It existed in Medina during Muhammad's time, but at less than today's rates. One source from the s states that cousin marriage was less common in Cairo than in other areas. In traditional Syria-Palestina, if a girl had no paternal male cousin father's brother's son or he renounced his right to her, the next in line was traditionally the maternal male cousin mother's brother's son and then other relatives. Raphael Patai, however, reported that this custom loosened in the years preceding his study.
Research among Arabs and worldwide has indicated that consanguinity could have an effect on some reproductive health parameters such as postnatal mortality and rates of congenital malformations. Andrey Korotayev claimed that Islamization was a strong and significant predictor of parallel cousin father's brother's daughter — FBD marriage. He has shown that while a clear functional connection exists between Islam and FBD marriage, the prescription to marry a FBD does not appear to be sufficient to persuade people to actually marry thus, even if the marriage brings with it economic advantages.
According to Korotayev, a systematic acceptance of parallel-cousin marriage took place when Islamization occurred together with Arabization. Cousin marriage rates from most African nations outside the Middle East are unknown. Muslim Hausa practice cousin marriage preferentially, and polygyny is allowed if the husband can support multiple wives. She recounts in the book that her good friend married the friend's first cross cousin.
These included not only cousin marriages, but also uncle-niece unions. Reportedly, it is a custom that in such marriages at least one spouse must be a relative, and generally such spouses were the preferred or favorite wives in the marriage and gave birth to more children. However, this was not a general study of Yoruba, but only of highly polygynous Yoruba residing in Oka Akoko.
Men are forbidden to marry within their own patrilineage or those of their mother or father's mother and must marry outside their own village. Igbo are almost entirely Christian, having converted heavily under colonialism. In Ethiopia, most of the population was historically rigidly opposed to cousin marriage, and could consider up to third cousins the equivalent of brother and sister, with marriage at least ostensibly prohibited out to sixth cousins.
The prospect of a man marrying a former wife's "sister" was seen as incest, and conversely for a woman and her former husband's "brother". Early Medieval Europe continued the late Roman ban on cousin marriage; under the law of the Catholic Church , couples were forbidden to marry if they were within four degrees of consanguinity.
Only Austria, Hungary, and Spain banned cousin marriage throughout the 19th century, with dispensations being available from the government in the last two countries. The 19th-century academic debate on cousin marriage developed differently in Europe and America. The writings of Scottish deputy commissioner for lunacy Arthur Mitchell claiming that cousin marriage had injurious effects on offspring were largely contradicted by researchers such as Alan Huth and George Darwin. Later studies by George Darwin found results that resemble those estimated today.
His father, Charles Darwin, who did marry his first cousin, had initially speculated that cousin marriage might pose serious risks, but perhaps in response to his son's work, these thoughts were omitted from a later version of the book they published. When a question about cousin marriage was eventually considered in for the census, according to George Darwin, it was rejected on the grounds that the idle curiosity of philosophers was not to be satisfied.
Cousin and sibling marriage were legal in ancient Rome from the Second Punic War — BC , until it was banned by the Christian emperor Theodosius I in in the West, and until after the death of Justinian in the East, [83] [84] but the proportion of such marriages is not clear. Anthropologist Jack Goody said that cousin marriage was a typical pattern in Rome, based on the marriage of four children of Emperor Constantine to their first cousins and on writings by Plutarch and Livy indicating the proscription of cousin marriage in the early Republic.
Such marriages carried no social stigma in the late Republic and early Empire. They cite the example of Cicero attacking Mark Antony not on the grounds of cousin marriage, but instead on grounds of Antony's divorce. Shaw and Saller propose in their thesis of low cousin marriage rates that as families from different regions were incorporated into the imperial Roman nobility, exogamy was necessary to accommodate them and to avoid destabilizing the Roman social structure.
Their data from tombstones further indicate that in most of the western empire, parallel-cousin marriages were not widely practiced among commoners, either. Jack Goody claimed that early Christian marriage rules forced a marked change from earlier norms to deny heirs to the wealthy and thus to increase the chance that those with wealth would will their property to the Church.
Shaw and Saller, however, believe that the estates of aristocrats without heirs had previously been claimed by the emperor, and that the Church merely replaced the emperor. Their view is that the Christian injunctions against cousin marriage were due more to ideology than to any conscious desire to acquire wealth. For some prominent examples of cousin marriages in ancient Rome, such as the marriage of Octavian's daughter to his sister's son, see the Julio-Claudian family tree. Marcus Aurelius also married his maternal first cousin Faustina the Younger , and they had 13 children.
Cousin marriage was more frequent in Ancient Greece , and marriages between uncle and niece were also permitted there. A Greek woman who became epikleros , or heiress with no brothers, was obliged to marry her father's nearest male kin if she had not yet married and given birth to a male heir. First in line would be either her father's brothers or their sons, followed by her father's sisters' sons. From the seventh century, the Irish Church only recognized four degrees of prohibited kinship , and civil law fewer. This persisted until after the Norman conquests in the 11th century and the synod at Cashel in Cousin marriage was legal in all states before the Civil War.
This led to a gradual shift in concern from affinal unions, like those between a man and his deceased wife's sister, to consanguineous unions. By the s, Lewis Henry Morgan — was writing about "the advantages of marriages between unrelated persons" and the necessity of avoiding "the evils of consanguine marriage", avoidance of which would "increase the vigor of the stock".
To many, Morgan included, cousin marriage, and more specifically parallel-cousin marriage, was a remnant of a more primitive stage of human social organization. In , Massachusetts Governor George N. Briggs appointed a commission to study mentally handicapped people termed " idiots " in the state.
This study implicated cousin marriage as responsible for idiocy. Within the next two decades, numerous reports e. Perhaps most important was the report of physician Samuel Merrifield Bemiss for the American Medical Association , which concluded cousin inbreeding does lead to the "physical and mental depravation of the offspring". Despite being contradicted by other studies like those of George Darwin and Alan Huth in England and Robert Newman in New York, the report's conclusions were widely accepted. These developments led to 13 states and territories passing cousin marriage prohibitions by the s.
Though contemporaneous, the eugenics movement did not play much of a direct role in the bans. George Louis Arner in considered the ban a clumsy and ineffective method of eugenics, which he thought would eventually be replaced by more refined techniques. By the s, the number of bans had doubled.
The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws unanimously recommended in that all such laws should be repealed, but no state has dropped its prohibition. Recent data for Brazil indicate a rate of cousin marriage of 1. Consanguinity has decreased over time and particularly since the 19th century. In the Far East, South Korea is especially restrictive with bans on marriage out to third cousins, with all couples having the same surname and region of origin having been prohibited from marrying until Taiwan , North Korea , and the Philippines also prohibit first-cousin marriage.
It is allowed in Japan , though the incidence has declined in recent years. China has banned it since passing its Marriage Law although cross-cousin marriage was commonly practiced in China in the past in rural areas. Similarly, in Vietnam , Clause 3, Article 10 of the Vietnamese Law on Marriage and Family forbids marriages on people related by blood up to the third degree of kinship. Attitudes in India on cousin marriage vary sharply by region and culture. The family law in India takes into account the religious and cultural practices and they are all equally recognized.
For Muslims , governed by uncodified personal law, it is acceptable and legal to marry a first cousin, but for Hindus , it may be illegal under the Hindu Marriage Act , though the specific situation is more complex. The Hindu Marriage Act makes cousin marriage illegal for Hindus with the exception of marriages permitted by regional custom. Apart from the religion-based personal laws governing marriages, the civil marriage law named Special Marriage Act, governs. Those who do not wish to marry based on the personal laws governed by religious and cultural practices may opt for a marriage under this law.
It defines the first-cousin relationship, both parallel and cross, as prohibited. Conflict may arise between the prohibited degrees based on this law and personal law, but in absence of any other laws, it is still unresolved. Cousin marriage is proscribed and seen as incest for Hindus in North India. In fact, it may even be unacceptable to marry within one's village or for two siblings to marry partners from the same village.
However, for some communities in South India , it is common for Hindu cross cousins to marry, with matrilateral cross-cousin mother's brother's daughter marriages being especially favored. These surnames are known as the candidate's gotra lit. Any two candidates who want to marry cannot have a common gotra. The marriage is allowed only when all these shakha branches are different for both the candidates, so this automatically rules out closer cousin marriages.
Practices in West India overall are closer to the northern than the southern, [] but differences exist here again. For instance, in Mumbai , studies done in showed 7. By contrast, in the northern city of New Delhi , only 0. At the other extreme, studies done in the South Indian state of Karnataka, which contains Bangalore , during that period show fully one-third of Hindus married to a second cousin or closer. This dichotomy may be a legacy of the partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan, when substantial Muslim migration to Pakistan occurred from the eastern parts of the former unified state of Punjab.
Most Indian Muslims, by contrast, are the result of Hindus' conversions to Islam in the 16th century or later. Consanguinity rates were generally stable across the four decades for which data exist, though second-cousin marriage appears to have been decreasing in favor of first-cousin marriage. The Middle East has uniquely high rates of cousin marriage among the world's regions. All Arab countries in the Persian Gulf currently require advance genetic screening for all prospective married couples.
Qatar was the last Persian Gulf nation to institute mandatory screening in , mainly to warn related couples who are planning marriage about any genetic risks they may face.
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Ahmad Teebi links the increase in cousin marriage in Qatar and other Arab states of the Persian Gulf to tribal tradition and the region's expanding economies. In many Middle Eastern nations, a marriage to the father's brother's daughter FBD is considered ideal, though this type may not always actually outnumber other types. If more than one relationship exists between spouses, as often results from successive generations of cousin marriage, only the patrilineal one is counted. Marriage within the lineage is preferred to marriage outside the lineage even when no exact genealogical relationship is known.
Of first marriages, only 84 were between couples unable to trace any genealogical relationship between them. Of those, in 64, the spouses were of the same lineage. However, of 85 marriages to a second or third wife, in 60, the spouses were of different lineages. Female members of the mother's lineage are seen as only loosely related. Finally, the Baggara Arabs favor MBD marriage first, followed by cross-cousin marriage if the cross cousin is a member of the same surra , a group of agnates of five or six generations depth.
Next is marriage within the surra. No preference is shown for marriages between matrilateral parallel cousins. The Netherlands has also had a recent debate that has reached the level of the Prime Minister proposing a cousin marriage ban. The proposed policy is explicitly aimed at preventing "import marriages" from certain nations like Morocco with a high rate of cousin marriage. Critics argue that such a ban would contradict Section 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights , is not based on science, and would affect more than immigrants.
While some proponents argue such marriages were banned until , according to Frans van Poppel of the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute, they are confusing cousin marriage with uncle-niece marriage. In Pakistan , cousin marriage is legal and common. Reasons for consanguinity are for economic and cultural reasons. Several states of the United States have bans on cousin marriage. Data on cousin marriage in the United States are sparse. It was estimated in that 0. To contextualize the group's size, the total proportion of interracial marriages in , the last census year before the end of anti-miscegenation statutes, was 0.
Paul and Hamish G. Spencer speculate that legal bans persist in part due to "the ease with which a handful of highly motivated activists—or even one individual—can be effective in the decentralized American system, especially when feelings do not run high on the other side of an issue. A bill to repeal the ban on first-cousin marriage in Minnesota was introduced by Phyllis Kahn in , but it died in committee. Republican Minority Leader Marty Seifert criticized the bill in response, saying it would "turn us into a cold Arkansas". She reportedly got the idea after learning that cousin marriage is an acceptable form of marriage among some cultural groups that have a strong presence in Minnesota, namely the Hmong and Somali.
In contrast, Maryland delegates Henry B. Heller and Kumar P. Barve sponsored a bill to ban first-cousin marriages in Texas Representative Harvey Hilderbran , whose district includes the main FLDS compound, authored an amendment [] to a child protection statute to both discourage the FLDS from settling in Texas and to "prevent Texas from succumbing to the practices of taking child brides, incest, welfare abuse and domestic violence".
And when it happens you have a bad result. It's just not the accepted normal thing. However, this statute was amended in ; while sex with close adult family members including first cousins remains a felony, the more serious penalty now attaches to sex with an individual's direct ancestor or descendant.
States have various laws regarding marriage between cousins and other close relatives, [] which involve factors including whether or not the parties to the marriage are half-cousins, double cousins, infertile, over 65, or whether it is a tradition prevalent in a native or ancestry culture, adoption status, in-law, whether or not genetic counselling is required, and whether it is permitted to marry a first cousin once removed.
There has been a great deal of debate in the past few years [ when?
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A analysis of infant mortality in Birmingham showed that "South Asian" infants had twice the infant mortality rate and 3 times the rate of infant mortality due to congenital anomalies. Robin Bennett, a University of Washington researcher, [] has said that much hostility towards married cousins constitutes discrimination. It's a form of discrimination that nobody talks about.
People worry about not getting health insurance — but saying that someone shouldn't marry based on how they're related, when there's no known harm, to me is a form of discrimination. In a different view, William Saletan of Slate magazine accuses the authors of this study of suffering from the "congenital liberal conceit that science solves all moral questions". While readily conceding that banning cousin marriage cannot be justified on genetic grounds, Saletan asks rhetorically whether it would be acceptable to legalize uncle-niece marriage or "hard-core incest" between siblings and then let genetic screening take care of the resulting problems.
It gives the example of one mother, Mrs. She stated that when she has told people about her daughter's marriage, they have been shocked and that consequently she is afraid to mention it. They live in a small Pennsylvania town and she worries that her grandchildren will be treated as outcasts and ridiculed due to their parental status. Another cousin couple stated that their children's maternal grandparents have never met their two grandchildren because the grandparents severed contact out of disapproval for the couple's marriage.
This couple withheld their names from publication.
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In most societies, cousin marriage apparently is more common among those of low socio-economic status, among the illiterate and uneducated, and in rural areas. Some societies also report a high prevalence among land-owning families and the ruling elite: In Pakistan, the ages of the spouses were also closer together, the age difference declining from 6. A marginal increase in time to first birth, from 1. Predictions that cousin marriage would decline during the late 20th century in areas where it is preferential appear to have been largely incorrect. One reason for this is that in many regions, cousin marriage is not merely a cultural tradition, but is also judged to offer significant social and economic benefits.
In South Asia, rising demands for dowry payments have caused dire economic hardship and have been linked to "dowry deaths" in a number of North Indian states. Where permissible, marriage to a close relative is hence regarded as a more economically feasible choice. Second, improvements in public health have led to decreased death rates and increased family sizes, making it easier to find a relative to marry if that is the preferred choice. Increases in cousin marriage in the West may also occur as a result of immigration from Asia and Africa.
In the short term, some observers have concluded that the only new forces that could discourage such unions are government bans like the one China enacted in In the longer term, rates may decline due to decreased family sizes, making it more difficult to find cousins to marry. Matrilateral cross-cousin marriage in societies with matrilineal descent meant that a male married into the family his mother's brother, building an alliance between the two families. However, marriage to a mother's sister daughter a parallel cousin would be endogamous , here meaning inside the same descent group, and would therefore fail to build alliances between different groups.
Correspondingly, in societies like China with patrilineal descent, marriage to a father's brother's daughter would fail at alliance building. And in societies with both types of descent, where a person belongs to the group of his mother's mother and father's father but not mother's father or father's mother, only cross-cousin marriages would successfully build alliances.
Whereas in other kinship systems one or another of these aspects dominates, in cross-cousin marriage they overlap and cumulate their effects. It differs from incest prohibitions in that the latter employs a series of negative relationships, saying whom one cannot marry, while cross-cousin marriage employs positive relationships, saying whom should marry. Most crucially, cross-cousin marriage is the only type of preferential union that can function normally and exclusively and still give every man and woman the chance to marry a cross-cousin.
Unlike other systems such as the levirate, the sororate, or uncle-niece marriage, cross-cousin marriage is preferential because for obvious reasons these others cannot constitute the exclusive or even preponderant rule of marriage in any group. Cross-cousin marriage divides members of the same generation into two approximately equal groups, those of cross-cousins and "siblings" that include real siblings and parallel cousins.
Consequently, cross-cousin marriage can be a normal form of marriage in a society, but the other systems above can only be privileged forms. This makes cross-cousin marriage exceptionally important. Cross-cousin marriage also establishes a division between prescribed and prohibited relatives who, from the viewpoint of biological proximity, are strictly interchangeable. Cross-cousin marriage in effect allowed the anthropologist to control for biological degree by studying a situation where the degree of prohibited and prescribed spouses were equal.
Instead, the raison d'etre of cross-cousin marriage could be found within the institution itself. Of the three types of institution of exogamy rules, dual organization, and cross-cousin marriage, the last was most significant, making the analysis of this form of marriage the crucial test for any theory of marriage prohibitions.
Matrilateral cross-cousin marriage has been found by some anthropological researchers to be correlated with patripotestal jural authority, meaning rights or obligations of the father. According to some theories, in these kinship systems a man marries his matrilateral cross-cousin due to associating her with his nurturant mother.
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Due to this association, possibly reinforced by personal interaction with a specific cousin, he may become "fond" of her, rendering the relationship "sentimentally appropriate". Under Leach's model, in systems where this form of marriage segregates descent groups into wife-givers and wife-takers, the social status of the two categories also cannot be determined by a priori arguments. Groups like the Kachin exhibiting matrilateral cross-cousin marriage do not exchange women in circular structures; where such structures do exist they are unstable.
Moreover, the exchanging groups are not major segments of the society, but rather local descent groups from the same or closely neighboring communities. Leach agreed but added that prestations could also take the form of intangible assets like "prestige" or "status" that might belong to either wife-givers or wife-takers.
Anthropologists Robert Murphy and Leonard Kasdan describe preferential parallel cousin marriage as leading to social fission, in the sense that "feud and fission are not at all dysfunctional factors but are necessary to the persistence and viability of Bedouin society". Their thesis is the converse of Fredrik Barth 's, who describes the fission as leading to the cousin marriage. Instead of corporate units, Arab society is described as having "agnatic sections", a kind of repeating fractal structure in which authority is normally weak at all levels but capable of being activated at the required level in times of war.
They relate this to an old Arab proverb: This practice is said to possess advantages such as resilience and adaptability in the face of adversity. A recent research study of 70 nations has found a statistically significant negative correlation between consanguineous kinship networks and democracy. The authors note that other factors, such as restricted genetic conditions, may also explain this relationship. Sailer believes that because families practicing cousin marriage are more related to one another than otherwise, their feelings of family loyalty tend to be unusually intense, fostering nepotism.
Cousins are not included in the lists of prohibited relatives provided in the Bible , specifically in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Two of the most famous are prominent in Genesis. Rebekah was married to Isaac , her first cousin once removed Genesis Also, Rachel and Leah were both cousins of Isaac's son Jacob. Jacob loved Rachel and worked seven years for her father Laban in return for permission to marry Genesis 28— Jacob's brother Esau also married his cousin Mahalath , daughter of Ishmael. According to many English Bible translations, a fourth example is the five daughters of Zelophehad , who married the "sons of their father's brothers" in the later period of Moses , although other translations merely say "relatives".
The daughters of Eleazer also married the sons of Eleazer's brother Kish in the still later time of David 1 Chronicles Finally, Tobias in the book of Tobit has a right to marry Sarah because he is her nearest kinsman Tobit 7: In Roman Catholicism , all marriages more distant than first-cousin marriages are allowed, [] and first-cousin marriages can be contracted with a dispensation.
At the dawn of Christianity in Roman times, marriages between first cousins were allowed. For example, Emperor Constantine , the first Christian Roman Emperor, married his children to the children of his half-brother. First and second cousin marriages were then banned at the Council of Agde in AD , though dispensations sometimes continued to be granted.
By the 11th century, with the adoption of the so-called canon-law method of computing consanguinity, these proscriptions had been extended even to sixth cousins, including by marriage. But due to the many resulting difficulties in reckoning who was related to whom, they were relaxed back to third cousins at the Fourth Lateran Council in AD Pope Benedict XV reduced this to second cousins in , [94] and finally, the current law was enacted in There are several explanations for the rise of Catholic cousin marriage prohibitions after the fall of Rome.
One explanation is increasing Germanic influence on church policy. Howard states, "During the period preceding the Teutonic invasion, speaking broadly, the church adhered to Roman law and custom; thereafter those of the Germans Augustine by the fifth century. Since the 13th century the Catholic Church has measured consanguinity according to what is called, perhaps confusingly, the civil-law method.
Under this method, the degree of relationship between lineal relatives i. However, the degree of relationship between collateral non-lineal relatives equals the number of links in the family tree from one person, up to the common ancestor, and then back to the other person. Thus brothers are related in the second degree, and first cousins in the fourth degree.
Protestant churches generally allow cousin marriage, [] in keeping with criticism of the Catholic system of dispensations by Martin Luther and John Calvin during the Reformation. According to Luther and Calvin, the Catholic bans on cousin marriage were an expression of Church rather than divine law and needed to be abolished. Protestants during the Reformation struggled to interpret the Biblical proscriptions against incest in a sensible manner, a task frustrated by facts like their omission of the daughter but inclusion of the granddaughter as a directly prohibited relation.
The Archbishop of Canterbury reached the same conclusion soon after. The Qur'an does not state that marriages between first cousins are forbidden. In Sura An-Nisa 4: Lawful to you are all beyond those mentioned, so that you may seek them with your wealth in honest wedlock…" In Sura Al-Ahzab O Prophet, indeed We have made lawful to you your wives to whom you have given their due compensation and those your right hand possesses from what Allah has returned to you [of captives] and the daughters of your paternal uncles and the daughters of your paternal aunts and the daughters of your maternal uncles and the daughters of your maternal aunts who emigrated with you and a believing woman if she gives herself to the Prophet [and] if the Prophet wishes to marry her, [this is] only for you, excluding the [other] believers.
We certainly know what We have made obligatory upon them concerning their wives and those their right hands possess, [but this is for you] in order that there will be upon you no discomfort. And ever is Allah Forgiving and Merciful. Muslims have practiced marriages between first cousins in non-prohibited countries since the time of Muhammad.
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In a few countries the most common type is between paternal cousins. Muhammad actually did marry two relatives. It was the issue of adoption and not cousinship that caused controversy due to the opposition of pre-Islamic Arab norms. Many of the immediate successors of Muhammad also took a cousin as one of their wives. Umar married his cousin Atikah bint Zayd ibn Amr ibn Nifayl, [] [] while Ali married Fatimah , [] the daughter of his paternal first cousin Muhammad and hence his first cousin once removed.
Even though many Muslims practice cousins marriage now, two of the Sunni Muslims madhhabs schools, four in total like Shafi'i about The Hindu Marriage Act prohibits marriage for five generations on the father's side and three on the mother's side, but allows cross-cousin marriage where it is permitted by custom. Hindu rules of exogamy are often taken extremely seriously, and local village councils in India administer laws against in-gotra endogamy,.
In the 18th and 19th Centuries, Hindu Kurmis of Chunar and Jaunpur are known to have been influenced by their Muslim neighbors and taken up extensively the custom of cousin marriage. In the Mahabharata , one of the two great Hindu Epics , Arjuna took as his fourth wife his first and cross cousin Subhadra , the sister of Krishna.
Arjuna had gone into exile alone after having disturbed Yudhishthira and Draupadi in their private quarters. It was during the last part of his exile, while staying at the Dvaraka residence of his cousins, that he fell in love with Subhadra. While eating at the home of Balarama , Arjuna was struck with Subhadra's beauty and decided he would obtain her as his wife. Subhadra and Arjuna's son was the tragic hero Abhimanyu. According to Andhra Pradesh oral tradition, Abhimanyu himself married his first cross-cousin Shashirekha, the daughter of Subhadra's brother Balarama.
Buddhism does not proscribe any specific sexual practices, only ruling out "sexual misconduct" in the Five Precepts. She appears in snowfall and glides without feet over the snow like a ghost.
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She feeds on human essence, and her killing method of choice is to blow on her victims to freeze them to death and then suck out their souls through their mouths. After the demon passed out, the warriors cut off his head , killed the other oni, and freed the prisoners. Also originating in the medieval period, yamauba are generally considered to be old women who were marginalized by society and forced to live in the mountains—who also have a penchant for eating human flesh. Among many tales, there is one of a yamauba who offers shelter to a young woman about to give birth while secretly planning to eat her baby, and another of a yamauba who goes to village homes to eat children while their mothers are away.
Yamabuas also have mouths under their hair. In another tale of a woman scorned, Uji no hashihime prayed to a deity to turn her into an oni so she could kill her husband, the woman he fell in love with, and all of their relatives. To accomplish this, she bathed in the Uji River for 21 days, divided her hair into five horns, painted her body red with vermilion, and went on a legendary killing spree. Besides her intended victims, anyone who saw her instantly died of fear.
Tengu are impish mountain goblins that play tricks on people, featured in countless folktales and considered purely evil until about the 14th century. They were originally depicted as birdlike, with wings and beaks, though now the beak is often replaced with a comically large nose. They are known to lead people away from Buddhism, tie priests to tall trees and towers, start fires in temples, and kidnap children.
Many legends say the tengu were hypocritical priests who must now live the rest of their lives as mountain goblins as punishment. Locals made offerings to the tengu to avoid their mischief, and there are still festivals in Japan dedicated to them today.
Though the poison failed to kill her, she became horribly disfigured, causing her hair to fall out and her left eye to droop. Upon learning of her disfigurement and betrayal, she accidentally killed herself on a sword. Her ghostly, deformed face appeared everywhere to haunt Iemon. This story begins as so many horror stories do: