[714] Among the Todas, on betrothal, "dowers" consisting of buffaloes are exchanged. If the husband discards his wife, her father demands a return of her dower; if the wife abandons the husband, his father may take back his gift. In case the marriage be canceled because the husband has not fulfilled his part of the contract he may be "fined a buffalo or two": Marshall, A Phrenologist amongst the Todas, 210-13, 217-19. Compare Wake, op. cit., 451.
[715] See the passage quoted from Boaz, p. 191, above. The "ceremonies" may sometimes be intended to prove the man's ability to support a family: Ratzel, Hist. of Mankind, II, 125.
[716] Wake, op. cit., 390; Lafitau, Mœurs des sauvages amériquains, I, 565, 568. Cf. Morgan, Ancient Society, 454, on the presents to the wife's relatives among the Syndiasmians (American Indians).
[717] Sohm, Eheschliessung, 22 ff.; Königswarter, Histoire de l'organisation de la famille, 123; and Weinhold, Deutsche Frauen, I, 320, hold this view. But the point is disputed and will be recurred to in another chapter.
[718] In general, on the decay of wife-purchase, see Westermarck, op. cit., 402-16, who gives the fullest and most detailed account; Post, Familienrecht, 173-81, who discusses the stages of decline.
[719] Thus in Lovrec, Dalmatia, where the bride-price is no longer customary, when the Brautführer, on the day before the nuptials, comes to the bride's home for the Brautkiste containing her trousseau, he finds a child sitting upon it, who must be bought off through payment of a piece of gold: Post, op. cit., 177. Sometimes the symbolical purchase coexists for a time with real purchase: ibid., 177; idem, Geschlechtsgenossenschaft, 73; idem, Grundlagen des Rechts, 235.
[720] Westermarck, op. cit., 409 ff. For many examples of exchange of gifts see Kohler, "Studien," ZVR., V, 340, 341, 347-49, 351, 353, 365; Post, op. cit., 177-79.
[721] Westermarck, op. cit., 409, 410, giving examples.
[722] The marriage contract had already reached this last stage among the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians. They had a remarkably high ideal of family life. The facts disclosed by the records are wholly inconsistent with Herodotus's story regarding the sacred prostitution of the unmarried women. At the nuptials it was customary to state that the bride was "pure" or "without stain." Polygyny existed only as the rare luxury of the rich. As a rule, the formation of a second marriage was equivalent to a divorce from the first. Two principles, declares Sayce, the maternal and the paternal, "were struggling for recognition." Perhaps "they were due to a duality of race; perhaps they were merely a result of the circumstances under which the Babylonians lived. At times it would seem as if we must pronounce the Babylonian family to have been patriarchal in character; at other times the wife and mother occupies an independent and even commanding position. It may be noted that whereas in the old Sumerian hymns the woman takes precedence of the man, Semitic translation invariably reverses the order: the one has 'female and male,' the other 'male and female.'"—Babylonians and Assyrians, 13. The practical result was that the sexes were nearly equal in marriage. The individual and not the family was the social unit; and the individuality of the woman was fully recognized. She controlled her own property. She could buy and sell, borrow and lend, sue and be sued, and inherit equally with her brother. She might become a priestess, the head of a city, or the queen of the state. The wife was her husband's equal in the business world. The possession of property "brought with it the enjoyment of considerable authority." She "could act apart from her husband, could enter into partnership, could trade with her money, and conduct law-suits in her own name."—Idem, Social Life among the Assyrians and Babylonians, 50, 51. The bride's dower was paid by her father to the bridegroom; but it was her property. Sometimes the husband enjoyed the use of it for life; sometimes the wife disposed of it as her private capital. It was always a means of securing her economic independence, and thus of promoting the happiness of her married life. "In this way she was protected from tyrannical conduct upon his part, as well as from the fear of divorce on insufficient grounds. If a divorce took place the husband was required to hand over to the wife all the property she had brought with her as dowry, and she then either returned to her father's home or set up an independent establishment of her own." The divorced woman might marry again if she chose. "Marriage was partly a religious and partly a civil function. The contracting parties frequently invoked the gods, and signed the contract in the presence of the priest. At the same time it was a contract, and in order to be legally valid it had to be drawn up in legal form and attested by a number of witnesses. Like all other legal documents it was carefully dated and registered."—Idem, ibid., 46, 47, 49, 50. Cf. for the forms of contract and ceremony his Babylonians and Assyrians, 13-43; also the interesting account of Simcox, Primitive Civilizations, I, 360-79; her discussion of the similarly advanced domestic relations of the ancient Egyptians, ibid., I, 198-225; Kohler, "Ueber zwei babylonische Rechtsurkunden aus der Zeit Nabonids," ZVR., V; and Haupt, Die sumerischen Familiengesetze.
[723] In "our days, a woman without a marriage portion, unless she has some great natural attractions, runs the risk of being a spinster forever. This state of things naturally grows up in a society where monogamy is prescribed by law, where the adult women outnumber the adult men, where many men never marry, and where married women too often lead an indolent life."—Westermarck, op. cit., 416.