years, and it is their chief business to dance before
the image of the god, to whom they are married (though in Upper
India professional dancing girls are married to inanimate
objects), but they are also trained in arousing and assuaging the
desires of devotees who come on pilgrimage to the shrine. For the
betrothal rites by which, in India, sacred prostitutes are
consecrated, see, e.g., A. Van Gennep, _Rites de Passage_, p.
142.

In many parts of Western Asia, where barbarism had reached a high
stage of development, prostitution was not unknown, though
usually disapproved. The Hebrews knew it, and the historical
Biblical references to prostitutes imply little reprobation.
Jephtha was the son of a prostitute, brought up with the
legitimate children, and the story of Tamar is instructive. But
the legal codes were extremely severe on Jewish maidens who
became prostitutes (the offense was quite tolerable in strange
women), while Hebrew moralists exercised their invectives against
prostitution; it is sufficient to refer to a well-known passage
in the Book of Proverbs (see art. "Harlot," by Cheyne, in the
_Encyclopaedia Biblica_). Mahomed also severely condemned
prostitution, though somewhat more tolerant to it in slave
women; according to Haleby, however, prostitution was practically
unknown in Islam during the first centuries after the Prophet's
time.

The Persian adherents of the somewhat ascetic _Zendavesta_ also
knew prostitution, and regarded it with repulsion: "It is the
Gahi [the courtesan, as an incarnation of the female demon,
Gahi], O Spitama Zarathustra! who mixes in her the seed of the
faithful and the unfaithful, of the worshipper of Mazda and the
worshipper of the Daevas, of the wicked and the righteous. Her
look dries up one-third of the mighty floods that run from the
mountains, O Zarathustra; her look withers one-third of the
beautiful, golden-hued, growing plants, O Zarathustra; her look
withers one-third of the strength of Spenta Armaiti [the earth];
and her touch withers in the faithful one-third of his good
thoughts, of his good words, of his good deeds, one-third of his
strength, of his victorious power, of his holiness. Verily I say
unto thee, O Spitama Zarathustra! such creatures ought to be
killed even more than gliding snakes, than howling wolves