H. Keane
(_Journ. of Anthrop. Inst_., 1883) remarks that while the Botocudos
often indulge in fierce outbreaks of jealousy, "the women have not yet
acquired the right to be jealous, a sentiment implying a certain
degree of equality between the sexes." Everywhere the women were
taught to subordinate themselves to the men, and among the Hindoos as
among the Greeks, by the ancient Hebrews as well as by the mediaeval
Arabs freedom from jealousy was inculcated as a supreme virtue. Rachel
actually fancied she was doing a noble thing in giving her handmaids
to Jacob as concubines. Lane (246) quotes the Arab historian
El-Jabartee, who said of his first wife:
"Among her acts of conjugal piety and submission was
this that she used to buy for her husband beautiful
slave girls, with her own wealth, and deck them with
ornaments and apparel, and so present them to him
confidently looking to the reward and recompense which
she should receive [in Paradise] for such conduct."
"In case of failure of an heir," says Griffis, in his famous work on
Japan (557), "the husband is fully justified, often strongly advised
even by his wife, to take a handmaid to raise up seed to preserve
their ancestral line." A Persian instance is given by Ida Pfeiffer
(261), who was introduced at Tabreez to the wives of Behmen-Mirza,
concerning whom she writes:
"They presented to me the latest addition to the
harem--a plump brown little beauty of sixteen; and they
seemed to treat their new rival with great good nature
and told me how much trouble they had been taking to
teach her Persian.
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