(M60) Even in the marriage customs of various races we may perhaps detect traces of this belief that women can be impregnated by the sun. Thus amongst the Chaco Indians of South America a newly married couple used to sleep the first night on a mare's or bullock's skin with their heads towards the west, "for the marriage is not considered ratified till the rising sun shines on their feet the succeeding morning."(175) At old Hindoo marriages the first ceremony was the "Impregnation-rite" (_Garbhadhana_); during the previous day the bride was made to look towards the sun or to be in some way exposed to its rays.(176) Amongst the Turks of Siberia it was formerly the custom on the morning after the marriage to lead the young couple out of the hut to greet the rising sun. The same custom is said to be still practised in Iran and Central Asia under a belief that the beams of the rising sun are the surest means of impregnating the new bride.(177) And as some people think that women may be gotten with child by the sun, so others imagine that they can conceive by the moon. According to the Greenlanders the moon is a young man, and he "now and then comes down to give their wives a visit and caress them; for which reason no woman dare sleep lying upon her back, without she first spits upon her fingers and rubs her belly with it. For the same reason the young maids are afraid to stare long at the moon, imagining they may get a child by the bargain."(178) Similarly Breton peasants are reported to believe that women or girls who expose their persons to the moonlight may be impregnated by it and give birth to monsters.(179)
§ 8. Reasons for the Seclusion of Girls at Puberty.
(M61) The motive for the restraints so commonly imposed on girls at puberty is the deeply engrained dread which primitive man universally entertains of menstruous blood. He fears it at all times but especially on its first appearance; hence the restrictions under which women lie at their first menstruation are usually more stringent than those which they have to observe at any subsequent recurrence of the mysterious flow. Some evidence of the fear and of the customs based on it has been cited in an earlier part of this work;(180) but as the terror, for it is nothing less, which the phenomenon periodically strikes into the mind of the savage has deeply influenced his life and institutions, it may be well to illustrate the subject with some further examples.