ed. Evidently
all traces of it have not yet disappeared. In at least forty North
American tribes the man marrying an elder sister has the right to make
all her sisters his wives as soon as they are of age, a survival of the
community of men for the whole series of sisters. And Bancroft relates
that the Indians of the Californian peninsula celebrate certain
festivities uniting several "tribes" for the purpose of unrestricted
sexual intercourse. These are evidently gentes that have preserved in
these festivities a vague recollection of the time when the women of one
gens had for their common husbands all the men of another gens, and vice
versa. The same custom is still observed in Australia. Among certain
nations it sometimes happens that the older men, the chief and
sorcerer-priests, exploit the community of women for their own benefits
and monopolize all the women. But in their turn they must restore the
old community during certain festivities and great assemblies,
permitting their wives to enjoy themselves with the young men. A whole
series of examples of such periodical saturnalia restoring for a short
time the ancient sexual freedom is quoted by Westermarck:[18] among the
Hos, the Santals, the Punjas and Kotars in India, among some African
nations, etc. Curiously enough Westermarck concludes that this is a
survival, not of group marriage, the existence of which he denies,
but--of a rutting season which primitive man had in common with other
animals.

Here we touch Bachofen's fourth great discovery: the widespread form of
transition from group marriage to pairing family. What Bachofen
represents as a penance for violating the old divine laws--the penalty
with which a woman redeems her right to chastity, is in fact only a
mystical expression for the penalty paid by a woman for becoming exempt
from the ancient community of men and acquiring the right of
surrendering to one man only. This penalty consists in a limited
surrender: Babylonian women had to surrender once a year in the temple
of Mylitta; other nations of Western Asia sent their young women for
years to the temple of Anaitis, where they had to practice free love
with favorites of their own choice before they were allowed to marry.
Similar customs in a religious disguise are common to nearly all Asiatic
nations between the Mediterranean and the Ganges. The penalty for
exemption becomes gradually lighter in course of time, as Bachofen
remarks: "The annually re