In the Sanscrit literature we find no definite account of the institution of marriage, but the Indian poem, “Mahabharata,” relates that until the Prince Swetapetu issued an edict requiring fidelity between husband and wife the Indian women roved about at their pleasure, and if in their youthful innocence they went astray from their husbands they were not considered as guilty of any wrong.
The Bible story of the institution of marriage is contained in the Second Chapter of Genesis, 18th to the 25th verse. It is not within the purpose of this treatise to argue for or against the acceptance of the Bible narrative, so we call attention without comment to the extreme simplicity of the wedding ritual as stated in the 22d verse:
“And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and he brought her unto the man.”
Among primitive men marriage was concluded without civil or religious ceremony. Even in modern Japan a wedding ritual is considered all but superfluous.
The principal marriage ceremonies have been derived from heathen customs; they were: the arrhae, or espousal gifts, an earnest or pledge that marriage would be concluded; and the ring betokening fidelity.
Among the ancient Hebrews marriage was not a religious ordinance or contract, and neither in the Old Testament nor in the Talmud is it treated as such.
As with the Mohammedans it was simply a civil contract.
Under the old Roman law there were three modes of marriage: 1. Confarreatio, which consisted of a religious ceremony before ten witnesses, in which an ox was sacrificed and a wheaten cake was broken by a priest and divided between the parties.
2. Coemptio in manum, which was a conveyance or fictitious sale of the woman to the man.
3. Usus, the acquisition of a wife by prescription through her cohabitation with the husband for one year without being absent from his house three consecutive nights.