Battas of Sumatra, the Alfoers of Celebes, and on the Island of Ceylon and the eastern Moluccas.[284.1] From this the more developed morality of the Babylonians would recoil. Mr Crawley, commenting on the Australian rite, surmises that in it “initiation” and marriage are one, and that “initiation” ceremonies (that is to say, puberty ceremonies) “of this kind are marriages to the other sex in abstract.”[284.2] The surmise follows from his theory of the danger of human contact, and especially of marriage, and the importance of ceremonies to avert the peril. The theory itself--at all events pushed to the length to which Mr Crawley pushes it--is very questionable. But defloration at puberty, whether natural or artificial, is undoubtedly (whatever else it may be) a formal introduction to sexual life. Such introduction might be the more authoritative and emphatic if given by one (or more) with whom sexual relations would not in future be sustained. It is a ritual act. Ritual acts are acts out of the ordinary course--often clean contrary to the ordinary course. Therein consists their essence, their virtue. But in the growth of civilization, with the emergence of a new religion or different customs, the real meaning of a traditional rite is obscured, the rite itself becomes decadent, and a new meaning is assigned to it. Hence a puberty rite might easily become part of the cult of a goddess like Mylitta. Moreover, at the stage of decay which the rite had reached at Babylon and elsewhere in Western Asia, the proviso that the person with whom the act was performed must be a stranger might be intended to prevent an {285} assignation. When the act had to be performed as a sacrifice in honour of the goddess it might be regarded as a profanation to perform it as an act of inclination with a favoured lover. The best way to prevent this would be to require that it should be performed with a chance stranger, who might further be looked upon, if Mannhardt’s interpretation be correct, as a representative sent by the goddess to play Adonis to the maiden’s Aphrodite. The rite at Byblus lends countenance to this conjecture. It is supported also by the artificial defloration enacted only in symbol by Roman brides, but in grim earnest at the temples of Siva by brides in Southern India.