VII. Adultery among the Mongol Races and in Malaya.
Thus the Mongols of Asia seem to have copied the Mongoloids of America. With the nomad Tartars a man of inferior class who has committed adultery with a woman of his own class pays the injured husband forty-five head of cattle; but the husband must revenge himself on the inconstant wife. The law invites him to do so; for if he kills her, the compensation of cattle remains his property; if not, it goes to the prince. But if it happens that a man of low condition has illicit intercourse with the wife of a prince, then the crime is terrible; the man is cut to pieces, the faithless wife is decapitated, and the family of the guilty man reduced to slavery.[1] If we may believe a modern traveller, Mongol customs have become considerably modified on this point, adultery being now extremely common in Mongolia, and so little repressed that the women hardly take the trouble to conceal it.[2]
In lamaic Thibet they do not regard adultery as a tragedy. The wife is corrected, and the lover pays a fine to the husband, or husbands, when there are several.[3]
Chinese legislation is relatively moderate in regard to adultery. In the first place it expressly forbids the husband to lend or let out his wife, under pain of twenty-four strokes with the bamboo.[4] The Chinese woman can certainly be imprisoned for adultery,[5] but she is chiefly punished by repudiation, which is obligatory on the husband on pain of twenty strokes of the bamboo.[6] She can, however, be sold either by the husband or by the judge to whom the offended husband remits her.[7] In contrast to certain barbarous legislations, the Chinese law is more severe in regard to adultery for the strong than for the weak. "Whoever, on the strength of his power or credit, shall
- ↑ Timkowski, Hist. Univ. des Voy., t. xxxiii. p. 341.
- ↑ Préjévalsky, Mongolia, t. I^{er.} p. 69.
- ↑ Turner, Hist. Univ. des Voy., t. xxxi. p. 437.
- ↑ Pauthier, Chine moderne, p. 238.
- ↑ Davis, China, vol. i. p. 322, etc.
- ↑ Pauthier, Chine moderne, p. 239.
- ↑ Sinibaldo de Mas, Chine et puissances chrétiennes, t. I^{er.} p. 52.
