her parents, and a part of the sum agreed on is paid when the contract is signed.[1] As in Mongolia, matrimonial arrangements are often settled, not only from the infancy of the future wife and husband, but even before their birth, on the hypothesis of a difference of sex.[2] These agreements are made by the fathers and mothers, or, in default of them, by the grandparents or nearest relatives.[3] Lastly, the women are excluded by law from inheritance,] and kept as much as possible in seclusion, so that they scarcely see any one besides their parents.[4] By marrying, the young Chinese girl simply changes masters. "The bride," says a Chinese author, "ought only to be a shadow and an echo in the house." The married woman eats neither with her husband nor with her male children; she waits at table in silence, lights the pipes, must be content with the coarsest food, and has not even the right to touch what her son leaves.[5]
China is a country of very ancient civilisation, where the laws and rites have regulated everything, and consequently there exists a whole legislation with regard to marriage.
To begin with, conjugal union is forbidden between persons having the same family name,[6] and I shall have to return to this circumstance.
As in ancient Rome, the law prohibits marriage between slaves and free persons.[7] It absolutely forbids marriage to the priests of Fo, and to those of the tao sect.[8] It orders public functionaries not to contract marriage with actresses, comedians, or musicians.[10] It seems that in ancient times, in China as in Greco-Latin antiquity, the father had the excessive right to unmarry his daughter, for to remedy this abuse the Chinese law pronounces the punishment of a hundred strokes of bamboo on the father-in-law who should send away his son-in-law in order to re-marry his daughter to another.[11] The Chinese widow, no longer belonging to her original family, but to the family of her husband, can
