous woman at the end of Proverbs is generally quoted as a sublime portrait of the Jewish wife by all those who are still hypnotised by the prestige of the so-called holy books. However, in reading these celebrated verses with an unprejudiced mind, we hardly find more than the portrait of a laborious servant, busy and grasping—“She seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands.... She riseth while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens. She considereth a field, and buyeth it; with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard. She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms.... Her candle goeth not out by night.... She eateth not the bread of idleness.” We shall see later that the wife, though she might gain much money, which seems to have been the ideal of the Hebrew husband according to the Proverbs, was repudiable at will, with no other reason than the caprice of the master who had bought her. Finally, and this is much more severe, she was always obliged to be able to prove, cloths in hand, that she was a virgin at the moment of her marriage, and this under pain of being stoned. Let us listen to the sacred book—“If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her ...” and seeking a pretext to repudiate her, he imputes to her a shameful crime, saying, “I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid ... her father and mother shall take her and shall represent to the elders of the city in the gate the tokens of the damsel’s virginity.” Of what kind were these proofs? The following verses tell us, “They shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city. And the elders of that city shall take that man and chastise him, and they shall amerce him in an hundred shekels of silver, and give them unto the father of the damsel.... But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel, then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father’s house, and the men of the city shall stone her with stones that she die; because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father’s house; so shalt thou put evil away from among you.”[562] If we add to the preceding, that by the law of levirate, the childless widow, whether she wished or not, was awarded to her brother-in-law, we shall be enlightened as to the unenviable position of the married woman under the Hebrew law.
III. Marriage in Persia and Ancient India.
Of the conjugal customs of the ancient Persians we know little. The only formal prescription that we find in the Avesta is a strict prohibition against marrying an infidel. The Mazdean who commits such a crime troubles the whole universe: “he changes to mud a third of the rivers that rush down the mountain sides; he withers a third of the growth of trees and of herbs which cover the earth; he takes from pure men a third of their good thoughts, of their good words, of their good actions; he is more noxious than serpents and wolves.”[563]
On Indian marriage we are better informed, at first by the Code of Manu, and then by modern travellers. India has early practised mitigated monogamy. Polygamy and concubinage were the privilege of the Brahmins and rich Kchatriyas; but the mass of the nation generally lived in monogamy, though nevertheless imposing on the married woman a most humiliating position. Manu proclaims aloud the necessary dependence and incurable inferiority of the weaker sex: “If women were not guarded, they would bring misfortune to two families.” “Manu has bestowed on women the love of their bed, of their seat, and of adornment, concupiscence, anger, bad inclinations, the desire to do evil, perversity.”[564] “A little girl, a young woman, and an old woman ought never to do anything of their own will, even in their own house.” “During her childhood a woman depends on her father; during her youth, on her husband; her husband being dead, on her sons; if she has no sons, on the near relatives of her husband; or in default of them, on those of her father; if she has no paternal relatives, on the sovereign. A woman ought never to have her own way.”[565]
Given such an utter subordination of woman, it is self-evident that there would be no question of her choosing a husband. It is the father’s duty to marry his daughter; and he need not wait till she has reached puberty: “A father must give his daughter in marriage to a young man of agreeable appearance, and of the same rank, according to the law, although she may not have attained the age of eight years, at which he ought to marry her.”[566] However, if the father neglects the prime duty of marrying his daughter, the law ordains that the latter shall proceed to do it. Marriage is a sacred duty: “Let a girl, although adult, wait three years; but after that period, let her choose a husband of the same rank as herself.”[567] The girl is then free, and her husband in marrying her owes no payment to the father: “The father has lost all authority over his daughter in delaying for her the time of becoming a mother.”[568] Girls cannot be married too soon; at eight years old they are given a husband of twenty-eight; at twelve years, a man of thirty.[569] Some verses, in contradiction to that which I have just now quoted, forbid the father from receiving any gratuity whatever in marrying his daughter, not even a cow or a bull: “All gratuity, small or large, constitutes a sale.”[570] But the prohibition to sell his daughter, though still very little observed, is evidently of posterior date; and in India, as in all other countries, the daughter has been esteemed at first as merchandise. The law imposes at times very curious restrictions on a man who is intending to marry. He must not take a girl with red hair, or bearing the name of a constellation, of a river, a bird, or a serpent.[571] He must not, under pain of hell, marry before his elder brother.[572] Above all, he must not marry below his rank. To marry a woman belonging to the servile class is, for the Brahmin or the Kchatriya, an enormous crime, which lowers him to the rank of the Soudras.[573] It is an unpardonable sin: “For him who drinks the foam of the lips of a Soudra, or who has a child by her, there is no expiation declared by the law.”[574] He descends to the infernal abode, and his son loses caste. As for the son of a Brahmanic woman and a Soudra, he is a Tchandala, the vilest of mortals.[575] The young Brahmin, after having received the authorisation of his spiritual director, and having purified himself by a bath, must marry a woman of his own class, who is well made, who has a fine down over her body, fine hair, small teeth, limbs of a charming sweetness, and the graceful movement of a swan or a young elephant.[576] But, however the wife may be chosen, she is held in a state of servile submission. “A wife,” says the Code, “can never be set free from the authority of her husband; neither by sale nor by desertion.” “Once only a young girl is given in marriage; once only the father says, I give her.”[577]
Taken as a whole, these antique precepts are still observed in India. In general, monogamy prevails, but the married woman is none the less kept in a state of abject subjection. It is shameful, says Somerset, for a virtuous woman to know how to read and dance; these futile accomplishments are left to the bayadere. “Servant, slave,” are the habitual appellations used by the husband in addressing his wife, who replies by saying “Master, lord,” who must take care not to call her husband by his name,[578] and has not the right to sit at his table.[579] It is the parents who negotiate the marriage, without any regard to the tastes of the future husband and wife, and thinking only of rank and fortune.[580] A daughter is always married, or rather sold, in infancy, often to a sexagenarian Brahmin, and before she is of age to manifest any preference.[581]
These accounts, which are as authentic as possible, enable us to estimate the Hindoo marriage. However monogamic it may generally be, it is very inferior from a moral point of view. The tyrannical right left to the husband, his unlimited power, the servitude of the wife, yielded or negotiated in infancy, the pride of caste and the care for wealth outweighing all other considerations, proclaim loudly enough that matrimonial legislation in India has been the regulation, for the man’s profit only, of instincts of a very low order.