practised by primitive Aryans. In the Fiji Islands, where a wife was
strangled on her husband's grave, the strangled women were called "the
carpeting of the grave."[54] In Arabia, as in many other countries,
while a widow may escape death, she is very often forced into the class
of vagabonds and dependents. One of the most telling appeals made by
missionaries is the condition of child widows in countries in which the
unfortunates cannot be killed, but where the almost universal stigma of
shame is attached to second marriages. A remarkable exception to this,
when in ancient Greece the dying husband sometimes bequeathed his widow
to a male friend, emphasized the idea of woman as property.

Although the taboos which are based on the idea of ownership are
somewhat aside from the main theme of our discussion, they nevertheless
reinforce the other taboos of the seclusion and segregation of woman as
unclean. Moreover, as will be shown in a later chapter, the property
idea has certain implications which are important for the proper
understanding of the status of woman and the attitude toward her at the
present time.

In the face of the primitive aversion to woman as the source of
contamination through sympathetic magic, or as the seat of some mystic
force, whether of good or evil, it may well be asked how man ever dared
let his sexual longings overcome his fears and risk the dangers of so
intimate a relationship. Only by some religious ceremonial, some act of
purification, could man hope to counteract these properties of woman;
and thus the marriage ritual came into existence. By the marriage
ceremonial, the breach of taboo was expiated, condoned, and socially
countenanced.[1, p.200] This was very evident in the marriage customs of
the Greeks, which were composed of purification rites and other
precautions.[55] The injunctions to the Hebrews given in Leviticus