[10] Ibid. i. 216 sq.
[11] Giles, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, i. 64, n. 10. de Groot, Religious System of China, (vol. ii. book) i. 617. Indo-Chinese Gleaner, iii. 58.
[12] Ross, History of Corea, p. 313.
Among the Semites, also, we meet with the idea that a dead man who has no children will miss something in Shĕol through not receiving that kind of worship which ancestors in early times appear to have received.[13] The Hebrews looked upon marriage as a religious duty.[14] According to the Shulchan Aruch, he who abstains from marrying is guilty of bloodshed, diminishes the image of God, and causes the divine presence to withdraw from Israel; hence a single man past twenty may be compelled by the court to take a wife.[15] Muhammedanism likewise regards marriage as a duty for men and women; to neglect it without a sufficient excuse subjects a man to severe reproach.[16] “When a servant [of God] marries,” said the Prophet, “verily he perfects half his religion.”[17]
[13] Cheyne, ‘Harlot,’ in Cheyne and Black, Encyclopædia Biblica, ii. 1964.
[14] Mayer, Rechte der Israeliten, pp. 286, 353. Lichtschein, Ehe nach mosaisch-talmudischer Auffassung, p. 5 sqq. Klugmann, Die Frau im Talmud, p. 39 sq.
[15] Schulchan Aruch, iv. (‘Eben haezer’) i. 1, 3. See also Yebamoth, fol. 63 b sq., quoted by Margolis, ‘Celibacy,’ in Jewish Encyclopedia, iii. 636.
[16] Lane, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, i. 197.
[17] Idem, Arabian Society in the Middle Ages, p. 221.
The so-called Aryan nations in ancient times, as M. Fustel de Coulanges and others have pointed out, regarded celibacy as an impiety and a misfortune: “an impiety, because one who did not marry put the happiness of the manes of the family in peril; a misfortune, because he himself would receive no worship after his death.” A man’s happiness in the next world depended upon his having a continuous line of male descendants, whose duty it would be to make the periodical offerings for the repose of his soul.[18] According to the ‘Laws of Manu,’ marriage is the twelfth Sanskāra, and as such a religious duty incumbent upon all.[19] Among the Hindus of the present day a man who is not married is generally considered to be almost a useless member of the community, and is indeed looked upon as beyond the pale of nature;[20] and the spirits of young men who have died without becoming fathers are believed to wander about in a restless miserable manner, like people burdened with an enormous debt which they are quite unable to discharge.[21] Similar views are expressed in Zoroastrianism. Ahura Mazda said to Zoroaster:—“The man who has a wife is far above him who lives in continence; he who keeps a house is far above him who has none; he who has children is far above the childless man.”[22] The greatest misfortune which could befall an ancient Persian was to be childless.[23] To him who has no child the bridge of Paradise shall be barred; the first question the angels there will ask him is, whether he has left in this world a substitute for himself, and if the answer be “No” they will pass by and he will stay at the head of the bridge, full of grief. The primitive meaning of this is plain: the man without a son cannot enter Paradise because there is nobody to pay him the family worship.[24] Ashi Vanguhi, a feminine impersonification of piety, and the source of all the good and riches that are connected with piety, rejects the offerings of barren people—old men, courtesans, and children.[25] It is said in the Yasts, “This is the worst deed that men and tyrants do, namely, when they deprive maids that have been barren for a long time of marrying and bringing forth children.”[26] And in the eyes of all good Parsis of the present day, as in the time of king Darius and the contemporaries of Herodotus, the two greatest merits of a citizen are the begetting and rearing of a numerous family, and the fruitful tilling of the soil.[27]