3 i2 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



pensation to enable the bridegroom to accept his 

 bride as if nothing had happened. 1 So among the 

 Hill tribes of Northern Aracan sexual intercourse 

 before marriage is unrestricted, "and it is considered 

 rather a good thing," we are told, " to marry a 

 girl in the family-way, even though by another 

 man/' 2 



In the same way in ancient Arabia when a husband 

 a bride-price all the children borne by his wife 

 his, and were reckoned to his kin. This, says 

 Professor Robertson Smith, " is the fundamental 

 doctrine of Mohammedan law : the son is reckoned 

 to the bed on which he is born. But in old Arab law 

 this doctrine is developed with a logical thorough- 

 ness at which our views of property stand aghast." 

 And he shows by an examination of cases that 

 " when a man desired a goodly seed he might call 

 upon his wife to cohabit with another man till she 

 became pregnant by him," and in such a case the 

 child would be the husband's ; that the child of a 

 woman already pregnant by another man at her 

 marriage would belong to the husband ; that when a 

 mother married again after divorce or the death of 

 her previous husband if she were allowed to take her 

 children with her they might become incorporated in 

 her new husband's stock ; that the husband might 

 lead his wife to a guest, or on going a journey 

 might get a friend to supply his place in his absence, 

 or might enter into a partnership of conjugal rights 

 with another man in return for service ; yet in all 

 these cases he would be reckoned the father of her 



1 Father Jaime Masip, Anthropos, ii. 716. 



2 /. A. /. ii. 239. 



