Even more widespread and prominent than the custom of offering blood, or of making a libation, or of overcoming a special barrier, at the threshold, or of anointing or stamping the posts or lintel of the doorway as a sign of the covenant, at the time of a marriage, and as a part of the ceremony, is the habit of causing the bride to cross the threshold with care, without stepping upon it. This custom is of well-nigh world-wide observance, and it has attracted the attention of anthropologists and students of primitive customs. A favorite method of explaining it has been by calling it a survival of the practice of “marriage by capture;” but this is nothing more than an unscientific guess, in defiance of the truth that persistent popular customs have their origin in a sentiment, and not in a passing historic practice. The earliest mentions of this custom, of the bride’s crossing the threshold without stepping on it, show it as a voluntary religious rite; and there are traces of its recognition in this light from the earliest times until now. In the Vedic Sutras, or the sacrificial rules of the ancient Hindoo literature, it is specifically declared that a bride, on entering her husband’s home, shall step across the threshold, and not upon it. She is not lifted over the door-sill, but she voluntarily crosses it. Thus it is said: “When (the bridegroom with his bride) has come to his house, he says to her, ‘Cross (the threshold) with thy right foot first; do not stand on the threshold.’”[92] In this ancient ceremony, grains of rice are poured on the heads of the bridegroom and his bride.[93] This modern custom has, therefore, a very early origin. And again: “He makes her enter the house (which she does) with her right foot. And she does not stand on the threshold.”[94] Putting the right foot forward seems to be a matter of importance in various primitive religions. “Put your right foot first” is a maxim ascribed to Pythagoras.[95] In his description of the proportions of a temple, the Roman architect Vitruvius said: “The number of steps in front should always be odd, since, in that case, the right foot, which begins the ascent, will be that which first alights on the landing of the temple.”[96] A Muhammadan is always careful to put his right foot first in crossing over the threshold of a mosk.[97] Among the Albanians, when the bride is taken to the home of the bridegroom, accompanied by the _vlam_, or “the friend of the bridegroom,” it is said that “particular care is taken that the threshold should be crossed with the right foot foremost.”[98] Here, as in India, the crossing of the threshold is a voluntary act. The bride is not lifted over, but crosses of her own accord. If she be veiled, the lifting is a necessity. In Madagascar, “on entering a house, especially a royal house, it is improper to use the left foot on first stepping into it. One must ‘put one’s best (or right) foot foremost.’”[99]