Appendix, Note B: On the Practice of Capturing Wives

1. An anonymous writer in “Chambers’ Journal,” October 22, 1864, gives the following account of the position of women, and of the practice of capturing wives, among the Australian Blacks. The writer would appear to have had good opportunities of being acquainted with the native customs:—

“In nothing is the brutality of their nature more clearly shown than in their treatment of their females. Amongst them, women are considered as an inferior class, and are used almost as beasts of burden; so that it is not at all uncommon to meet a huge black fellow travelling merrily along with no load but his spear or war-club, whilst his unfortunate leubra is panting under the weight of their goods and chattels, which she is compelled to carry from camp to camp. Courtship, as the precursor to marriage, is unknown amongst them. When a young warrior is desirous of procuring a wife, he generally obtains one by giving in exchange for her a sister, or some other female relative of his own; but if there should happen to be no eligible damsel disengaged in the tribe to which he belongs, then he hovers round the encampment of some other blacks until he gets an opportunity of seizing one of their leubras, whom perhaps he has seen and admired when attending one of the grand corroborries. His mode of paying his addresses is simple and efficacious. With a blow of his nulla-nulla (war-club), he stuns the object of his ‘affections,’ and drags her insensible body away to some retired spot, whence, as soon as she recovers her senses, he brings her home to his own gunyah in triumph. Sometimes two join in an expedition for the same purpose, and then for several days they watch the movements of their intended victims, using the utmost skill in concealing their presence. When they have obtained the knowledge they require, they wait for a dark, windy night; then quite naked, and carrying only their long ‘jag-spears,’ they crawl stealthily through the bush until they reach the immediate vicinity of the camp-fires, in front of which the girls they are in search of are sleeping. Slowly and silently, they creep close enough to distinguish the figure of one of those leubras; then one of the intruders stretches out his spear, and inserts its barbed point amongst her thick flowing locks; turning the spear slowly round, some of her hair speedily becomes entangled with it; then, with a sudden jerk, she is aroused from her slumber, and as her eyes open, she feels the sharp point of another weapon pressed against her throat. She neither faints nor screams; she knows well that the slightest attempt at escape or alarm will cause her instant death, so, like a sensible woman, she makes a virtue of necessity, and rising silently, she follows her captors. They lead her away to a considerable distance, tie her to a tree, and return to ensnare their other victim in like manner. Then, when they have accomplished their design, they hurry off to their own camp, where they are received with universal applause, and highly honoured for their gallant exploit. Occasionally an alarm is given, but even then the wife-stealers easily escape amidst the confusion, to renew their attempt at some future period. When a distinguished warrior carries off a bride from a strange tribe, he will frequently volunteer to undergo ‘the trial of spears,’ in order to prevent the necessity of his people going to war in his defence; then both the tribes meet, and ten of their smartest and strongest young men are picked out by the aggrieved party. These are each provided with three reed-spears, and a wommera, or throwing-stick; and the offender, armed only with his heiliman (a bark-shield eighteen inches long by six wide), is led out in front, and placed at the distance of forty yards. Then, at a given signal, the thirty spears are launched at him in rapid succession; these he receives and parries with his shield, and so skilful are the blacks in the use of their own weapons, that very seldom is any wound inflicted. Having successfully passed through this ordeal, the warrior is considered to have fairly earned his leubra, and to have atoned for his offence in carrying her off; so the ceremony generally concludes by the two tribes feasting together in perfect harmony.”

It is impossible, in reading this account of the Australian mode of capturing women, not to recall what Plutarch says of the ceremonies of Roman marriage, apropos of the Rape of the Sabines:—“It is a custom still observed for the bride not to go over the threshold of her husband’s house herself, but to be carried over; (compare additional example of the Form No. 5, p. 300), because the Sabine virgins did not go in voluntarily, but were carried in by violence. Some add that the bride’s hair is parted with the point of a spear, in memory of the first marriages being brought about in a warlike manner.”

2. Probable Origin of the Name Racshasa.—We saw (pp. 80-81) that, in the code of Menu, one of the eight legal forms of the marriage ceremony was that by capture de facto, and called Racshasa, and that this marriage was permitted to the military class. It is curious that the name of this species of marriage should be that of a race of beings—the Rakshasas—whom we find playing an important part, and that connected with a legend of a capture, in the mythic history of the Hindus. The story of the Ramayana may be said to be that of the carrying off of Rama’s wife, Sita, by the Rakshasa, Ravana, and of the consequent war carried on by Rama against the Rakshasas, ending in their defeat and the recovery of Sita. (See Williams’s “Indian Epic Poetry,” pp. 74-76.) Wilson (“India Three Thousand Years Ago;” Bombay, 1858, p. 20) speaks of the Rakshasas as “a people, often alluded to, from whom the Aryas suffered much, and who, by their descendants, were transferred in idea to the most distant south, and treated by them as a race of mythical giants.” He ranks them with the Dasyus, Ugras, Pishachas, and Asuras, as indigenous barbarian races or tribes, which had to be overcome before the Aryans could effect a settlement in part of Hindustan. Lassen takes the same view. “The Ramayana,” he says (Lassen, vol. i. p. 535; we quote from Muir’s “Sanscrit Texts,” vol. ii. p. 425) “contains the narrative of the first attempt of the Aryans to extend themselves to the south by conquest; but it presupposes the peaceable extension of Brahmanical missions in the same direction as having taken place still earlier.... The Rakshasas, who are represented as disturbing the sacrifices and devouring the priests, signify here, as often elsewhere, merely the savage tribes which placed themselves in hostile opposition to the Brahmanical institutions. The only other actors who appear in the legend, in addition to these inhabitants, are the monkeys, which ally themselves to Rama and render him assistance. This can only mean that, when the Arian Kshatriyas first made hostile incursions into the south, they were aided by another portion of the indigenous tribes.” Dr. Muir can find no authority for saying that the word Rakshasa was originally the name of a tribe. At the same time (“Texts,” vol. ii. p. 434), he inclines to hold the descriptions we have of them as having more probably originated in hostile contact with the savages of the south, than as the simple offspring of the poet’s imagination. He notices (“Texts,” vol. ii. p. 426) that, even in the Vedic period, the Rakshasas “had been magnified into demons and giants by the poetical and superstitious imaginations of the early (Arian) bards.” He quotes from the Ramayana a passage which represents them as cannibals—feeding on blood, men-devouring, changing their shapes, etc.; and another, in which they are described as “of fearful swiftness and unyielding in battle;” while Ravana, the most terrible of all the Rakshasas, is stigmatised as a “destroyer of religious duties, and ravisher of the wives of others.” Dr. Muir adds, that the description of the Rakshasas in the Ramayana “corresponds in many respects with the epithets applied to the same class of beings (whether we take them for men or for demons) who are so often alluded to in the Rigveda,” and that it is quite possible that the author of the Ramayana may have borrowed therefrom many of the traits which he ascribes to the Rakshasas.

But how came the name of a legal mode of marriage to be that of such a race of beings? The only answer that we can make is a surmise—viz., that while the system of capture had not as yet died out among the Kshatriyas, or warrior caste of the Aryans, it was perfect among the races to which the name Rakshasas was applied; and that what was their system gave its designation to the exceptional, although permitted, marriage by capture among the Kshatriyas. This is the more probable, since, so far as we can ascertain, there is nothing in the name—Rakshasa—itself, descriptive of the mode of marriage.

From another point of view, it may be observed that the Rakshasas hold nearly the same place in Hindu tradition that giants, ogres, and trolls occupy in Scandinavian and Celtic legends. They are supernatural beings—robbers and plunderers of human habitations—men-devourers and women-stealers. The giants and ogres of the north share the characteristics of Ravana. The cruel monsters are always carrying off kings’ daughters. As Rama’s exploits culminate in the recovery of Sita, so the northern giant-slayer is crowned with the greatest glory when he has rescued the captive princesses and restored them in safety to the king’s—their father’s—palace. Are we to hold all such beings—giants, ogres, trolls, etc.—wherever they occur, as representing savage races, between whom and the peoples in whose legends they appear, as supernatural beings, there was chronic hostility?

3. Africa.—The following is the account which poor Speke received from the Queen of Uganda regarding marriage there:—“There are no such things as marriages in Uganda: there are no ceremonies attached to it. If any Mkungu possessed of a pretty daughter committed an offence, he might give her to the king as a peace-offering; if any neighbouring king had a pretty daughter, and the king of Uganda wanted her, she might be demanded as a fitting tribute. The Wakungu in Uganda are supplied with women by the king, according to their merits, from seizures in battle abroad, or seizures from refractory officers at home. The women are not regarded as property according to the Wanyamŭézi practice, though many exchange their daughters; and some women, for misdemeanours, are sold into slavery; whilst others are flogged, or are degraded to do all the menial services of the house”—(Speke’s “Journal,” etc., 1863, p. 361).