Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 248

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ALLEGED EXCESS OF FEMALES
is certified to be barren, or if she has only
for in the latter case the debt to
borne female children
is con-
one's ancestors that is to say, the birth of a son
But even in this
sidered to have been imperfectly paid.
case, before a man contracts a second marriage it is neces-
and
sary that he should obtain the consent of the first
she is always regarded as the chief wife and retains all her
his wife, she
—
;
—
;
prerogatives.
It may be remembered that for the same reason Abraham
took Hagar to be his wife during the lifetime and with the
consent of Sarah, his lawful wife. One may also remember
what dissensions arose in the family of the holy patriarch
It is
as the result of this marriage with two women.
exactly the same in Hindu families where there are two
Consequently the majority of Hindu husbands
legal wives.
prefer, under such circumstances, to give up the hope of
having a son, rather than be subjected to the numberless
troubles which are the invariable result of the remedy
permitted by law.
Some modern writers have hazarded the theory that in
hot countries the number of women greatly exceeds that of
men. It is Bruce, I think, who first advanced this opinion
in his account of his travels in Arabia and Abyssinia.
my
own experience had led me to a totally
Even before
different conclusion on this point, it had always appeared to
me that his deductions were wrong, or at any rate doubtful.
If
memory does not deceive me, this author tried to
my
prove the numerical excess of the female sex from the fact
that in the families of some Arab princes, amongst a large
number of children hardly one-sixth were males and from
this particular instance he drew a general conclusion.
It
is evident that the calculation is fundamentally wrong.
To obtain a sound basis on which to found such a conclu-
sion, a census must be taken of a large number of families
of all classes, and upon that alone can such a rule of pro-
portion be drawn. The proportion of births in the harems
of a few Eastern princes, with many wives, cannot furnish
any standard from which to determine what takes place
amongst the people themselves, where conjugal union is
restricted to what it ought to be according to the laws of
healthy morality and true civilization.
;