In ancient Guatemala, where marriages were celebrated with a certain pomp, the father of the bridegroom sent a deputation of friends to seek the bride, and one of these messengers had to take the girl on his shoulders and carry her to an appointed spot, near the house of the bridegroom.[238]
In Asia, over the vast Mongol region extending from Kamtschatka to the country of the Turcomans, the ceremonial of capture is always held in honour.
This symbolism of capture is especially curious with the Kamtschatdales. There it is not as a conqueror that the husband enters the family of the wife, since he must first do an act of servitude, find the parents of the girl he desires, put himself at their service, and take his part in the domestic labour. This period of probation may last a long time, even years,[239] and surely it is a singular prelude to a marriage by violent capture. However, when the time of the novitiate is over, the future husband is allowed to triumph violently and publicly over the resistance of his bride. She is armed with thick garments, one over the other, and with straps and cords. Besides this she is guarded and defended by the women of the iourte. However, the marriage is not definitely concluded until the bridegroom, surmounting all these obstacles, succeeds in effecting on his well-defended bride a sort of outrage on modesty, that she herself must acknowledge by crying ni ni in a plaintive tone. But the girls and women of the guard fall on the assailant with great cries and blows, tear his hair, scratch his face, and sometimes throw him. Victory often necessitates repeated assaults and many days of combat. When at last it is gained, and the bride has herself acknowledged it, the marriage is settled, and is consummated the same evening in the iourte of the bride, who is not taken to her husband’s house till the next day.[240]
The ceremonial of capture still continues in the marriages of the Kalmucks, the Tungouses, and the Turcomans, but has become less coarse.
With the Kalmucks the girl is first bought from her father, and then, after a pretended resistance, is carried away on a horse ready saddled.[241] The custom varies: sometimes it is enough to place the bride, by force, on a horse; sometimes she flees, always on horseback, but is pursued and caught by the bridegroom, who consummates the marriage on the spot, and then conducts his prize to his tent.[242]
The Tungouses, coarser still, proceed by an attempt on modesty, as with the Kamtschatdales; the bridegroom must attack his bride and tear her clothes.[243]
With the Turcomans, marriage can be concluded with or without the consent of the parents. In the latter case, the young people fly and seek refuge in a neighbouring obah. They are always well received there, and remain a month or six weeks. During this time the elders of the two obahs negotiate an arrangement with the parents; they agree on the price of the girl, who afterwards returns to the paternal domicile; she must remain six months or a year, or even longer, before living with her husband, and during all this time he may only see her secretly. Sometimes the flight is executed with the previous consent of the parents, and then it is no more than a symbolic capture,[244] a comedy.
In reality rape, more or less real, is often replaced by a simple ceremonial with the greater part of the nomads of Central Asia, and notably the Turcomans. Then the young girl, clothed in her bridal costume, bestrides a fiery horse, which she puts to a gallop, having at the saddle a kid or a lamb freshly killed. The bridegroom and all the wedding guests, also on horseback, pursue the future wife, who, by clever turns and evolutions, hides herself, and hinders them from seizing the animal she has carried off.[245] All this is plainly the mere mimic of rape, and there is in these divers customs a designed gradation: at first the actual stealing of the girl, with the understanding that the affair will not end tragically; then a stealing that may be called legal, as it is authorised by the parents; at length the simple ceremony symbolic of rape by violence.
Customs very similar to these are found with a certain number of the aborigines of Bengal.
The Kurmis and other sudras celebrate marriage by a pretended combat. Sometimes the bridegrooms mark their foreheads with blood, which seems, indeed, to be the origin of the singular and nearly universal custom in India of the sindradan,[246] consisting of marking the forehead of the bride with vermilion. The vermilion has apparently replaced the blood, and the blood may, and doubtless does, symbolise a violent rape.