We must then take into consideration _several_ causal factors to help us to an explanation of the custom in question. The original motive may very well have been in every case the consecration of the maiden’s virginity to the goddess,[41]—Hieroduli (Temple hand-maids) in the earlier meaning. Further again the maiden was bound to pay her tribute to the goddess of sexual Pleasure[42], so as to co-operate with the husband with a view to the procreation of children. Little by little the custom lost its purer character. After a time it ceased to be any longer one of universal obligation, and became binding only for the poorer classes, who found in it an opportunity of earning a dowry[43] for their daughters. Meantime the rich adopted the habit of presenting female slaves to the temple of the goddess, thereby giving occasion for the establishment of the regular Hieroduli,—who subsequently grew into _filles de joie_ in the proper sense, and laying the foundation of the brothel system (see later). Out of the idea of consecration was subsequently developed on the one hand that of initiation for the married state,—an idea found again in the “proof-nights” custom of the Middle Ages, and on the other the idea of bondage that grew into the “Jus primae noctis” (Right of first night). As second factor then must be reckoned the belief in the harmfulness of the blood resulting from rupture of the hymen at defloration; and connected with this the actual injury that the man’s genital organs are occasionally exposed to in deflowering a maid with narrow vaginal orifice, or at any rate the effort necessarily called for to perforate the hymen, a motive not without actual weight amongst indolent Asiatics[44]. To this day the bridegroom at Goa gives thanks to the _Priapus_ (Lingam), that has loosed his bride’s virgin-zone, with marks of the deepest adoration and gratitude for having performed this honourable service and so relieved him of a heavy task[45]. For the maid defloration is yet more painful, and as she had to go through it once and once only with a stranger, she might readily get the idea that it was the stranger alone that was to blame; consequently that every surrender to a stranger must involve the same sufferings. This would deter her from a second experience of the kind, and all the more so because the subsequent embraces of the husband stirred in her only pleasurable sensations. So the wife had no inducement to break the marriage vow. § 5.