There is a _prima facie_ ground for believing that the employment of art for gaining the favour of the other sex is characteristic of a certain advance in social development. The tribes in which we have most reason to suppose that the practice of self-decoration does not rest on political or religious grounds, and may thus aim exclusively at pleasing, are to be found among the Polynesians, the Malays, and some of the nations of India. From Polynesia also Berchon derived his chief support for the curious assertion—which seems to be true of scarcely any other ethnological province—that the patterns used in tattooing are quite indifferent, provided only that they effectually embellish the decorated part of the body;[352] in short, that tattooing has a purely decorative purpose. With regard to dancing, there also is practised in Tahiti, by the dramatic society of the Areoi, a dance most typical of the kind which aims at an erotic excitement in the spectators.[353] As is well known, the “oriental” dancing, such as is performed in the barbaric Negro states and in the Mohammedan communities of Northern Africa, as well as in Persia, Turkey, China, and Japan, is mainly a gross pantomime of physical love executed by a woman to the delight of her male spectators.[354] In most of these cases, however, the dancers are outcast women, who are paid with money for their performance. Somewhat closer, it seems, is the connection between erotic dance and sexual selection in the native population of the East Indian Islands.[355] And finally, among the aboriginal tribes of India, the Mundaris, Rasas, Kolhs, Sonthals, Bhuiyas, Chukmas, and Khyoungthas, courtship is pervaded by art and æsthetic activities.[356] In some of the villages there still survives the same kind of romantic love-making which is so well known from the old Indian poems and tales. The Bhuiya youths pay visits to the camp of the girls, and are received by them with dances and songs; and, says Mr. Dalton, “after such daylong festivals the morning dawns on more than one pair of pledged lovers.”[357] In the Bayar tribe one of the “methods of bringing about marriage” is a dance, performed by both sexes, who face each other in rows and exchange impromptu love couplets. Similar festivals are also met with among the Bendkars and Khonds.[358] The Hos and Mundaris, on the other hand, afford an example of sexual selection in its grossest form at their yearly festivals, during which excited dionysiac dances and obscene and blasphemous speeches are connected with wild promiscuous orgies.[359]