In some aboriginal tribes of India we even find matriarchal customs. Thus with the Pani-Koechs the husbands leave to their very industrious wives the care of their property. In marrying, a man goes to live with his mother-in-law, and obeys her as well as his wife. Moreover, in this tribe the mothers negotiate the marriages; the fathers have nothing to do with them.[323]
Among the Yerkalas the maternal uncle has the right to claim for his sons the two eldest daughters of his sister, or to renounce them for an indemnity of eight images of idols.[324]
Money, always money! With all peoples and races marriage is often reduced to a pecuniary question. In this respect the Berbers, the Semites, and the Aryans are not distinguished from other human types. With certain Touaregs of the Sahara, says Duveyrier, it is the daughter herself who indemnifies the father, and it is after the old Italian manner, more tusco, that she gains the price of enfranchisement which is necessary for her marriage. “The father, before the marriage of his daughter, exacts from her the reimbursement, levied on her body, of what she has cost her family ... and the girl, dishonoured according to our ideas, but ransomed according to local ideas, is all the more sought after, the greater her success in the commerce of her attractions.”[325]
In contrast to the Touaregs, the Semites, Hebrews, and Arabs, attached and still attach an enormous value to the virginity of the bride; but marriage was not and is not any the less for them a simple sale. The history of Jacob’s marriage has already shown us that marriage by servitude was practised by the ancient Hebrews. In later times the consent of the woman became necessary, which is a great step in advance, but the husband none the less bought his wife in some way or other.[326]
With contemporary Arabs marriage is a simple sale, without any disguise. An Arab jurist gives us the formula of it, which is very clear. It is as follows: “I sell you my daughter for such a sum.” “I accept.” The same author says elsewhere: “The woman sells in marriage a part of her person. In a purchase men buy an article of merchandise; in a marriage they buy the field of procreation.”[327] It would be impossible to speak more plainly. Nevertheless, the consent of the woman is necessary; it is she who is supposed to sell herself, and the price of the bargain constitutes her dowry. It was the same with the Hebrews.
Whatever may have been their religion, the greater number of the Aryan peoples have also considered marriage as a commercial transaction. The Afghan Mussulmans buy their wives, and these are regarded as a property, so much so that in case of widowhood they cannot re-marry, unless the second husband indemnifies the family of the first.[328]
In Brahmanic India the daughter is also bought from the parents. A curious verse of the Code of Manu tells us how the purchaser was indemnified in the case of substitution of another person: “If, after having shown a suitor a young girl, whose hand is granted to him, another is given him to wife, and secretly brought to him, he becomes the husband of both for the same price; such is the decision of Manu.”[329] Things have not much changed at present. “When they wish to signify that they are going to be married,” says an editor of Lettres édifiantes, in speaking of the Hindoos, “they generally say that they are going to buy a wife.” However, the parents do not appropriate the entire sum paid by the purchaser; a great part of it goes to buy jewels for the bride.[330] The ancient Malays of Sumatra had solved the conjugal problem in three different ways. Sometimes the man bought and led away the woman, according to the universal custom; sometimes the woman bought the man, who then came to live with her family; sometimes the two were married on a footing of equality.[331] We must note in passing that this last matrimonial form is very exceptional.
Throughout Europe, as well in Greco-Latin antiquity as among barbarians, the young girl has formerly been considered as a negotiable property, and marriage as a sale.
The Sagas tell us that the Scandinavian fathers married their daughters without consulting them—after the manner of savages—and received an indemnity from the son-in-law.[332]
With the Germans the daughter could not marry without the authorisation of her father or of her nearest relative, who first received the earnest money from the bridegroom;[333] as for the bride, she received the oscle, or price of the first kiss, and then the morgengabe, which constituted her dowry. In return, the German widow, like the Afghan widow, was the property of the parents of her husband, and could not re-marry without their authorisation.[334]