The Evolution of Marriage and of the FamilyLetourneau, Ch. (Charles)
Science
The Evolution of Marriage and of the Family
Letourneau, Ch. (Charles)
Families; Marriage
With the Pipiles of Salvador the man who committed adultery was put to
death, or became the slave of the offended husband.[658] In Yucatan the
guilty ones were stoned or pierced with arrows; before this they were
impaled or disjointed.[659] According to Herrara, among the Yzipecs the
injured husband cut off the nose and ears of the adulterous woman.[660]
The same author tells us that among the Guaxlotillans the woman was
taken before the Cacique, and if found guilty she was cut in pieces and
eaten.[661]
In ancient Mexico adultery was generally punished with stoning,[662]
and in certain districts this crime entailed the quartering of the
guilty woman; elsewhere, the judges simply ordered the husband to cut
off her nose and ears.[663]
In Peru the law also punished ordinary adultery with capital
punishment.[664] There was no chastisement terrible enough for adultery
committed with one of the wives of the Inca, the son of the Sun: the
guilty man was burnt, his parents were put to death, and his house
destroyed (Pizarro).
Guatemala offered an exception;[665] there the affair was arranged by
a composition--a fine of precious feathers paid to the husband. The
latter could also repudiate his wife, or pardon her, in which last
case he was much honoured. If the adultery was committed with the wife
of a great lord, the crime naturally acquired an exceptional gravity;
the guilty man was then strangled if he was noble, and if servile,
was thrown down a precipice. We shall find elsewhere this hierarchic
iniquity, for in this matter, as in others, various human societies and
races repeat themselves.
VII. _Adultery among the Mongol Races and in Malaya._
Thus the Mongols of Asia seem to have copied the Mongoloids of America.
With the nomad Tartars a man of inferior class who has committed
adultery with a woman of his own class pays the injured husband
forty-five head of cattle; but the husband must revenge himself on the
inconstant wife. The law invites him to do so; for if he kills her,
the compensation of cattle remains his property; if not, it goes to
the prince. But if it happens that a man of low condition has illicit
intercourse with the wife of a prince, then the crime is terrible; the
man is cut to pieces, the faithless wife is decapitated, and the family
of the guilty man reduced to slavery.[666] If we may believe a modern
traveller, Mongol customs have become considerably modified on this
point, adultery being now extremely common in Mongolia, and so little
repressed that the women hardly take the trouble to conceal it.[667]
In lamaic Thibet they do not regard adultery as a tragedy. The wife is
corrected, and the lover pays a fine to the husband, or husbands, when
there are several.[668]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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