[151] Sleeman, Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, i. 330 sqq.
According to ancient Russian laws, fathers had great power over their children;[152] but it is not probable that a son could be sold as a slave.[153] Baron von Haxthausen, who wrote before the Emancipation in 1861, says that “the patriarchal government, feelings, and organisation are in full activity in the life, manners, and customs of the Great Russians. The same unlimited authority which the father exercises over all his children is possessed by the mother over her daughters.”[154] It was a common custom for a father to marry his young sons to full-grown women; and in Poland also, according to Nestor, a father used to select a bride for his son.[155] According to Professor Bogišić, the power of the father is not so great among the Southern Slavs as among the Russians;[156] but a son is not permitted to make a proposal of marriage to a girl against the will of his parents, whilst a daughter, of course, enjoys still less freedom of disposing of her own hand.[157] According to a Slavonian maxim, “a father is like an earthly god to his son.“[158]
[152] Accurse, quoted by de Laurière, in Loysel, op. cit. i. 82.
[153] Macieiowski, Slavische Rechtsgeschichte, iv. 404.
[154] von Haxthausen, Russian Empire, ii. 229 sq.
[155] Westermarck, op. cit. p. 234. Macieiowski, op. cit. ii. 189.
[156] Maine, Early Law and Custom, p. 244, note.
[157] Krauss, Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven, pp. 314, 320.
[158] Maine, Early Law and Custom, p. 243.
Among this group of peoples, also, we meet with reverence for the elder brother, for persons of a superior age generally, and, especially, for the aged.