Note 385.1 — Chapter XIV · MARRIAGE RITES.

Until group-marriage had practically passed away, and society had organised itself into true clans, there could be no actual reception of the wife into the kin. We must therefore not look to so archaic a condition as group-marriage for rites of reception, or for the resulting status of the wife. Where the clan has been most completely organised, we may expect to find its results most logically carried out; and some of the most logical results will often remain even when society has passed into a still higher development. So it was in Rome, where the wife entered into the familia of her husband, or, if her husband had a father living and were still in his power, into that of her husband’s father. Her offering, on the day following her marriage, to her husband’s Penates seems to have been a solemn initiation, in so far at least as that had not been effected by the ceremonies of the confarreatio. This is also the meaning of somewhat similar rites performed by a bride in Ukrainia on entering her new home, where she is first welcomed by all the female neighbours of her bridegroom’s family,385.1—and of many ceremonies of the same kind elsewhere, notably the Brahman rites in India. A Chinese married woman is taught to regard her husband’s parents and his remoter ancestors in every respect as if they were her own; while she ceases, on the other hand, to have any but a secondary interest in her own relatives. According to Confucius the very object of marriage was to furnish those who should preside at the sacrifices, among which a prominent place is given to the ancestral offerings. This was indeed expressed in the formula of demand for the hand of a maiden in ancient times. And just as at Rome the bride offered sacrifices to her husband’s Penates, so in China, on the day after the wedding, she prepared and presented a sucking-pig to her husband’s parents, and when they had done eating she finished what was left.386.1 In this way among the polite Chinese the union of the bride with her husband’s parents is signified and completed. I have already mentioned the Santali and other customs of Bengal, as well as that of the more barbarous islanders of Bonabe, who tattoo the wife with marks representing her husband’s ancestors.