The Jewish custom of handing “the tokens of the damsel’s virginity” to her parents, to be kept as evidence in case of a later accusation, is well-known.[684] A practice not very dissimilar to this prevails in China,[685] Arabia,[686] and among the Chuvashes,[687] with whom the _signum innocentiae_ is exhibited even _coram populo_. In Persia,[688] as also in Circassia,[689] a girl who is not a virgin when she marries, runs the risk of being put away after the first night. Among several nations belonging to the Russian Empire, according to Georgi, the bridegroom may claim a fine in case of the bride being found to have lost her virtue;[690] and, among the Chulims, if the Mosaic testimony of chastity is wanting, the husband goes away and does not return before the seducer has made peace with him.[691] As to the ancient Germans, Tacitus states that, by their laws, virgins only could marry.[692] A husband’s pretensions may reach even farther than this. He often demands that the woman he chooses for his wife shall belong to him, not during his lifetime only, but after his death. The belief in another life is almost universal in the human race. As that life is supposed to resemble this, man having the same necessities there as here, part of his property is buried with him. And so strong is the idea of a wife being the exclusive property of her husband, that, among several peoples, she may not even survive him. Thus, formerly, among the Comanches, when a man died, his favourite wife was killed at the same time.[693] In certain Californian tribes, widows were sacrificed on the pyre with their deceased husbands;[694] and Mackenzie was told that this practice sometimes occurred among the Crees.[695] In Darien and Panama, on the death of a chief, all his concubines were interred with him.[696] When one of the Incas died, says Acosta, the woman whom he had loved best, as well as his servants and officers, were put to death, “that they might serve him in the other life.”[697] The same custom prevailed in the region of the Congo, as also in some other African countries.[698] “It is no longer possible to doubt,” says Dr. Schrader, “that ancient Indo-Germanic custom ordained that the wife should die with her husband.”[699] In India, as is well known, widows were sacrificed, until quite recently, on the funeral pile of their husbands;[700] whilst, among the Tartars, according to Navarette, on a man’s death, one of his wives hanged herself “to bear him company in that journey.” Among the Chinese, something of the same kind seems to have been done occasionally in olden times.[701]