186 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



partners have changed. Whoever lives among the 

 Buryats has often the opportunity of seeing and 

 hearing what happens at a wedding when men and 

 women are excited by drink." 1 In Chinese Turkestan 

 the conjugal bond is extremely fragile. For the 

 slightest reason and even without any reason at all the 

 wife collects her belongings and returns to her parents ; 

 and on the other hand there is nothing to protect her 

 from her husband's caprices. Sometimes she does not 

 wait for a formal divorce in order to marry again. A 

 woman of thirty who has not already had several 

 husbands is therefore an exception. No respectable 

 man who has to make a journey will spend a few days 

 in a distant place without entering into a new and 

 legitimate marriage. Yet all these facilities given by 

 the law do not prevent either adultery or prostitution. 

 This laxity of morals is of ancient date : it was noted 

 as existing in the early centuries of our era. 2 



Among the tribes of the Caucasus pagan Cheremiss 

 boys and girls enjoy sexual intercourse without reproof. 

 Neither religious belief nor the moral code opposes the 

 freedom of relations between the sexes. The statement 

 is express that reluctance on the part of the girls exposes 

 them to forcible violation. Like the Buryats, the 

 Cheremiss marry their sons when they have hardly 

 emerged from infancy, and fulfil the part of husbands 

 to their daughters-in-law. The concubinage of several 

 brothers with one woman is also not unknown, nor are 

 traces that it was once usual wanting either in lan- 

 guage or custom. 3 The Mordvin customs are similar. 



1 Int. Arch. xii. 202, 203; Zeits. f. Ethnol. xxxi. Verhandl, 441. 



2 UAnne'e Soc. iii. 374, citing Grenard, Le Turkestan et le Tibet. 



3 Smirnov, i. 117, 115. 



