Part 69 (1/2)
Such utter lack of delicacy prepares us for the statement that the Eskimos are equally coa.r.s.e in other respects, notably in their treatment of women and their s.e.xual feelings. It would be a stigma upon an Eskimo's character, says Cranz (I., 154), ”if he so much as drew a seal out of the water.” Having performed the pleasantly exciting part of killing it, he leaves all the drudgery and hard work of hauling, butchering, cooking, tanning, shoe-making, etc., to the women. They build the houses, too, while the men look on with the greatest insensibility, not stirring a finger to a.s.sist them in carrying the heavy stones. Girls are often ”engaged” as soon as born, nor are those who grow up free allowed to marry according to their own preference. ”When friendly exhortations are unavailing she is compelled by force, and even blows, to receive her husband.” (Cranz, I., 146.) They consider children troublesome, and the race is dying out. Women are not allowed to eat of the first seal of the season. The sick are left to take care of themselves. (Hall, II., 322, I., 103.) In years of scarcity widows ”are rejected from the community, and hover about the encampments like starving wolves ... until hunger and cold terminate their wretched existence.” (M'Lean, II., 143.) Men and women alike are without any sense of modesty; in their warm hovels both s.e.xes divest themselves of nearly all their clothing. Nor, although they fight and punish jealousy, have they any regard for chast.i.ty _per se_. Lending a wife or daughter to a guest is a recognized duty of hospitality. Young couples live together on trial.
When the husband is away hunting or fis.h.i.+ng the wife has her intrigues, and often adultery is committed _sans gene_ on either side.
Unnatural vices are indulged in without secrecy, and altogether the picture is one of utter depravity and coa.r.s.eness.[257]
Under such circ.u.mstances we hardly needed the specific a.s.surance of Rink, who collected and published a volume of _Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo_, and who says that ”never is much room given in this poetry to the almost universal feeling of love.” He refers, of course, to any kind of love, and he puts it very mildly. Not only is there no trace of altruistic affection in any of these tales and traditions, but the few erotic stories recorded (_e.g._, pp. 236-37) are too coa.r.s.e to be cited or summarized here. Hall, too, concluded that ”love--if it come at all--comes after marriage.” He also informs us (II., 313) that there ”generally exists between husband and wife a steady but not very demonstrative affection;” but here he evidently wrongs the Eskimos; for, as he himself remarks (126), they
”always summarily punish their wives for any real or imaginary offence. They seize the first thing at hand--a stone, knife, hatchet, or spear--and throw it at the offending woman, just as they would at their dogs.”
What could be more ”demonstrative” than such ”steady affection?”
INDIA--WILD TRIBES AND TEMPLE GIRLS
India, it has been aptly said, ”forms a great museum of races in which we can study man from his lowest to his highest stages of culture.” It is this multiplicity of races and their lack of patriotic co-operation that explains the conquest of the hundreds of millions of India by the tens of millions of England. Obviously it would be impossible to make any general a.s.sertion regarding love that would apply equally to the 10,000,000 educated Brahmans, who consider themselves little inferior to G.o.ds, the 9,000,000 outcasts who are esteemed and treated infinitely worse than animals, and the 17,000,000 of the aboriginal tribes who are comparable in position and culture to our American Indians. Nevertheless, we can get an approximately correct composite portrait of love in India by making two groups and studying first, the aboriginal tribes, and then the more or less civilized Hindoos (using this word in the most comprehensive sense), with their peculiar customs, laws, poetic literature, and bayaderes, or temple girls.
In Bengal and a.s.sam alone, which form but a small corner of this vast country, the aborigines are divided into nearly sixty distinct races, differing from each other in various ways, as American tribes do. They have not been described by as many and as careful observers as our American Indians have, but the writings of Lewin, Galton, Rowney, Man, Shortt, Watson and Kaye, and others supply sufficient data to enable us to understand the nature of their amorous feelings.
”WHOLE TRACTS OF FEELING UNKNOWN TO THEM”
Lewin gives us the interesting information (345-47) that with the Chittagong hill-tribes
”women enjoy perfect freedom of action; they go unveiled, they would seem to have equal rights of heritage with men, while their power of selecting their own husband is to the full as free as that of our own English maidens.”
Moreover, ”in these hills the crime of infidelity among wives is almost unknown; so also harlots and courtesans are held in abhorrence amongst them.”
On reading these lines our hopes are raised that at last we may have come upon a soil favorable to the growth of true love. But Lewin's further remarks dispel that illusion:
”In marriage, with us, a perfect world springs up at the word, of tenderness, of fellows.h.i.+p, trust, and self-devotion. With them it is a mere animal and convenient connection for procreating their species and getting their dinner cooked. They have no idea of tenderness, nor of the chivalrous devotion that prompted the old Galilean fisherman when he said 'Give ye honor unto the woman as to the weaker vessel,' ...
The best of them will refuse to carry a burden if there be a wife, mother, or sister near at hand to perform the task.” ”_There are whole tracts of mind, and thought, and feeling, which are unknown to them_.”
PRACTICAL PROMISCUITY
One of the most important details of my theory is that while there can be no romantic love without opportunity for genuine courts.h.i.+p and free choice, nevertheless the existence of such opportunity and choice does not guarantee the presence of love unless the other conditions for its growth--general refinement and altruistic impulses--coexist with them.
Among the Chittagong hill-tribes these conditions--const.i.tuting ”whole tracts of mind, and thought, and feeling”--do not coexist with the liberty of choice, hence it is useless to look for love in our sense of the word. Moreover, when we further read in Lewin that the reason why there are no harlots is that they ”are rendered unnecessary by the freedom of intercourse indulged in and allowed to both s.e.xes before marriage,” we see that what at first seemed a virtue is really a mark of lower degradation. Some of the oldest legislators, like Zoroaster and Solon, already recognized the truth that it was far better to sacrifice a few women to the demon of immorality than to expose them all to contamination. The wild tribes of India in general have not yet arrived at that point of view. In their indifference to chast.i.ty they rank with the lowest savages, and usually there is a great deal of promiscuous indulgence before a mate is chosen for a union of endurance. Among the Oraons, as Dalton tells us (248), ”liaisons between boys and girls of the same village seldom end in marriage;”
and he gives strange details regarding the conduct of the young people which may not be cited here, and in which the natives see ”no impropriety.” Regarding the Butias Rowney says (142):
”The marriage tie is so loose that chast.i.ty is quite unknown amongst them. The husbands are indifferent to the honor of their wives, and the wives do not care to preserve that which has no value attached to it. ...
The intercourse of the s.e.xes is, in fact, promiscuous.”
Of the Lepchas Rowney says (139) that ”chast.i.ty in adult girls previous to marriage is neither to be met with nor cared for.” Of the Mishmees he says (163): ”Wives are not expected to be chaste, and are not thought worse off when otherwise,” and of the Kookies (186): ”All the women of a village, married or unmarried, are available to the chief at his will, and no stigma attaches to those who are favored by him.” In some tribes wives are freely exchanged. Dalton says of the Butan (98) that ”the intercourse between the s.e.xes is practically promiscuous.” Rhyongtha girls indulge in promiscuous intercourse with several lovers before marriage. (Lewin, 121.) With the Kurmuba, ”no such ceremony as marriage exists.” They ”live together like the brute creation.” (W.R. King, 44.)
My theory that in practice, at any rate, if not in form, promiscuity was the original state of affairs among savages, in India as elsewhere, is supported by the foregoing facts, and also by what various writers have told us regarding the licentious festivals indulged in by these wild tribes of India. ”It would appear,” says Dalton (300),
”that most of the hill-tribes found it necessary to promote marriage by stimulating intercourse between the s.e.xes at particular seasons of the year.... At one of the Kandh festivals held in November all the lads and la.s.ses a.s.semble for a spree, and a bachelor has then the privilege of making off with any unmarried girl whom he can induce to go with him, subject to a subsequent arrangement with the parents of the maiden.”
Dalton gives a vivid description of these festivals as practised by the Hos in January, when the granaries are full of wheat and the natives ”full of deviltry:”
”They have a strange notion that at this period men and women are so overcharged with vicious propensities, that it is absolutely necessary for the safety of the person to let off steam by allowing, for a time, full vent to the pa.s.sions. The festival therefore becomes a saturnale, during which servants forget their duties to their masters, children their reverence for parents, even their respect for women, and women all notions of modesty, delicacy, and gentleness; they become raging bacchantes....