“Caindu is an heathenish nation, where, in honor of their idols, they prostitute their wives, sisters, and daughters to the lust of travellers.”—(Purchas, vol. v. p. 430. Caindu seems to have been a territory adjacent to Thibet.)
“Sometimes, at the command of a wizard, a man orders his wife to go to an appointed place, usually a wood, and abandon herself to the first person she meets. Yet there are women who refuse to comply with such orders.”—(Patagonia, “Voyage of Adventure and Beagle,” vol. ii. p. 154.)
“The people of Khasrowan, a Christian province in the Libanus, inhabited by a peculiarly prurient race, also hold high festival under the far-famed cedars, and their women sacrifice to Venus, like the ‘Kadeshah’ of the Phœnicians. This survival of old superstition is unknown to missionary ‘hand-books,’ but amply deserves the study of the anthropologist.”—(Burton, “Arabian Nights,” terminal essay, vol. x. 230.)
The religious prostitution of the ancient Babylonians seems also to survive, in a small degree, in the petty hamlets of Kesfin and Martaouan, near Aleppo, in Syria. “The women carry their hospitality as far as those of Babylon of old. This authorized prostitution seems to be a remnant of the old Asiatic superstitions.”—(Maltebrun, “Universal Geography,” vol. i. p. 353, lib. 28.) Dulaure cites the case of Martaouan, and also quotes Marco Polo in evidence of the existence of the same practices in Kamul, near Tanguth.—(“Des Dif. Cultes,” vol. ii. pp. 598, 599.)
“Most eastern temples, and especially those connected with the solar cult, had, and for the most part still have, ‘Deva-Dasis’ temple, or ‘God’s women,’ the followers of Mylitta, though generally not seated so confessedly nor so prominently as those whom Herodotus describes. They were doubtless the women with mirrors (Ezek. viii. 14) who wept for Tamuz, the sun-god.” (“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, vol. i. p. 329.) The African goddess Odudua promised protection “to all those who would establish themselves in this place, and erect to her a temple in place of the cabin. Many persons came and established themselves here, and thus was founded Ado, which means prostitution in memory of the goddess.”—(“Fetichism,” Baudin, p. 17.) “The temple erected in this city is celebrated among the blacks. The neighboring kings offer an ox to the goddess on her feast-day, and, in accordance with the legend, impure games are celebrated in her honor.”—(Idem.)
“In the Babylonian worship of the goddess Mylitta, the women who offered themselves for a price to the stranger at the door of the temple were distinguished by a peculiar apparel, according to Baruch.... The women sit in the ways, girded with cordes of rushes and burnt straw,” and “their resting-places distinguished with cords.”—(Purchas’s “Pilgrims,” vol. v. p. 56, art. “Hondius’ Babylonia.”)
In Ireland, at the present day, the peasantry make use, in divination and witchcraft, of “Saint Bridget’s cord,” made of rushes, and corresponding closely to the cord of the goddess Mylitta.
We are not informed that horns were assumed as a distinctive feature of such uniform, but we are constantly kept in mind of the fact that many, if not all, of the deities of the countries adjacent to the Mediterranean were at one time or another represented with horns as symbols of power. What, therefore, is more reasonable than to suppose that the woman thus employed was decked with a head-dress of horns? Or that her husband, without whose permission such prostitution would have been impossible, and for whom it must have been an act of equal religious importance, was similarly decorated?
When new religions had succeeded in trampling into the dust the sacred usages of the past, the fierce intolerance of the fanatic would have had no greater delight than in ridiculing that which had been the distinctive feature, perhaps, of the cult so recently overthrown. Therefore the association of horns, formerly the typical attribute of the heathen gods, would be transferred to the betrayed husband, and what had been the outward sign of the most devout self-negation would be turned into ridicule and opprobrium.
Brand, “Pop. Ant.,” vol. ii. pp. 181 et seq. gives a perfect flood of information on this subject, but nothing very satisfactory or definite,—art. “Cornutes.”