Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/135

 for the bride is lifted over the threshold of the conjugal dwelling, as was the custom in ancient Rome.

It has appeared so natural to parents all over the world to dispose of their daughters as they chose, that many of the aborigines of India do nearly the same as the Mongols. The daughters are sold by the parents among the Kolhans, the Bendkars, the Limboos, the Kirantis, the Moundas, the Santals, the Oraons, the Muasis, the Birhors, the Hos, the Boyars, the Nagas, the Gonds, etc. The price of the girl varies from three to fourteen rupees, or is reckoned in head of cattle or measures of rice. Sometimes female merchandise is rare and dear, for in some countries female infanticide has long prevailed; it may happen, too, that daughters are condemned to celibacy, as with the Hos, or, as with the Nagas, that marriages are delayed, and that the bridegroom must often submit to marriage by servitude. Sometimes, again, the girls are carried off, as happens among the Kolhans, by the impatient bridegrooms, and, after the rape, arbitrators negotiate a settlement. It should be remarked, by the way, that with the Nagas marriage by servitude has its ordinary effect, that of abasing the husband and raising the wife; and, in fact, among these races, although the wife performs severe labour, she is treated as the equal of her husband.

In some aboriginal tribes of India we even find matriarchal customs. Thus with the Pani-Koechs the husbands leave to their very industrious wives the care of their property. In marrying, a man goes to live with his mother-in-law, and obeys her as well as his wife. Moreover, in this tribe the mothers negotiate the marriages; the fathers have nothing to do with them.

Among the Yerkalas the maternal uncle has the right to claim for his sons the two eldest daughters of his sister, or to renounce them for an indemnity of eight images of idols.

Money, always money! With all peoples and races marriage is often reduced to a pecuniary question. In this