in the gate the tokens of the damsel’s virginity.” Of what kind were these proofs? The following verses tell us, “They shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city. And the elders of that city shall take that man and chastise him, and they shall amerce him in an hundred shekels of silver, and give them unto the father of the damsel.... But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel, then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father’s house, and the men of the city shall stone her with stones that she die; because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father’s house; so shalt thou put evil away from among you.”[562] If we add to the preceding, that by the law of levirate, the childless widow, whether she wished or not, was awarded to her brother-in-law, we shall be enlightened as to the unenviable position of the married woman under the Hebrew law. III. _Marriage in Persia and Ancient India._ Of the conjugal customs of the ancient Persians we know little. The only formal prescription that we find in the Avesta is a strict prohibition against marrying an infidel. The Mazdean who commits such a crime troubles the whole universe: “he changes to mud a third of the rivers that rush down the mountain sides; he withers a third of the growth of trees and of herbs which cover the earth; he takes from pure men a third of their good thoughts, of their good words, of their good actions; he is more noxious than serpents and wolves.”[563] On Indian marriage we are better informed, at first by the Code of Manu, and then by modern travellers. India has early practised mitigated monogamy. Polygamy and concubinage were the privilege of the Brahmins and rich Kchatriyas; but the mass of the nation generally lived in monogamy, though nevertheless imposing on the married woman a most humiliating position. Manu proclaims aloud the necessary dependence and incurable inferiority of the weaker sex: “If women were not guarded, they would bring misfortune to two families.” “Manu has bestowed on women the love of their bed, of their seat, and of adornment, concupiscence, anger, bad inclinations, the desire to do evil, perversity.”[564] “A little girl, a young woman, and an old woman ought never to do anything of their own will, even in their own house.” “During her childhood a woman depends on her father; during her youth, on her husband; her husband being dead, on her sons; if she has no sons, on the near relatives of her husband; or in default of them, on those of her father; if she has no paternal relatives, on the sovereign. A woman ought never to have her own way.”[565]