As for the Persians of more ancient times still, the Mazdeans who drew up the sacred code of the Avesta, if we refer to the Zend text, we find they had a most severe sexual morality. The Avestic code condemns and punishes resort to prostitutes, seduction, sexual extravagances, abortion, etc. Throughout that portion of the Avesta which has come down to us there is no recognition of polygamy, and the verses which mention marriage have quite a monogamic meaning. It seems, however, says one of the translators of the Avesta, that among the ancient Persians polygamy may have been authorised in case of sterility of the first wife.[439] Like anthropophagy, polygamy is an original sin with human societies. But writings so exclusively religious and even liturgic as the Avesta constitute very incomplete sources of information in regard to civil institutions. To study the marriage of the ancient Persians in the Avesta seems about as illusory as it would be to study ours in a Catholic prayer-book.
We know also, from the Code of Manu and historical and ethnographical documents, that polygamy is and has been far from being unknown in India, and yet it is difficult to prove from the text of the Vedic hymns that the writers of these chants have practised it.
This may be inferred, however, from several verses. In the beginning the morals were coarse enough for abortion to be common. “Let Agni,” we read in a hymn, “kill the rakchasa who, under the form of a brother, a husband, or a lover, approaches thee to destroy thy fruit.”[440] On the other hand, woman is held in slight esteem by the sacred chants. She is a being “of incapable mind and unfit for serious employment.”[441] In one hymn, Satchi, the daughter of Buloman, boasts of having eclipsed her rivals in the eyes of her husband.[442] A certain number of verses speak of the wives of the gods: “The praying cows, these wives of Agni, wish to obtain a proof of the virility of the god.”[443]
In Sanskrit the word “finger” is feminine, and thus very often the fingers which handle the sacred mortar are called the ten wives of Agni.[444]
In short, other accounts leave us no room to doubt that in primitive India, as elsewhere, the great and the powerful have largely practised polygamy from Vedic times.[445]
That these customs have been those of Brahmanic India, the text of Manu in antiquity, and the reports of travellers in modern times, attest loudly enough. One verse of Manu regulates the right of succession of sons that a Brahmin may have by four wives belonging to different castes. “If a Brahmin has four wives belonging to four classes, in the direct order, and if they all have sons, this is the rule of inheritance. Let the son of the Brahmin (after having deducted the bull, the chariot, and the jewels) take three parts of the rest; let the son of the Kchatriya wife take two parts; that of the Vaisyâ, one part and a half; that of the Soudra, one part only.”[446]
Another verse, much more singular, declares that the children of a second wife belong to the person who has lent the money to buy her:
“He who has a wife, and who, after having borrowed money from some one, marries another with it, derives no other advantage than the sensual pleasure; the children belong to the man who has given the money.”[447] As for the king, the Code of Manu permits polygamy to him in the largest measure, at least under the form of concubinage. He ought to have a troop of wives, whose duty it is to fan him, and to pour water and perfumes over his august person. He refreshes himself with them from the cares of government, and passes the night in their agreeable company.[448] We must not forget, besides, that, as the Mahabharata has informed us, the Kchatriyas practised marriage by capture and polygamy.[449]
To sum up, in India, as everywhere else, polygamy has evolved; it has at first been common; then, when power and riches have been concentrated in the hands of a small number, it has become the privilege of the great. The polygamy of the princes and of the rich Brahmins was even the first obstacle encountered in the seventeenth century by the preaching of the Jesuits in India.[450]
In the present time it is the same for the great, and custom tolerates a second wife, even to common husbands, in case of sterility of the first.[451] I shall have to speak again of these customs in treating of concubinage.