But it was necessary not merely to detach the strange woman from her own gods, she must also be introduced to the gods of her new home. This introduction survived in the Roman custom, whereby _new wedded wives are bidden to touch fire and water_ (_R. Q._ 1).[111] That this custom goes back to the time when wives were captured is indicated by the words "are bidden:" the force which was at first necessarily used survives in this gentle compulsion. Parallels to this custom are forthcoming: the Hindoo bride, according to the Kâuçikasûtra (77. 16), was led thrice round the hearth in the bridegroom's house. Exactly the same ceremony not only was practised by the ancient Teutons, but is still observed in some places in North Germany and in Westphalia.[112] The Esthonians and Wotjaks still honour the custom.[113] The first thing a Servian bride has to do on entering her new home is to mend the fire,[114] and in ancient Greece she was taken at once to the hearth. It need hardly be said that the hearth is the abode of the house-spirit and the centre of the family worship. At Rome, we find from Festus,[115] the bride was also sprinkled with water. In Sardinia,[116] her mother-in-law empties a glass of water over her. Amongst the ancient Hindoos[117] this was the bridegroom's duty; with the Servians it is the function of the _Djewer_.[118] That this sprinkling was originally an introduction of the strange woman to the local water-spirit seems indicated by the fact that amongst the Servians the sprinkling is performed at the well, in the Unterkrain at the burn,[119] in Albania[120] at the village-spring, while in modern Greece the bride casts offerings into the spring.[121] The conventionally extravagant lamentation which was required of the Roman bride[122] is regarded by Rossbach (p. 329) as a survival of marriage by capture, and may be paralleled amongst many Aryan nations: with the Hindoos it was part of the officially prescribed programme;[123] in the Oberpfalz it is obligatory; in Bohemia and in Russia it is required by public opinion.[124] The evidence of folk-lore (so far as it is called for by the _Romane Questions_) that the Aryans obtained wives by capturing the women of other households or family groups than their own, has now been stated. It does not suffice to show that an Aryan was forbidden to marry a woman of his own household; but a wider survey of early Aryan wedding-customs would bring out this important fact, that however other parts of the ceremony vary, there is one which is always present, and which may be regarded as essential—that is the _domum deductio_, the bringing-home of the bride; and from this fact we may fairly draw the conclusion that normally, and—so strong is custom—probably uniformly, the bride and the bridegroom belonged to different households, and that the bride came to live in the home of the bridegroom.