Bhishma takes a vow not to marry, in accordance with which he refuses the offer of Amva who revenges herself when she is born a second time, as Chikandini, the daughter of a great king. The epic opens up another view of the early Aryan attitude when it is stated that Chikandini, although a daughter, is allowed to live; but in order to accomplish this her mother hides her sex for twenty-one years.[167] In the Sankhayana-Grihya-Sutra there is a long description of the ceremony of the Pumsavana (the ceremony to secure the birth of a male child) which with its earnest prayer for a male child, not only at the time of coition but again with much ceremony in the third month, shows that the female child was doomed to a most unwelcome reception at the very best. As we shall see later, these ceremonies were bound to produce, in the course of time, not only the practice of killing female infants without remorse but even the disgusting ceremonies that marked female infanticide in some places.[168] The feeling of these people at all times about women is best expressed in the words of the ordinance of Manu: “Women are born to bear children.”[169] The female child that escaped death had therefore a sharply defined life before it. It is a question, as Professor Gottheil suggests, as to whether it is a degeneracy that brings about the death of these infants in view of the life they would be obliged to lead. Girls were betrothed at three or four years of age and at seven had gone through the ceremony of marriage to boys of whom they knew nothing, and when those boys died they remained virgin widows. At one time it was possible for them to be taken to their boy husbands’ homes and in some instances they became mothers before they were eleven. Not until March 19, 1891, was a law passed in India prohibiting cohabitation before twelve.[170] Vatsyayana, an ancient Hindu sage, author of the Kama-sutra, in which are given rules for the domestic life of the Hindus, mirrors the point of view of his time, about the first century, A.D. According to Vatsyayana parents were to show to their children all indulgence and freedom—until they were five. From five to sixteen they were to be instructed in the fourteen sciences and sixty-four arts, after which time the lord of creation was enjoined to become a householder.[171] Of this early period there is plenty of evidence of human sacrifice which, even when it did not consist entirely of children, led to the slaughter of children. “There is no evidence,” as Professor Wilson says, “that the practice ever prevailed to the extent to which it spread through most of the ancient nations, or partook in general of the same character. They were in the main sacrifices of an expiatory nature performed in fear and intended to deprecate the anger of the gods.”[172]