"When a woman is discovered in an intrigue, a great outcry is made, and the neighbors rush to the scene with much laughter. A goat is sent for on the spot for a peace-making feast between the gallant and the husband. Of course the neighbors also partake of the feast; _the husband and wife both look very happy_, and so does every one else except the lover, who has to pay for the goat, and in addition will have to pay six cows later on."
Here we see a great value attached apparently to conjugal fidelity, but in reality an utter and ludicrous indifference to it.
Asia is also the chief home of polyandry, though, as we saw in the preceding chapter, this custom has prevailed on other continents too. The cases there cited to show the absence of monopoly also prove the absence of jealousy. The effect of polyandry is thus referred to by Colonel King (23):
"A Toda woman often has three or four husbands, who are all brothers, and with each of whom she cohabits a month at a time. What is more singular, such men as, by the paucity of women among the tribe, are prevented from obtaining a share in a wife, are allowed, with the permission of the fraternal husbands, to become temporary partners with them. Notwithstanding these singular family arrangements, the greatest harmony appears to prevail among all parties--husbands, wives, and lovers."
Whatever may have been the causes leading to the strange custom of marrying one woman to several men--poverty, the desire to reduce the population in mountainous regions, scarcity of women due to female infanticide, the need of protection of a woman during the absence of one husband--the fact stares us in the face that a race of men who calmly submit to such a disgusting practice cannot know jealousy. So, too, in the cases of _jus primae noctis_ (referred to in the chapter on Indifference to Chastity), where the men not only submitted to an outrage so damnable to our sense of honor, affection, and monopoly, but actually coveted it as a privilege or a religious blessing and paid for it accordingly. Note once more how the sentiments associated with women and love change and grow.
Petherick says (151) that among the Hassangeh Arabs, marriages are valid only three or four days, the wives being free the rest of the time to make other alliances. The married men, far from feeling this a grievance,