What was marriage like in ancient times?

Marriage is the main way in which human beings are able to reproduce and forms the basis of family and kinship. Marriage customs mainly include the form of marriage, the medium, the etiquette, and various customary concepts such as divorce, re-marriage, and the status between husband and wife.

"Poetry - Xiao Ya - I walk its wild" contains: "The reason for the faint marriage, the words on the Er residence."

"Rituals - Fainting Yi narrative" said: "son-in-law said fainting, wife said marriage." "Shuo Wen" contained: "marriage, the woman's family also, the rituals of marrying a woman to the time of the faint, the woman yin also, so it is called marriage." "Marriage, son-in-law's family also, the woman is due, so it is called marriage."

The above list of purposes, it seems that the son-in-law and the woman's family called marriage, wife and husband's family called marriage. In fact, "male fainting female marriage, scattered is through", can be called each other, marriage means couples.

Why is the marriage of marriage also written as "faint"? Baihu Tong - Marriage Chapter" explains: "What is the meaning of marriage? Marriage is called marriage because the rituals are performed in the dark." Now marrying a wife to day, and hanging red color, the ancient to welcome women to welcome the Yin gas to the home, must be night, the car clothing is still black, candle to go. Therefore, the wedding "not happy not congratulations."

"Liezi - Tang Wen" in ancient times, "men and women traveled, not media not hired." This kind of promiscuous marriage has no specific constraints norms, not a clan, family, and do not know the secret of fertility, often attributed to the "sense of the divine dragon", "trample the giant traces", "swallowing Coix lacryma", etc., is not strict marriage. It is not strictly a marriage.

The earliest form of human marriage was the blood family, which excluded sexual intercourse between parents and children, and was a kind of blood marriage between siblings.

Legend has it that Fuxi's had people marrying brother and sister, this kind of blood marriage that is quite Fuxi's era.

Taiwanese Alpine legend, the flood drowned all the people in the world, leaving only two siblings. The sister wanted to marry the brother, the brother did not agree. The sister said, there is a girl in the cave, you marry her. Brother went to the cave, really see a masked girl, only after the marriage to realize that it is his own sister. Hainan Island Li legend, the ancient sky turned upside down, mankind suffered all the bad luck, only two siblings left. Sister tattooed her face, so that her brother could not recognize, the two were married. From then on, Li girls began to tattoo their faces.

At this time, mankind not only knew the secret of fertility, but also gradually realized the harm of marriage of the same blood, in ancient times, called "men and women with the same name, the birth of no fan".

It seems unbelievable that in the ancient stage of ignorance and low awareness, we can recognize the harm of consanguineous marriages, but in fact it is understandable. First, many of the legends of brother-sister marriages were made after various natural disasters, leaving only the brother and sister with no other choice, demonstrating a kind of psychological denial of the helplessness of the world. Secondly, many siblings married, there are born meatballs, meat melon, gourd, no limbs and five senses, such as the legend of the strange child, reflecting the simple concept of people resisting the blood marriage.

Once again, many modern ethnic groups with backward marriage customs not only have a clear understanding of same-blood marriages, but also practice essentially extra-ethnic marriages. Thus, people start by prohibiting marital relations between parents and children, then forbidding full siblings, cousins, distant siblings, and finally, no intermarriage is allowed within their own clans, which gives rise to extra-clan marriage.

Extra-clan marriages were when a group of brothers from Clan A married into Clan B and married each other with a group of sisters from Clan B. The marriage was not allowed within the clan.

In the Cham dynasty of China, it was usually two clans that formed an alliance to intermarry for generations. For example, the Ji clan and the Jiang clan were in a long-term intermarriage alliance. Chinese daughters-in-law have always called their in-laws "aunt and uncle". In the Tang Dynasty, Zhu Qingyu wrote the poem "last night's red candles in the cave, to be in front of the hall at dawn to pay homage to the aunt". This kind of title is a remnant of the race's exogamy. As a result of generations of intermarriage, men from clan A married into clan B, and men from clan B married into clan A. The first two clans are the same, but the second one is the same.

The daughter-in-law's father-in-law is actually her mother's brother, and her mother-in-law is actually her father's sister, the daughter-in-law's uncle and aunt. Extra-clan marriages take the following three forms of specific intermarriages, which also show clues towards dyadic marriages.

One form is the marriage by wild coupling. In ancient times and in modern times, certain ethnic minorities held regular ceremonies to honor the goddess and various forms of gatherings, one of the purposes of which was to provide young men and women of the two clans with the opportunity to establish marital relations. This old custom was still practiced during the Shang and Zhou eras. The Zhou Rituals - Matchmaker's" reads: "In the month of mid-spring, the order was to meet men and women, and at that time, those who ran were not forbidden." The Records of the Grand Historian - Slipknot Legend: "The meeting of the state coccyx, men and women sitting ...... in mixed company, cups and plates in disarray, the candles in the hall extinguished, Luo 襦襟解, faintly smelling the fragrance." In addition, there are many examples in the Book of Songs reflecting the wild flirtation between men and women, and Confucius was born of his father, Shulianghe, who had a wild flirtation with Yan's women.

One form is public **** houses. At the beginning of the liberation of Yunnan A fine people clan men and women live separately, women live in "black clothes de", men live in "if the clothes de". Among them, the Heiyide was also a place where women entertained men from other clans at night. Since all the men of the clan go out at night, Wakayode is actually a place where old people and children sleep.

The Three Kingdoms - Wei Zhi - Dongyi Biography, Gaoxunli, "the woman's family made a hut in the back of the big house, called the son-in-law house. Son-in-law twilight to the female outdoors, kneeling, begging for female lodging, such as this again and again, the female parents are holiday to make the hut on the night".

This kind of "son-in-law house", can be the above public **** house of evidence.

One form is the visiting marriage. With the development of extra-communal marriage, the group visit of a group of brothers of this clan developed into the visit of a single person.

The above-mentioned marriage customs of Gaoxunli are typical of the visiting marriage. Yunnan Yongning Naxi, the opposite sex of the external clan friends called each other a note, as long as the two sides get along, the man can be invited to the female side of the overnight. This A Note marriage is a kind of visit marriage.

Extra-clan marriage is also a group marriage, and as it develops, the two sides are required to maintain a relatively exclusive and stable marital relationship, which is a dyadic marriage.

Engels said in "The Private System of the Family and the Origin of the State" that in the case of dyadic marriage, "a man is a principal wife among many wives, and he is to the woman a principal husband among her many husbands". There are two kinds of Naxi ajiao marriages mentioned above: one is that the man merely goes to the woman's place at night, and his production and life are separated during the day. The other is a kind of dyadic marriage in which not only the man resides at the woman's place, but his production and life are also together during the day.

After the establishment of patriarchy, traditional Chinese marriage practiced strict and hypocritical monogamy.

It required women to strictly observe one-sided chastity, and they were absolutely forbidden to have two husbands at the same time. Men were allowed to have many concubines at the same time, but "there is no such thing as two first wives", so there could only be one wife at the same time. Later, there were also double wives, but they were not legal.

Since the beginning of the sibling blood marriage, human marriage life was formally created, and until monogamy, the traditional form of marriage was finalized.