These prisoners were entitled to none of the privileges of the community into which they were taken; and as the hostility felt toward unrelated tribes had become so strong as to be shared by women, the captive woman could no longer look for pity even from her own sex. From this time in the history of the race may be traced the decline of woman’s power and the subjection of the natural female impulses. As, at this stage, within the limits of their own tribe, women held the balance of power in their own hands, and as they still exercised unqualified control over their own persons, the acknowledged ownership of one woman, who, being a “stranger,” was without power or influence, would be an object much to be desired, and one for which a warrior would not hesitate to brave the dangers of a hostile camp. Hence, female captives were in demand, and the women of warring tribes were sought after singly and in groups. In process of time wars for wives became general and under the new regime women had the fear of captivity constantly before their view as a condition more to be dreaded than death. In the _Mahabharata_ of India it is stated that formerly “women were unconfined and roved about at their pleasure, independent.” Finally, marriage was instituted and a woman was bound to a man for life. One of the eight forms of legalized marriage in the code of Manu was that of capture _de facto_ and was called _Racshasa_. This particular form of conjugal union was practised exclusively by the military classes, among which, the women taken in battle were the acknowledged booty of their captors. A definition of this kind of marriage is as follows: “The seizure of a maiden by force from her house while she weeps and calls for assistance, after her kinsmen and friends have been slain in battle or wounded, and their houses broken open, is the marriage called _Racshasa_.” Capture as the prescribed form of marriage for warriors may be traced through thousands of years and among various peoples. Of the three legalized forms of marital union in Rome, that by capture was the one in use among the plebeians, the patricians at the same time practising _Confarreatio_ and _Usus_. In Arabia, as late as Mohammed’s time, the carrying off of women was recognized as a legal form of marriage.[109] [109] W. Robertson Smith, _Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_, p. 73. That capture constituted a legal form of marriage among the Israelites, or that women taken captives in war were appropriated as sexual slaves, is shown by their religious history, in which the instructions given to the Lord’s chosen people after they had taken a city was to “smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword: But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city” they were to take unto themselves. This, it will be noticed, is to be done “unto the cities which are very far off,” and which “are not of the cities of these nations.”[110]