In the Mahabharata of India it is stated that formerly “women were unconfined and roved about at their pleasure, independent.” Finally, marriage was instituted and a woman was bound to a man for life. One of the eight forms of legalized marriage in the code of Manu was that of capture de facto and was called Racshasa. This particular form of conjugal union was practised exclusively by the military classes, among which, the women taken in battle were the acknowledged booty of their captors. A definition of this kind of marriage is as follows: “The seizure of a maiden by force from her house while she weeps and calls for assistance, after her kinsmen and friends have been slain in battle or wounded, and their houses broken open, is the marriage called Racshasa.”
Capture as the prescribed form of marriage for warriors may be traced through thousands of years and among various peoples. Of the three legalized forms of marital union in Rome, that by capture was the one in use among the plebeians, the patricians at the same time practising Confarreatio and Usus. In Arabia, as late as Mohammed’s time, the carrying off of women was recognized as a legal form of marriage.[109]
That capture constituted a legal form of marriage among the Israelites, or that women taken captives in war were appropriated as sexual slaves, is shown by their religious history, in which the instructions given to the Lord’s chosen people after they had taken a city was to “smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword: But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city” they were to take unto themselves. This, it will be noticed, is to be done “unto the cities which are very far off,” and which “are not of the cities of these nations.”[110]
When the Israelites 12,000 strong marched against the Midianites, they were commanded by Moses to slay all the males, adults and children, and all the women except the virgins. These virgins of whom there were 32,000 were to be spared and utilized as wives by the victorious Israelites. The fact will be noted that these women had been taken from their own people, hence they were wholly without influence or power. They were dependents and therefore subject to the will of their masters. They were sexual slaves or wives.
In Australia, among the North American Indians, the tribes of the Amazon and the Orinoco, in Hindustan and Afghanistan, marriage by actual capture is still practised, and many of the details connected with the modus operandi have been given by various writers. The following from Sir George Gray, relative to this form of marriage as it exists at the present time among some of the native Australian tribes, is quoted by Mr. J. F. McLennan.
Although a woman give no encouragement to her admirers,
many plots are laid to carry her off, and in the encounters which result from these, she is almost certain to receive some violent injury, for each of the combatants orders her to follow him, and in the event of her refusing, throws a spear at her. The early life of a young woman at all celebrated for beauty is generally one continued series of captivity to different masters, of ghastly wounds, of wanderings in strange families, of rapid flights, of bad treatment from other females, amongst whom she is brought a stranger by her captor; and rarely do you see a form of unusual grace and elegance, but it is marked and scarred by the furrows of old wounds; and many a female thus wanders several hundred miles from the home of her infancy, being carried off successively to distant and more distant points.[111]
In an account describing the search for wives by the natives of Sydney, Collins says:
The poor wretch is stolen upon in the absence of her protectors. Being first stupefied with blows, inflicted with clubs or wooden swords, on the head, back, and shoulders, every one of which is followed by a stream of blood, she is then dragged through the woods by one arm, with a perseverance and violence that it might be supposed would displace it from its socket. This outrage is not resented by the relations of the female, who only retaliate by a similar outrage when they find an opportunity. This is so constantly the practice among them that even the children make it a play game, or exercise.[112]
By various travellers and explorers, the fact has been observed that certain symbols representing force in their marriage ceremonies are in use among nearly if not all extant tribes which have reached a certain stage of growth. To such an extent, in an earlier age, has the forcible carrying-off of women prevailed, that among most of these tribes a valid marriage may not be consummated without the appearance of force in the nuptial ceremonies. In reference to these symbols, we have the following passage from Mr. McLennan: