Chapter CXIII: Section CCLI: Polyandry.--Exposure of Children

In some of the countries of farther Asia, the immoral tendencies counter to over-population which with us take the direction of illegitimate births and acts of adultery, assume the guise of formal institutions established by law. I need only cite the polyandry of East India, Thibet and other mountainous regions of Asia, which is indeed modified somewhat by the fact that, as a rule, only several brothers have one wife in common.[251-1]

That unnatural institution is, in many localities, based on this, that a great many of the newly born female children are killed or at least sold in foreign parts after they have grown.[251-2] In addition to this, we have the very great encouragement given to celibacy in the Himalayas, so that only monks can attain to a higher education and to the higher honors.[251-3] In many parts of the East Indies, we find a legally recognized community of wives, which is but slightly modified[251-4] by the difference of caste; and almost everywhere, that looseness of general morality which usually characterizes declining nations.[251-5]

China is, as a rule, considered the classic land of child-exposure. And a writer of the country, who is considered one of the principal authorities against the exposure of children, actually claims that it is reprehensible only when one has property enough to support them. The murder of daughters he especially reprobates as "a struggle against the harmony of nature; the more a father performs this act, the more daughters are born to him; and no one has ever heard that the birth of sons was promoted in this way."[251-6] Moreover, the exposure of children in the later periods of antiquity played an important part. In Athens, the right of a father to expose his child was recognized by law. Even a Socrates accounts it one of the occasional duties of midwives to expose children.[251-7] Considered from a moral point of view, Aristotle has nothing to say against abortion.[251-8] In Rome, a very ancient law, which was still in existence in 475 before Christ, made it the duty of every citizen to have and to bring up children.[251-9] It was very different in the time of the emperors,[251-10] and until Christianity, made the religion of the state, caused a legal prohibition against the exposure of children to be passed.[251-11] [251-12]

[Footnote 251-1: _Turner_, Embassy to Thibet, II, 349, tells
of five brothers who lived satisfied thus under one roof.
(_Jacquemont_, Voyage en Inde, 402.) In Ladakh, all the
children are ascribed to the eldest brother, to whom also
the property belongs; all the younger brothers are his
servants and may be expelled the house by him. (_Neumann_,
Ausland, 1866, No. 16 seq.) In Bissahir, on the other hand,
the eldest child belongs to the eldest brother, the second
to the second, etc. Here the wife is bought by all the
brothers together and treated precisely as a slave.
(_Ritter_, Erdkunde, III, 752.) In Bhutan, the men move into
the house of the woman, who is frequently old, and who
before marriage, and up to her 25th or 30th year, has
generally lived very lawlessly. (_Ritter_, IV, 195.) Among
the Garos, the wife may leave the man at pleasure and not
lose her property or her children, while her husband by her
rejection of him loses both. (_Ritter_, V, 403.) Even in
Mahabarata, polyandry occurs among the Northern Indians.
Similarly, among the Indo-Germanic tribes in Middle Asia
(_Ritter_, VII, 608); according to Chinese sources in
ancient Tokharestan (_Ritter_, VII, 699), and among the
Sabæans (_Strabo_, XVI, 768). Even in ancient Sparta.
(_Polyb._, XII, 6.)]

[Footnote 251-2: In lower Nerbudda, the poisoning of new
born female children was very common about the beginning of
this century. In Kutch, people prefer to marry persons from
foreign countries, and murder their own daughters.
(_Ritter_, VI, 623, 1054.) Similarly, even in the Indian
Arcadia, the land of the Nilgherrys (V, 1035 seq.). In
Cashmir, all the beautiful girls are sold in the Punjab and
in India from their eighth year upwards. (VII, 78.)
Similarly in the Caucasus and in the mountainous region of
Badakschan. (VII, 798 ff.) _v. Haxthausen_, Transkaukasia,
1856, I, ch. 1, tells how the Russians captured a vessel
carrying Circassian slaves into Turkey. They left them their
choice, to go back home, marry in Russia, or to continue
their journey to Constantinople. They all unhesitatingly
chose the last! There is an echo of something analogous even
in the Semiramis saga.]

[Footnote 251-3: In many parts of Thibet and Rhutan the
fourth son, and in some places the half of the young men,
become lamas. (_Ritter_, Erdkunde, IV, 149, 206.)]

[Footnote 251-4: Among the Garos and Nairs, as well as among
the Cossyahs, in Northwestern Farther India, the children
have no father, but consider their brothers on the mother's
side their nearest male relatives. Inheritance also takes
this direction. (_J. Mill_, History of British India, I, 395
seq. _Buchanan_, Journey through Mysore, II, 411 seq.
_Ritter_, V, 390 seq., 753.) Similarly, among the Lycians:
_Herodot._, I, 173. Whether the peculiar custom of many old
German people, of which _Tacitus_, Germ., 20, makes mention,
does not point to an original community of wives, _quære_.]

[Footnote 251-5: Even the most debauched European is a
pattern of modesty compared with the Indians themselves.
(Edinb. Rev., XX, 484.) On the frightful development of
unnatural as well as natural crimes against chastity among
the Chinese, see _G. Schlegel_, in the memoirs of the
Genoostchap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen in Batavia, Band.
XXXII, and Ausland, Januar., 1868.]

[Footnote 251-6: According to _J. Bowring's_ official
report: Athenæum, 17 Nov., 1855. That the exposure of
children is allowed by law in China, and that many poor
couples marry with the intention of exposing them, is
unquestionable. But the reports concerning the extent of the
evil differ materially. The Jesuits estimated that in Pekin
alone from 2,000 to 3,000 children were exposed in the
streets. To this must be added the many thrown into the
water or smothered in a bath-tub immediately after birth.
Compare Lettres édif., XVI, 394 ff.; _Barrow_, 166 ff. The
street-foundlings were picked up by the police and placed in
wagons, living and dead together, and cast into one pit in a
part of the city. Other accounts are much more favorable:
thus that of _Ellis_, Voyage, ch. 7, who was there in 1816,
and of _Timkowski_, Reise, II, 359. Compare the quotations
in _Klemm_, Kulturgeschichte, VI, 212.]

[Footnote 251-7: _Petit_, Legg. Att., 144. Compare _Becker_,
Charicles, I, 21 ff.; _Plato_, Theæt., 150 ff. In Plato's
state, a system of exposure on a large scale is one of the
most essential foundations of the whole. (De Re., V, 461.)]

[Footnote 251-8: Aristotle advised that males should not
marry before their 37th year, and that at least after their
55th year they should bring no more children into the world.
No family was allowed to have more than a definite number of
children. (Polit., VII, 14.) There are even yet pictures of
Venus trampling an embryo under foot. (_R. O. Müller_,
Denkmäler der alten Kunst, II, No. 265.) Compare, _per
contra_, _Stobaeus_, Serm., LXXIV, 91; LXXI, 15.]

[Footnote 251-9: _Dionys. Hal._, Ant. Rom., IX, 22.]

[Footnote 251-10: _Plutarch_, De Amore Prol., 2, Minut.
Felix Octav., 30. That it seemed entirely right, when
persons had "enough" children, to put the others to death,
is proved by the catastrophe in _Longus'_ idyllic romance,
IV, 24, 35. Even men like _Seneca_ (Contr., IX, 26; X, 33)
and _Tacitus_ (Ann., III, 25 ff.) were actually in favor of
the right of exposing children. On the frequency of
artificial abortion, see _Juvenal_, VI, 594. Semi-castration
of young slaves for libidinous women who did not want to
bear children. (_Juvenal_, VI, 371 ff.; _Martial_, I, V67.)]

[Footnote 251-11: Under Constantine the Great, 315 after
Christ. _Theod._, Cod., XI, 27, 1]

[Footnote 251-12: It is an unfortunate fact that many modern
nations approximate more closely to this abomination of the
ancients than is generally supposed. The infrequency of
illegitimate children in Romanic southern nations is offset
by the enormous number of exposures almost after the manner
of the Chinese. See the tables in _v. Oettingen_, Anhang,
95. In Milan, between 1780 and 1789, there were, in the
aggregate, 9,954 children abandoned; between 1840 and 1849,
39,436. (_v. Oettingen_, 587.) On abortion in North America,
and the numberless bold advertisements of doctors there that
they are ready to remove all impediments to menstruation
"from whatever cause," see _v. Oettingen_, 523, and Allg.
Zeitung, 1867, No. 309. It would be a very mournful sign of
the times if the work: Principles of Social Science, or
physical, sexual and natural Religion; an Exposition of the
real Cause and Cure of the three great Evils of Society,
Pauperism, Prostitution and Celibacy, by a Doctor of
Medicine (Berlin, 1871), were really a translation of an
alleged English original. It is throughout atheistic,
materialistic and immoral, concerned only with one
fundamental idea: to instruct women how to prevent
conception!]