low, even in comparison with the average of other Asiatic races. There
is no social law to govern the intercourse of the youths of both sexes
before marriage. Even the authority of parents is not recognised to any
extent. The Dyak girl is supposed capable of selecting a husband for
herself; and before she is betrothed to a man she may cohabit, without
disgrace, with any other with whom she may please to associate. The
women appear to make liberal use of this privilege. Loose as their
conduct is, however, before marriage, they are subject afterwards to
a more stringent code. As a man is only allowed one wife, he requires
strict fidelity in her, and if she break faith with him, she is
punished by a severe beating and a heavy fine. On his part, moreover,
he must be continent, for the penalty is the same for either sex. Cases
of adultery are not frequent in times of peace, though during war more
licence is allowed. The Dyak women seldom engage in intrigues with
Malays or other foreigners.
[Illustration: DYAK WOMAN--BORNEO.
[_From_ MARRYAT’S “_Indian Archipelago._”]]
From their long intercourse with the Malays, who are all Mohammedans,
the Dyaks might have been expected to borrow such of their customs as
encourage the savage in the gratification of his animal appetites,
and would enable him to live in lordly indolence on the labour of his
wives. Monogamy, however, still prevails with all the tribes.
The ceremony of marriage--if such it can be called--is simple to the
last degree with all except a few communities, who practise some
particular rites. The consent of the woman is necessary to the match,
which is made without the intervention of the parents, who, after the
mutual willingness of the young people has been expressed, cannot
refuse their sanction. The bride and bridegroom meet, a feast is given,
and the transaction is concluded.
There are certain restrictions on the immoral intercourse of the young
people, to which we have alluded. If a girl becomes pregnant, the
father of her child must marry her. Such an occurrence often precedes
a match. Men and women live with each other on trial, and if no signs
of offspring appear, the acquaintance is discontinued. Constancy during
such an intercourse is not rigidly required. Mr. Hugh Low was assured
that, in some communities, the laxity of manners was carried so far,
that when a chief was travelling from place to place, hospitality
required that at every village he should be furnished with a girl as
his companion while he rested. Such a practice is general among the
Kyans who inhabit a large part of the interior of Borneo. The fear
of not becoming the father of a family--a misfortune greatly dreaded
by the Dyaks--is supposed to encourage the loose intercourse of the
unmarried people, since, as we have said, a man always marries the
woman by whom he has a child.
Among the Dyaks who dwell on the hills in the interior, a higher
morality prevails. The licentious intercourse of the unmarried people
is not permitted. The young and single men are obliged to sleep apart
in a separate building, and the girls are carefully kept from them.
Marriage is contracted at a very early age, and adultery is almost
unknown. Polygamy is not allowed; but some of the chiefs indulge in
a second wife or concubine--an infringement of the law which is held
in great reprobation, though it cannot be prevented. The degrees of
consanguinity within which marriage is prohibited extend beyond
cousins. One man shocked the public feeling of his tribe by marrying
his granddaughter--his wife and the girl’s mother, his own child, being
still alive. The people affirmed that ruin and darkness had covered
the face of the sun ever since the day when that incestuous union took
place. Nevertheless, as they adhere almost constantly to the practice
of marrying within their own tribe, the whole commonwealth comes, in
the course of time, to be united by distant ties of blood, which has
been assigned as a cause for the cases of insanity not uncommon among
them. This may be true, since it is a fact that many royal families,
constrained to perpetual intermarriage, have dwindled into a race of
imbeciles in consequence. The women put faith in medicines to render
them fruitful; but they never resort to the custom of procuring
abortion adopted by the Malay prostitutes on the coast. These women
eat large quantities of honey, largely mixed with hot spices, which
produces the desired result. It is said that among the people of the
south numerous public prostitutes are to be found, though this is on
the equivocal authority of a German missionary, whose testimony is much
to be suspected. No word for prostitution appears to exist in the Dyak
language. Among the Malays such women are numerous.
The Sibnouan females present a fair average of the manners prevailing
with the various divisions of that singular race. Their women are not
concealed, nor are they shy before strangers. They will bathe naked in
the presence of men; yet many of the decencies of life are observed.
Though the unmarried people sleep promiscuously in a common room,
married couples have separate chambers. The labour of the household,
with all the drudgery, is allotted to the females; they grind rice,
carry burdens, fetch water, catch fish, and till the fields, but
are far from occupying the degraded condition of the wives of the
North-American Indians; their situation may, indeed, be compared to
that of women in the humblest classes in England. They eat with the
men, and take part in their concerns as well as their festivals. This
is an agricultural and fishing tribe.
Among the Kayans a _naked woman_ cannot under any circumstances be
killed, or a woman with child.
Among the Mohammedan Malays, as we have said, there is more
civilization and corruption of manners in another form. They are
polygamists, indulge in concubines, encourage prostitutes, and
sometimes treat their wives with great tyranny. An English physician
lately received a message from one of the wives of a chief--celebrated
for fostering privacy--desiring a secret interview with him at a
secluded spot in the jungle. He went with the high belief that the
woman was enamoured of his good looks. He met her, found her young and
pretty, but with an air of firmness and dignity which showed that it
was no frivolous purpose which had led her to take so dangerous a step.
She complained of her miserable life, of the despotism under which
she suffered, declared she would endure it no longer, and requested
the doctor to furnish her with a small dose of arsenic to poison, not
herself, but her husband. Of course he refused, and the poor creature
went away sorely disappointed.
The rich Malays allow their wives to keep female slaves for their
service. The position of these captives is, under any circumstances,
unenviable; should, however, one of them, by her personal qualities,
excite the jealousy of her mistress; her case is miserable, until
she can procure another owner. Sometimes the slaves are used as
concubines, when by law they become free, though they seldom avail
themselves of their liberty, preferring to be supported by their old
masters, while prostituting themselves to others. The wealthy chiefs
spend large sums in the purchase of concubines. The marriage ceremony
is performed according to the ritual of the Koran, but is often
neglected.
The prostitutes who congregate in the seaport towns have not been
particularly described. They appear to be divided into classes:
those who cohabit temporarily with the Malays, are paid a certain
price, and exchange their residence; those who prostitute themselves
indiscriminately to all comers; and those who are supported by the
sailors, and profligate Chinese, who invariably create such a class
wherever they settle. Of their numbers we have no account, nor of
their modes of life; but it is certain they exist in considerable
numbers[68].
PROSTITUTION AMONG THE SEMI-CIVILIZED NATIONS.
INTRODUCTION.
Surveying the social aspects of the globe, we discover an immense range
occupied by races partially civilized, which connect the barbarian with
the polished communities. Some of these, perhaps, are placed below
European nations rather because they differ from, than because they are
inferior to them.
The influence of every great religion is powerful in various divisions
of the vast range. Buddha and Bramah have their millions of worshippers
in China, India, and the intervening regions. The prophet is followed
by whole nations in eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa. Christianity has
numerous adherents on the plains of Syria, Palestine, and the countries
of Asia Minor. An equal variety of institutions prevails among these
half-educated races. British policy in India; paternal despotism in
China; republican simplicity in Arabia, Celebes, and Afghanistan;
religious tyranny in the empire of the Porte; and patriarchal freedom
among the nomades of Asia Minor, exercise different influences on this
mighty and mixed population. In some we find a singular purity of
manners, as among the Bedouins of Arabia; with others, morals are more
gross than among the worst savages; but in all there is a perceptible
contrast between the civilized states of Europe on the one hand, and
the barbarian countries of Africa, Australasia, and the Pacific, on the
other.
The position of the female sex among half-civilized races, as among
all others, may be taken as a standard to measure their progress. It
differs, in some remarkable particulars, from that occupied by women
in purely savage or highly-civilized communities. In the one, where
any regulations exist they are rude and coarse, and only obeyed where
their action is constant, which it seldom is. In the other, men fear
blame more than the law, and manners perform what legislation is unable
to accomplish. In most of the countries of which we are now treating,
government endeavours to rule with parental discipline the minutest
concerns of life, to affix a penalty to every fault, to adjust with
nicety the slightest relations of individuals with individuals, to
guard morals by police and suppress profligacy by imperative decrees.
So it is in China, so in Japan, and so in a less degree in the
dominions of every Asiatic prince. In Egypt Mohammed Ali attempted,
by one stroke of his pen, to blot out the stain of prostitution. He
banished the old professors of that class, and new ones were created
from the remainder of the population. In Persia a royal decree forbade
prostitution, and men immediately prostituted the right of marriage
to evade the law. In China the Emperors have, from time to time,
fulminated proclamations against all profligate persons; but they
have flung their invectives into the void, and no impression has been
produced. The coarse and awkward efforts of a barbarian despot’s will
never produce any better result. The Draconic decree is promulgated and
the offences it is intended to suppress continue to be perpetrated as
before. A distinction must be drawn, however, between those communities
in which severe laws are enacted to produce, and those in which they
are inspired by, public morality. In the one case they are worthless,
because they are in hostility to the prevailing system; in the other
they are the signification, because they are the embodiment, of the
national feeling. They may be symptoms, but they can never be causes,
of virtuous manners.
The view of the half-civilized nations, which is here presented,
includes sketches of India, of Afghanistan, Kashmir, the Hindu-Chinese
races, China, Japan, Celebes, Ceylon, Persia, Egypt, the Barbary
States, Syria, Palestine, Asia Minor, Arabia, and Turkey. In all of
them polygamy exists, though to a very small extent in Ceylon. It
will be seen that the popular ideas on this subject are somewhat
exaggerated. Most persons unaccustomed to read, or reflect, imagine
that throughout the East all men have their harems filled with wives,
who are beautiful prisoners, immured in perpetual seclusion, slaves to
the will of their lord, and never allowed to move unless guarded by
a fierce black eunuch, or a duenna still more dark and angry. It is
left for those who are accustomed to peruse the accounts of veracious
travellers, to know that polygamy, though allowed to almost all, is
practically a privilege only of the rich, and not indulged in even by
the majority of these. The general notions, also, of female seclusion
are extravagant. Women in Turkey enjoy far more liberty than is usually
imagined. So do they even in China, though very wealthy husbands,
especially among the Hindus, shut up their wives and never allow a
stranger’s glance to fall upon their countenances. This excessive
jealousy is not always disagreeable to the objects of it; indeed, in
the harem where three or four wives are congregated, the youngest
and most beautiful sometimes makes it her chief triumph over her
mortified rivals, that she is watched, guarded, shaded even from the
light, and immured beyond the sound of a man’s voice, while they are
far less religiously secluded. Thus the sex, influenced during ages by
a peculiar system of manners, accommodates itself to them, invariably
sinking or rising to the level assigned it by the civilization of the
period.
Throughout the world the numerical disparity of the sexes is nowhere
such as to induce the belief that polygamy is natural to certain
countries. It is practised in many where the females are less numerous
than the males, in consequence of infanticide. Everywhere, when
extensively prevalent, it produces injurious results, diminishing the
fecundity of women, and by no means preventing men from encouraging
a class of professional prostitutes. There is, indeed, in this idea,
something debasing to the female sex. That men should multiply their
wives that they may not be induced to visit harlots, appears to
degrade the institution of marriage, which was not intended for the
satisfaction of sensual appetites, but for the continuation of the
human species. Polygamy is opposed to increase, and thus appears
unnatural; still more revolting to our ideas of civilization is the
custom of polyandrism, or one wife with many husbands. It obtains in
some regions of the Himalaya, among the Nairs of Malabar, and in the
Cingalese kingdom of Kandy. Nowhere else do we find more than a trace
of it, and it is singular to find a practice so utterly repugnant to
the general sense of Orientals, prevailing close to the region in which
men are most jealous and women most carefully guarded. In Hindustan
some men will not divorce a wife whom they thoroughly dislike, because
they will not allow her to be unveiled by a stranger; yet among the
neighbouring Hindu-Chinese nations, a man will frequently prostitute
his wife for gain. On the southern coast, and in Ceylon, eight men will
live with one wife. This proves that institutions have no geographical
distribution. Both kinds of polygamy are equally opposed to the natural
increase of population.
Where nobler qualities distinguish the men of any race, we still find,
as we ascend the scale of civilization, that women rise with them. In
Afghanistan, in Celebes, and among the Bedouins of Arabia, the male
sex is distinguished for its upright, dignified, and manly character.
Chastity in women is prized, and because it is prized it is preserved.
Where, on the contrary, the husband desires his wife may be faithful
to him, not that she may be virtuous, but that he may not be robbed
or wronged, it frequently occurs that she only keeps her vow until she
has an opportunity to break it. On the whole, however, female chastity
among the Hindus and Mohammedans is more general than from some popular
accounts might be inferred. With the mixed races--hybrid in blood,
manners, and religion--an inferior state of morality prevails.
With respect to actual prostitution, the region which is most free
from it is the desert country of Arabia. It flourishes most, perhaps,
in India and China. The flower boats of the Pearl River, the temples
of the Deccan, the kiosks of Barbary, the Ghawazee villages of Egypt,
the dancing houses of Java, and the tea-gardens of Japan, were all
originally consecrated to vice, which nowhere flourishes more rankly
than in those countries where despotism has paralyzed the virtuous
energies of men.
Almost everywhere the prostitute class, among Eastern nations, has
addicted itself to other pursuits--to music and the dance--to inflame
the lust which it designs itself to satisfy. In many countries also
the prostitutes have been allied to the priesthood. Thus in India
they have formed a sacred class; in the cities of Arabia they are
encouraged by the Moolahs to frequent places of worship; elsewhere they
have flourished under the auspices of government, which has placed
them under the charge of inspectors and derived profit from their
degradation. In such countries they carry on their profession more
openly, and are more openly encouraged, than in others where their
occupation is clandestine.
Some of the nations included in this division of the subject appear to
have reached the last stage of their native civilization. Among these
is China: her further progress will not be influenced by internal
causes, but will be regulated by contact with a superior race. In
India the process has already begun, and in the condition of women,
and consequently, also, in their national character, the change is
becoming apparent. Widow-burning is already a thing of the past; the
blot of infanticide will soon be obliterated from the face of society;
the prejudice which prevented the second marriage of women, and drove
thousands to suicide or prostitution, is gradually yielding before
reason; the barriers of caste are being broken down, and more natural
relations restored to society. Women in India are the chief degradation
to the sacred class of Brahmins, in whom were combined the fanaticism
of idolatrous priests and the pride of nobles. Thus the contact of
English with Oriental civilization, gentle as it has been, is leading
to the subjugation of the latter before the more humane and liberal
principles of the former. But it is singular to find that much more
difficulty is experienced in modifying the social institutions of
half-educated, than in changing those of barbarous races. With the
one they are based on habit, with the other on prejudice; and the
pride of a little learning induces the one to cling to them, while the
simplicity of the savage allows him easily to yield.
The sentiment of chastity is nowhere discovered pure except among very
simple and unsophisticated, or very refined and polished nations. It is
found in the Bedouin encampments of Arabia, it is found in the pastoral
communities of Afghanistan, and it is found among the wandering
shepherds of Asia Minor; but amid the barbaric millions of China, with
their innumerable maxims of virtue, the true sentiment is very rare.
So also is that of love, which belongs also to the infancy and to the
maturity of nations, for in the intervening stages it becomes mingled
with an alloy of interest, sensuality, or superstition.
Prostitution, however, belongs to all ages and to every nation. But
it assumes various forms in the different classes of mankind: it is
loose and scattered among the barbarous tribes not yet settled under
the forms of regular society; it is systematized and acknowledged
among the half-barbarous races; it is adopted as a sacred institution,
in regions where the object of the priesthood is, to enslave the
souls of men through their senses; it is encouraged in States where
the desire of government is to absorb the people in the pursuit of
animal gratification, and thus distract their attention from public
affairs; it is submitted to a strict, though awkward discipline in
countries where the rulers desire to mimic the social code of civilized
commonwealths; and as society progresses, though it becomes distinct
and conspicuous, it exchanges the highway for the bye-street, the day
for the night, withdraws from other classes of the people, and becomes
a despised sisterhood, cut off from intercourse with the moral classes
of women.
Various stages of this process may have been remarked in the view of
the condition and character of women, and the extent and state of
the prostitute system in barbarous countries. We now enter on the
half-educated communities which occupy the greater part of the world’s
surface, and these will lead in the communities of Europe, to which
they are linked, on the one hand by Turkey, and on the other by the
inhospitable deserts of Siberia.
OF CELEBES.
In a region so vast as the Indian Archipelago it would be useless to
dwell separately upon every island, especially as many characteristics
are common to most of them. We have taken Java and Sumatra as
representing the Sunda group, and we shall take Celebes as the head of
a family of isles, with Borneo as another. Incidental notices of any
peculiarities in the lesser isles will suffice.
Celebes, in its political and social state, is far in advance of the
other countries in insular Asia. It enjoys in many of its States a
considerable degree of civilization. The idea of freedom, so rare
among barbarous races, is recognised in its political system, and
representative institutions have actually developed themselves into a
republican form of government. Where such progress has been made in the
art of civil polity, we may look with confidence for a superior social
scheme, and this we actually find. It should be premised that the
Indian Archipelago is peopled by two races--the brown, or Malay; and
the black, or Ethiopian. The former is the more powerful, intelligent,
and polished, and has therefore become the conquering race. It has
subdued the Negro hordes of the various islands, and is now paramount
in all the great native States. In Java, Sumatra, and Celebes, it has
entirely displaced the original possessors of the soil, who dwell only
in scattered communities, defended from annihilation by forests and
hills, which serve in some degree to balance that native valour which
has made the Malays an imperial nation, subdued in their turn by the
more powerful race from Europe.
In the States of Celebes women are not excluded from their share in the
public business of the commonwealth, though their influence is usually
indirect. They rule their own households, give counsel to the men on
all important occasions, and even, when the monarchy is elective, are
frequently raised to the throne. They eat with their husbands, and
from the same dish, only using the left side. They appear mixed with
the other sex at public festivals, and, when intrusted with authority,
preside over the councils, and are vigorous in the exercise of their
prerogative. Nor is peace the only era of their reign. They have
sometimes presented themselves in the field, and animated the warriors
to battle by applauding the courageous and upbraiding the timid.
In the State of Wajo, which is, perhaps, the most advanced in the
island, one check upon civilization exists, and that is the extravagant
pride of birth. The spirit, if not the actual institution of caste,
exists, and is productive of the usual evils attending an artificial
division of classes. A woman of pure descent dare not mingle her blood
with that of an inferior, though a man may ally himself with a girl of
humbler station. The offspring of such a connection, however, carry
with them an appellation denoting their imperfect parentage.