Although chastity before marriage appears to be, as a rule, little regarded in Africa, this is not always so. In some parts of West Africa, a girl, at all events if of high birth, when found guilty of unchastity may be punished by the insertion into her vagina of bird pepper, a kind of capsicum, beaten into a mass; this produces intense pain and such acute inflammation that the canal may even be obliterated.[[217]]
Among the Dahomey women there is no coitus during pregnancy nor during suckling, which lasts for nearly three years. The same is true among the Jekris and other tribes on the Niger, where it is believed that the milk would suffer if intercourse took place during lactation.[[218]]
In another part of Africa, among the Suaheli, even after marriage only incomplete coitus is at first allowed and there is no intercourse for a year after the child's birth.[[219]]
Farther south, among the Ba Wenda of north Transvaal, says the Rev. R. Wessmann, although the young men are permitted to "play" with the young girls before marriage, no sexual intercourse is allowed. If it is seen that a girl's labia are apart when she sits down on a stone, she is scolded, or even punished, as guilty of having had intercourse.[[220]]
Among the higher races in India the sexual instinct is very developed, and sexual intercourse has been cultivated as an art, perhaps more elaborately than anywhere else. Here, however, we are far removed from primitive conditions and among a people closely allied to the Europeans. Farther to the east, as among the Cambodians, strict chastity seems to prevail, and if we cross the Himalayas to the north we find ourselves among wild people to whom sexual license is unknown. Thus, among the Turcomans, even a few days after the marriage has been celebrated, the young couple are separated for an entire year.[[221]]
All the great organized religions have seized on this value of sexual abstinence, already consecrated by primitive magic and religion, and embodied it in their system. It was so in ancient Egypt. Thus, according to Diodorus, on the death of a king, the entire population of Egypt abstained from sexual intercourse for seventy-two days. The Persians, again, attached great value to sexual as to all other kinds of purity. Even involuntary seminal emissions were severely punishable. To lie with a menstruating woman, according to the Vendidad, was as serious a matter as to pollute holy fire, and to lie with a pregnant woman was to incur a penalty of 2000 strokes. Among the modern Parsees a man must not lie with his wife after she is four months and ten days pregnant. Mohammedanism cannot be described as an ascetic religion, yet long and frequent periods of sexual abstinence are enjoined. There must be no sexual intercourse during the whole of pregnancy, during suckling, during menstruation (and for eight days before and after), nor during the thirty days of the Ramedan fast. Other times of sexual abstinence are also prescribed; thus among the Mohammedan Yezidis of Mardin in northern Mesopotamia there must be no sexual intercourse on Wednesdays or Fridays.[[222]]
In the early Christian Church many rules of sexual abstinence still prevailed, similar to those usual among savages, though not for such prolonged periods. In Egbert's Penitential, belonging to the ninth century, it is stated that a woman must abstain from intercourse with her husband three months after conception and for forty days after birth. There were a number of other occasions, including Lent, when a husband must not know his wife.[[223]] "Some canonists say," remarks Jeremy Taylor, "that the Church forbids a mutual congression of married pairs upon festival days.... The Council of Eliberis commanded abstinence from conjugal rights for three or four or seven days before the communion. Pope Liberius commanded the same during the whole time of Lent, supposing the fast is polluted by such congressions."[[224]]