Quum apud Samoanos nuptiae cuiusdam optimatum in diebus primaevis celebrabantur, partes agnatique sponsae in _maroe_, seu foro publico congregabantur, ubi sponsus, cunctis intuentibus, primam virginitatis sponsae obryssam instituit. Si documentum virginitatis ab eo exhiberi potuerat, coetus omnis exsurrexit complosisque manibus sponsae gratulabundus acclamavit; at, si quo casu proba haec defuerit, eam probris scommatibusque lacessiverant. Apud plebem humilem ritus his in aedibus privatis, nec tanta pompa celebrabatur.[666]
Turner’s _Samoa a Hundred Years Ago_, pp. 93–95.
A distinct reference to the proofs of chastity, in the blood-stamped cloth, is found in the Bible record of the ancient law of Israel. “If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her, and lay shameful things to her charge, and bring up an evil name upon her, and say, I took this woman, and when I came nigh to her, I found not in her the tokens of virginity: then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel’s virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate: and the damsel’s father shall say unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto this man to wife, and he hateth her; and, lo, he hath laid shameful things to her charge, saying, I found not in thy daughter the tokens of virginity; and yet these are the tokens of my daughter’s virginity. And they shall spread the garment [or cloth, Hebrew _simlah_] before the elders of the city.
“And the elders of that city shall take the man and chastise him; and they shall amerce him in an hundred shekels of silver, and give them unto the father of the damsel, because he hath brought up an evil name upon a virgin of Israel: and she shall be his wife; he may not put her away all his days. But if this thing be true, that the tokens of virginity were not found in the damsel: then they shall bring out the damsel to the doors of her father’s house, and the men of the city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the harlot in her father’s house.”[667]
In different languages and among various peoples there is, as already suggested,[668] an apparent connection between the terms, and the corresponding ideas, of “woman” and “door,” that would seem to be a confirmation of the fact that the earliest altar was at the threshold of the woman, and of the door.