Portland and Seattle Commercial and Event photography. Travel quotes upon request. |
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Portland and Seattle Commercial and Event photography. Travel quotes upon request. |
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This website is a wedding photography portfolio, but I found this
odd old book called "strange customs of courtship and marriage"
Below is a excerpt from that book. Warning, its strange stuff.
90 Strange Customs of Courtship and Marriage
In those communities where circumcision is a prerequisite
of marriage, eligible girls would not think of considering an
uncircumcised youth as a prospective mate. The folkways
with respect to this custom are so thoroughly established that
it would be thought indecent and objectionable to show en-
couragement to a youth who had not been initiated by under-
going this tribal rite.
Among many peoples of Africa and certain natives of the
Malay Archipelago and South America, the girls also undergo
a ritual analogous to circumcision, which is also looked upon
as a necessary preliminary to marriage. Whether the practice
applies to one sex or both, it is always a serious obligation, one
of the most sacred rites performed by the tribe.
SUTTEE.—A hideous practice which prevailed in India from
legendary times down to the present century was suttee, the
burning or immolation of the widow on the funeral pyre with
the body of her husband; or, separately, if he died at a distance.
The word is an English corruption from the Sanskrit sati,
meaning "true wife" or "good woman." The custom was
based on injunctions of the orthodox Hindus' religious teach-
ings. It appears to have originated among the Indian royalty
as a "wifely privilege", and afterwards became generalized and
made legal under the native laws.
Akbar, the Mogul emperor, acting from his Mohammedan
viewpoint, forbade the suttee about 1600. His rule had no
effect whatever on the practice. In the year 1803 there were 275
women sacrificed on funeral pyres within a radius of thirty
miles of Calcutta. In six months of the year 1804, in the same
area, the number was 115.
Primitive Marriage Practices 91
The British Government outlawed the practice in 1829, but
so strong was the custom that it continued in isolated parts of
India as late as 1905, when several persons who had partici-
pated in a suttee in Behar were condemned to penal servitude.
When the rite was suppressed under British rule, the Hindu
priesthood resisted to the utmost, appealing to the Veda, as
sanctioning the ordinance, and demanding that the foreign
rulers respect the native religious-law. It was proven, however,
that the priests had actually falsified their sacred Veda in sup-
port of the rite, which was based on long and inveterate prac-
tice, and not on the traditional standards of Hindu faith.
For a long time after suttee had been suppressed, it was said
that the prohibitory law was not a kindness to widows, as their
continued existence was so wretched that death would have
been preferable. They were subjected to physical abuse and torture,
and shunned as creatures of ill omen.
Usually the wife went willingly to the sacrifice, but force
bemused if she showed reluctance. Often one dead man took
many wives with him. Some went eagerly, even gaily to the
new life, many were driven by force of custom, by fear of
disgrace, by family persuasion, by priestly threats and promises,
if necessary, by sheer violence.
Widow sacrifice is found in various regions of the world
under a state of low civilization. Tyior finds traces of a rite
similar to suttee among ancient Aryan nations in Europe—
Greece, Scandinavia, Germany, the Slavonic countries—and
(accounts for it by direct inheritance from the common
antiqity of them all. Striking examples are found in
both early historical writings.
In Greek lore we learn of the Trojan captives laid with the
horses and hounds on the funeral pyre of Patroklos, of Evadne
ing herself into the funeral pile of her husband, and
