FLORIDA WOMEN SACRIFICING THEIR FIRST-BORN CHILDREN
(FROM AN OLD PRINT)
The two great epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, are the two sources of information on this period. Written down when the art of writing became known about the year 800 B. C., these books mirror the life of the people for centuries further back. The attitude toward children can only be gleaned from such statements as that Bhishma, one of the heroes of the Mahabharata, was the eighth son of his father, and the first to be allowed to live. The deaths of the previous seven are explained on the ground that his father Shantanu, the King of Hastinapur, was married to Ganga, the river goddess, who had consented to be the wife of the King on condition that, no matter what he might see her do, he would ask no questions. When she, however, having drowned the seven, attempted to drown the eighth son, he was obliged to cry “enough,” thereby saving the son but losing his wife, who departed declaring that the previous seven sons had been seven of the deities, condemned to a fresh life for some venial sin, and had been released by her from their punishment by an early death.
With such a story recited as semi-religious doctrine it can easily be seen why there grew up early the feeling that there was no crime in taking the lives of those children who were regarded as unnecessary.
Bhishma takes a vow not to marry, in accordance with which he refuses the offer of Amva who revenges herself when she is born a second time, as Chikandini, the daughter of a great king. The epic opens up another view of the early Aryan attitude when it is stated that Chikandini, although a daughter, is allowed to live; but in order to accomplish this her mother hides her sex for twenty-one years.[167]
In the Sankhayana-Grihya-Sutra there is a long description of the ceremony of the Pumsavana (the ceremony to secure the birth of a male child) which with its earnest prayer for a male child, not only at the time of coition but again with much ceremony in the third month, shows that the female child was doomed to a most unwelcome reception at the very best. As we shall see later, these ceremonies were bound to produce, in the course of time, not only the practice of killing female infants without remorse but even the disgusting ceremonies that marked female infanticide in some places.[168]
The feeling of these people at all times about women is best expressed in the words of the ordinance of Manu: “Women are born to bear children.”[169] The female child that escaped death had therefore a sharply defined life before it. It is a question, as Professor Gottheil suggests, as to whether it is a degeneracy that brings about the death of these infants in view of the life they would be obliged to lead. Girls were betrothed at three or four years of age and at seven had gone through the ceremony of marriage to boys of whom they knew nothing, and when those boys died they remained virgin widows. At one time it was possible for them to be taken to their boy husbands’ homes and in some instances they became mothers before they were eleven. Not until March 19, 1891, was a law passed in India prohibiting cohabitation before twelve.[170]
Vatsyayana, an ancient Hindu sage, author of the Kama-sutra, in which are given rules for the domestic life of the Hindus, mirrors the point of view of his time, about the first century, A. D. According to Vatsyayana parents were to show to their children all indulgence and freedom—until they were five. From five to sixteen they were to be instructed in the fourteen sciences and sixty-four arts, after which time the lord of creation was enjoined to become a householder.[171]
Of this early period there is plenty of evidence of human sacrifice which, even when it did not consist entirely of children, led to the slaughter of children. “There is no evidence,” as Professor Wilson says, “that the practice ever prevailed to the extent to which it spread through most of the ancient nations, or partook in general of the same character. They were in the main sacrifices of an expiatory nature performed in fear and intended to deprecate the anger of the gods.”[172]
Monier-Williams suggests that it is possible that human sacrifice was at one time part of the Brahmanical system and adduces the story of Hariskandra and Sunahsepa as an evidence of that practice.[173] In this legend, Hariskandra, being childless, prays to Varuna to grant him a son, vowing to sacrifice him to the god. A son is born but the father does not keep his word, and when the son reaches the age of discretion he refuses to become a victim. From a starving Brahman he purchases a son for one hundred cows, but this victim escapes by being adopted by the priest Visvamitra who is a royal sage.[174]
In the Purushamedha, or the section of the Satapatha-Brahmana dealing with the human sacrifice, a large number of men and women are bound to eleven sacrificial posts, and after the necessary rites have been performed on them, they are set free and eleven animals are killed instead. That in times previous to this adoption human beings had been sacrificed, there is no doubt.