CHAPTER VIII
CHILDREN IN INDIA—STORY OF THE MAHABHARATA—FEMALE CHILD DESPISED—A HUNDRED COWS THE PRICE OF A SON—RECORDS LEFT BY HISTORIANS OF ALEXANDER’S CONQUEST—ATTEMPTS BY BRITISH GOVERNMENT TO CHECK INFANTICIDE—WORK OF JONATHAN DUNCAN AND COL. ALEXANDER WALKER.
IN an examination of the attitude of early man toward the child, there could be no more illuminating study than that of the habits of our own ancestry, the so-called Aryan primitives.
Whether the cradle of the race was in India and spread from there throughout Europe, or whether the original habitat was Central Europe, the fact remains that the earliest records of the civilization of all of the races from the Indians and Aryans in Asia to the Celts, Teutons, Hellenes, Goths, and Italians indicate that they were a pastoral rather than an agricultural people and that while the family was the unit, the father was undoubtedly the supreme power that later marked the pater familias in Rome.
The mere absence of fish-hooks in the archæological remains and the fact that the Aryans were for a long time a fish-hating race (the word fish-eater used as a term of opprobrium by Herodotus, there being no mention of eating fish in the Vedas and only occasionally in Homer) go to show how limited was the food of that race. It is only as the various branches of the race developed that they came to know the art of fishing and the value of fish, a fact that is shown in the lack of a common name for fish in the Aryan tongues. The age of Homer was really the beginning of the Iron Age of the Aryan people, the culture of Italy and Hellas resulting from a “lengthened process of historical evolution” stimulated and developed by contact with the high culture of the Semites, which again was derived from the proto-Babylonian people.[165]
Up to this time in the struggle for existence of these semi-savages everything was sacrificed for war, and infanticide and human sacrifice were practised, there being reason to believe that even cannibalism was practised in Britain, if not by the Celts certainly by the Iberians.
Early Greek myths reveal a condition of society little different from that which the missionaries in recent years have found at Dahomey. Children were killed when they were not wanted; wives were bought and sold. The practice of breaking a bottle over the bow of a vessel is a survival of a savage practice of the vikings of binding a human being to the prow when the war galley was launched in order that the keel might be sprinkled with sacrificial blood.
Recent philological research corrected by archæological discovery has established the fact that the members of the Aryan race up to the time of the Homeric legends were nomad herdsmen who had domesticated the dog and wandered over the plains of Europe in wagons drawn by oxen. They knew how to fashion canoes out of the trunks of trees but with the exception of native copper they were ignorant of metals. It is extremely doubtful if they practised any agriculture. They collected and pounded in stone mortars the seed of some wild cereal, either spelt or barley. They recognized the association of marriage but they were polygamous. They practised human sacrifice and they retained after birth only those children that they could conveniently rear, or those male children who were regarded as necessary for the increase of the fighting forces of the tribe.
Upon the Dasyas, the dark-skinned, flat-nosed people who originally inhabited India, the Aryans triumphantly descended, eventually driving the Dasyas out of their lands. From the Rig Vedas we learn the nature of the Aryan conqueror. He was a warrior, but he was a prayerful warrior who prayed for health, a defensive armour, and a comfortable dwelling. There were frequent sacrifices to the gods and at all of the sacrifices interesting philosophical and sphagiological discussions took place. In his prayers he prayed for racy and healthy children, but he always prayed for boys and never for girls. His children were part of his scheme of wealth; they were his body and soul.[166]
