Here we touch Bachofen's fourth great discovery: the widespread form of transition from group marriage to pairing family. What Bachofen represents as a penance for violating the old divine laws--the penalty with which a woman redeems her right to chastity, is in fact only a mystical expression for the penalty paid by a woman for becoming exempt from the ancient community of men and acquiring the right of surrendering to one man only. This penalty consists in a limited surrender: Babylonian women had to surrender once a year in the temple of Mylitta; other nations of Western Asia sent their young women for years to the temple of Anaitis, where they had to practice free love with favorites of their own choice before they were allowed to marry. Similar customs in a religious disguise are common to nearly all Asiatic nations between the Mediterranean and the Ganges. The penalty for exemption becomes gradually lighter in course of time, as Bachofen remarks: "The annually repeated surrender gives place to a single sacrifice; the hetaerism of the matrons is followed by that of the maidens, the promiscuous intercourse during marriage to that before wedding, the indiscriminate intercourse with all to that with certain individuals."[19] Among some nations the religious disguise is missing. Among others--Thracians, Celts, etc., in classic times, many primitive inhabitants of India, Malay nations, South Sea Islanders and many American Indians to this day--the girls enjoy absolute sexual freedom before marriage. This is especially true almost everywhere in South America, as everybody can confirm who penetrates a little into the interior. Agassiz, e. g., relates[20] an anecdote of a wealthy family of Indian descent. On being introduced to the daughter he asked something about her father, presuming him to be her mother's husband, who was in the war against Paraguay. But the mother replied, smiling: "Nao tem pai, he filha da fortuna"--she hasn't any father; she is the daughter of chance. "It is the way the Indian or half-breed women here always speak of their illegitimate children; and though they say it without an intonation of sadness or of blame, apparently as unconscious of any wrong or shame as if they said the father was absent or dead, it has the most melancholy significance; it seems to speak of such absolute desertion. So far is this from being an unusual case, that among the common people the opposite seems the exception. Children are frequently quite ignorant of their parentage. They know about their mother, for all the care and responsibility falls upon her, but they have no knowledge of their father; nor does it seem to occur to the woman that she or her children have any claim upon him." What seems so strange to the civilized man, is simply the rule of maternal law and group marriage.