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PRIMITIVE MARRIAGE.
PRIMITIVE MARRIAGE

AN INQUIRY INTO
THE ORIGIN OF THE FORM OF CAPTURE
IN MARRIAGE CEREMONIES.

BY JOHN F. M'LENNAN, M.A.,

ADVOCATE.

EDINBURGH:
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK.
1865.
 PREFACE.

In the course of some .inquiries which I

had been making into the early history

of civil society, the meaning and origin
of the Form of Capture in Marriage
Ceremonies fell to be investigated. The
subject being in itself curious, as well as

obscure, and one which has never Jiither-

to, so far as I am aware, been handled, I

venture to lay the result of my investi-

gation before the public, hoping that it

may to some extent interest by its novelty.

To the philosophic reader, I humbly sub-
mit my little book as an exercise in scien-

tific history. If I am right in my con-

 —
vi PREFACE.

elusions as to the origin of the symbol of

capture, my essay must be accepted as

throwing new light on the primitive state^

For it will be seen that the symbol is not

peculiar to any of the families of mankind.
It is at once Indo-European, Turanian,
and Semitic ; and the frequency of its oc-

currence is such as strongly to suggest

what I incline to believe —that the phase
of society in which it originated existed,
at some time or other, almost every-
where. Indeed, so far as my inquiries
into early social phenomena have ex-
tended, I have found such similarity, so
many correspondences, so much sameness
in the forms of life prevailing among the
races usually considered distinct, that I

have come to regard the ethnological

differences of the several families of man-
 PREFACE. vii

kind as of little or no weight compared

with what they have in common. (Xhe

most that can be attributed to those diffe-

rences is, that they have affected the rate

of development of the families, and the

character of the development itself, in

some of its secondary aspec^

Apart from the interest attaching to

the Form of Capture as pointing out

what most probably wa s the primitive

Torrn of human association^ it_will be
fomi3'ToTiave an important bearing on
several social problems which have
hitherto remained unsolved. I think

that the most important portions of my

work are Chapters VIII. and IX., in
which the solution of some of these pro-
blems is attempted. These chapters, it

will be seen, are strictly pertinent to the

viii PREFA CE.

main subject of inquiry. In order to

explain the appearance of the Form of

Capture among endogamous peoples, it

was necessary that I should examine

the systems of kinsh ip which ancie ntly
prevailed, and their influence on the
structure of the primitive groups , so as
to obtain a true view of the rise of ca ste

and o fendogamy.^
I ought to mention that, in some
cases, I have had much difficulty in

ascertaining the proper names of places.

For instance, Munniepore is sometimes

written Munipur, and sometimes Manni-
poor. In every such case I have followed
the authority which I have had most fre-

quent occasion to cite in regard to the

glace. I have farther to notice, that I

have discarded the use of the signs

 PREFACE. ix

"_.'"', and so on, commonly em-

ployed to indicate the orthoepy of foreign
words. Such signs are of no use to the

unlearned ; and, in the run of cases, the

learned may be presumed not to require
their assistance. Besides, I have not
found much agreement, among writers, in
the use of such signs. The word Ra-
mayana, for example, is written Rdmdy-
ana by Professor Monier Williams, Ra-
mayana by Dr. Muir, and Rdm^yana by
Professor Max Miiller. In writing it

simply Ramayana, I follow Mr. Tagore,

in his recent translation of the '

Vivada
Chintamani,' in which work, as in the

present, the signs referred to are wholly

discarded.

Edinburgh, Jan. 6, 1865.

 CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
Page
Legal Symbolism and Primitive Life -
5

CHAPTER II.

The Form of Capture in Marriage Ceremonies 19

CHAPTER III.

The Origin of the Form of Capture 43

CHAPTER IV.

On the Prevalence of the Practice of Capturing

Wives, de facto 59

CHAPTER V.

Of the Rule against Marriage between mem-

bers of the same Tribe — Of the coincidence
of- this rule with the Practice of Capturing
Wives, de facto, and with the Form of Cap-
ture in Marriage Ceremonies 93
xii CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VI.
Faoe
On the State of Hostility - - 132

CHAPTER VII.

—
Exogamy its Origin Comparative Archaism
:

of Exogamy and Endogamy - - 136

CHAPTER VIII.

Ancient Systems of Kinship, and their Influence

on the Structure of the Primitive Groups - 151

CHAPTER
The Decay of Exogamy ...
IX.

266

CHAPTER X.

Conclusion - -
287

APPENDIX.
Note A. —Additional Examples of the Form
of Capture - - - . . 293'

Note B.— On the Practice of Capturing Women

for Wives - - . . 302
 CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

Legal Symbolism and Primilive Life.

The chief sources of information rega rd-

ing the early history of c ivil society a re,
first, th e study of races in t heir primitive
condition ; and, second, the study of the
symbols employed by advanced nation s
in the constitution or exercise of civil

rights. From these studies pursued to-

'gether, we obtain, to a large extent, the

power of classifying social phenomena as
more or less archaic, and thus of connect-
ing and arranging in their order the
stages of human advancement.
None of the usual methods of his-
torical inquiry conduct us back to forms
B
 LEGAL SYMBOLISM

of life so nearly primitive as many that

have come down into our own times.
The geological record, of course, exhibits
races as rude as any now living, some per-

haps even more so, but then it goes no

farther than to inform us what food they
ate, what weapons they used, and what
was the character of their ornaments.
More than this was not to be expected

from that record, for it was not in its

nature to preserve any memorials of

those aspects of human life in which the

philosopher is chiefly interested — of the
family or tribal groupings, the domestic
and political organisation. Again, the
facts disclosed by philology as to the civil

condition of the Indo-European race be-

fore its dispersion from its original head-
quarters, — the earliest, chronologically
considered, which we possess respecting
the social state of mankind, —cannot be
 AND PRIMITIVE LIFE.

said to tell us anything of the origin or

early progress of civilization. Assuming
the correctness of the generalization by
which philologers have attempted to re-

construct the social economy of the

Aryans, we find that people, at an un-
known date before the dawn of tra-

dition, occupying nearly the same point

of advancement as that now occupied
by the pastoral hordes of Kirghiz Tar-
tary, and leading much the same sort

of life. They had marriage laws re-

gulating the rights and obligations of

husbands and wives, of parents and chil-

dren ; they recognised the ties of blood

through both parents ; they had great
flocks and herds, in defence of which
they often did battle, and they lived under
a patriarchal government with monarchi-
cal features. It is interesting —a short

time ago we should have said surprising

 LEGAL SYMBOLISM

— to find that such progress had been so

early made. But in all other respects this

so-called revelation of philology is void of

instruction. Those Aryan institutions are
— -to use the language of geology —post-
pliocene, separated by a long interval from
the foundations of civil society, and throw-
ing back upon them no light. Marriage
laws, agnatic relationship, and kingly go-
vermnent, hel ongf, in the order of deve lop-
me nt, to recent t imes.

For the features of primitivejife, we

must look, not to tribes of the Kirghiz type,
but to those of CentraLAiricaJiiejwilds of
I

'

America, the hillsoflndia, and the islands

QfjHeTac ificiwith some of whom we find
marriage laws unknown, the family system
undeveloped, and even the only acknow-
ledged blood-relationship that through
mothers. These facts of to-day are, in a

sense, the most ancient history. In the

 AND PRIMITIVE LIFE.

sciences of law and society, old means not

old in chronology, but in structure: that,
is most archaic which lies nearest to the
beginning of human progress considered
as a development, and that is most modern
which is farthest removed from that be-
ginning.
And since the historical nations were
so far advanced at the earliest dates to
which even philology can lead us back, the
scientific investigation of the progress of

mankind must not deal with them, in the

first instance, but with the very rude forms

of life still existing, and the rudest of

which we have accounts. The preface of
general history must be compiled from the
materials presented by barbarism. Hap-
we may
pily, if say so, these materials are

abundant. So unequally has the species

been developed, that almost every con-
ceivable phase of progress may be studied,
lo LEGAL SYMBOLISM

as somewhere observed and recorded. And

thus the philosopher, fenced from mistake,
as to the order of development, by the in-

terconnection of the stages and their shad-

ing into one another by gentle gradations,
may draw a clear and decided outline of
the course of human progress in times
long antecedent to those to which even
philology can make reference. All honour
to philology; but in the task of recon-
structing the past, to which its professors
declare themselves to be devoted, they
must be contented to act as assistants
rather than as principals.
We have said that the preface of gene-
ral historymust be compiled from mate-
rials presented by barbarism. Some may
account it illogical to prefix a scheme of
early progress formed on view of socie-
ties that have not yet advanced far, if at
all, from savagery, to a scheme of further
 AND PRIMITIVE LIFE. ii

progress deduced from the written histories

of nations whose origin and early training
we are unacquainted with. But, in point
of fact, it is not so. It is the best proof
of the propriety of such a course —as well
as of the continuity and uniform charac-
ter of human progress — that we can trace

everywhere, disguised under a variety of

symbolJcaLforms in the higher layers -of

civilization, the rude modes of life and

formi of law with which the examination
of the lower makes us familiar. Indeed,

were these remarks not merely general and

introductory to the investigation of the
origin of one particular symbol, many in-

stances of this correspondence between

the higher and lower levels might be
cited, to show that the symbolism of law
in the light of a knowledge of primi-
tive life, is the best key to unwritten

history.
12 LEGAL SYMBOLISM

Of the value of that symbolism —of

that reverence for the past to which it owes
its origin —there will be occasion to say
something hereafter. Meantime, we ob-
serve that, Wherever we discover sym-
'bolical forms, we are justified in inferring
that in the past life of the people em-
ploying them, there were corresponding
realities |\andamong the primitive races
if,

which we examine, we find such realities

as might naturally pass into such forms on
an advance taking place in civility, then

we may safely conclude (keeping within

the conditions of a sound inference) that

what these now are, those employing the
symbols once were. History is thus
made to ratify conclusions derived from
the observation of rude tribes ; while
such observation, again, is made to fur-
nish the key to many of the enigmas of
history.
 AND PRIMITIVE LIFE. 13

For it is not as regards unwritten

history merely that the two sources of
information specified at the outset are of
importance. Apart from the tests of truth

afforded by the minute knowledge of

primitive modes of life and their classi-
fication as more or less archaic, nothing

could be more delusive than written his-

tory itself. In Roman law, to take a con-

venient, example, Confarreatio has the

foremost place among the modes of con-
stituting marriage. Usus is just men-
tioned in the twelve tables, which contain
a provision against the wife coming into
the Manus of her husband through Usus.
Coemptio does not appear in the old law
of Rome at all, nor is there any mention
of it earlier than that by Gains. But it

can easily be shown that Usus and Co-

emptio come first in order of age, and
Confarreatio later ; that is to say, the two
14 LEGAL SYMBOLISM

former are more archaic than the latter.

Yet have recent learned writers, overlook-

ing this fact and the meaning of legal

symbolism, represented Usus and Co-
emptio as forms invented and introduced
by the legislators of Rome, whereby the
plebeians might have their wives in Manu,
and enjoy the other advantages of Justae
Nuptise ; Usus as an invention ; and the
fictitious sale in Coemptio as merely a
device of legislative ingenuity. The true
explanation of the late appearance of
both Usus and the fictitious sale in the

Roman law, is this —that the law at first

was not that of the whole people but of a
limited aristocracy, who, with a Sabine
king and priesthood, adopted the Sabine
religious ceremony of marriage ; that the
law long totally ignored the life and
usages of the mass, and that their modes
of marrying and giving in marriage be-
 AND PRIMITIVE LIFE. 15

gan to appear, and to make their mark

in the law, only on the popular element
in the city becoming of importance. In-
stead of marriage per coemptionem being
the invention of legislators, it was of
spontaneous popular growth, and must
have been as old as the establishment of
peaceful relations between tribes and fami-
lies. All fictions, or nearly all, have had
their germs in facts ; became fictions or

merely symbolical forms afterwards. And

that the fictitious sale was originally an

actual sale and purchase, cannot be doubted

by any one who knows that marriage by
the form of actual sale has prevailed
almost universally among rude popula-
tions.

We see in the case of the Roman law

how incomplete must necessarily be the
history of the law of a country, as written
on the face of it. The law is at first that of
i6 LEGAL SYMBOLISM

the dominant and presumably the most ad-«

vanced classes —the literates, warriors, and^

statesmen ; the rest of the community are

beyond its pale, a law unto themselves.

When the levelling processes, by which
the lower classes succeed in the long run in
acquiring rights more or less equal, have
gone on for some time, then the ruder cus-
toms followed by them before and since

the commencement of the State appear in

a modified form in what is now for the

first time really becoming the law of the

people. Civility seems suddenly to as-

sume the garb and the air, and to use

the gutturals of barbarism ; legal pro-

cesses are gone through with the frantic

howls and gesticulations of armed Ojibe-j

ways ; and while all this, to those who are
ignorant of primitive times, seems mere
idle pantomime, sometimes silly, some-
times odd, sometimes puzzling by its in-
 AND PRIMITIVE LIFE. 17

tricacy, to those who are prepared to

receive their suggestions, the forms em-
ployed are pregnant with meaning and in-
struction, ^fortunately all the nations in
the world have not advanced in civility
pari passu ; and what is pantomime with
one people, we discern to be grimmest
reality with another/ Were it not for this
inequality of development, in what mys-
teries would the history of the race be

enveloped! What Michelet calls the

poetry of law would have to be received

as such simply ; as so many grotesqueries

or graces introduced into the ways of life

to satisfy the popular fancy. As it is,

however, ^he so-called poetry of law, the

symbolic forms that appear in a code or in
popular customs, tell us as certainly of the
early usages of a people, as the rings in the
transverse section of a tree tell of its ag^
The Libripens, with his scales, ofh-
 LEGAL SYMBOLISM.

elating at a will or act of adoption, seemsi

out of place ; but his presence illustratesj

the source whence all ideas of formal dis-

positions were derived —the sale of fun-

gibles. So does an old form of process

—
preserved by Gains the Legis Actio.
Sacramenti of the Romans —prove that

cultivated people to have been at one

time in pari casu as regards the adminis-
tration of justice with many races which
we find ignorant of legal proceedings, and

dependent for the settlement of their dis-

putes on force of arms or the good offices

of neutral parties interfering as arbiters.
So far, briefly, of the importance of
the symbolism of law and of the study of
races in their primitive condition. What
follows is an attempt at a practical exem-
plification in a new direction of the aid
derivable from these sources in the task
of unveiling the past.
 FORM OF CAPTURE. 19

CHAPTER II.

The Form of Capture in Marriage

Ceremonies.

In the whole range of legal symbolism

there is no symbol more remarkable than
that of capture in marriage ceremonies
—the origin of which it is our purpose
to investigate — nor is there any the
meaning of which has been less studied.

So far as we know, neither has the

extent to which it prevails been made
the subject of inquiry ; nor its signifi-

cance the subject of thought. In two

cases, indeed, the occurrence of the
symbol could not fail to receive some
attention. But, naturally, it did not lie

in the way of the historians of either

Greece or Rome to examine the matter
20 THE FORM OF CAPTURE

very minutely, or to follow up the sugges-

tions which, upon examination, it might
have yielded, as to the early condition
of the Dorians or Latins. Accordingly,
the custom has been accepted as meaning
no more than Festus said it did among the
Romans, than Muller says it did amdng
the Spartans ; as indicating nothing at
Rome but the popular appreciation of the
good fortune of Romulus in the rape of the

Sabines ;* as indicating, at Sparta, the feel-

ing that a young woman " could not sur-

render her freedom and virgin purity

unless compelled by the violence of the
stronger sex."t It is surprising that
writers so acute should have rested con-
tent with such explanations, and that
their views should have been so gene-
* Festus, De Verborum Significatione —Rapi.
t Muller's " Dorians," Book iv., c. iv., sec. 2 ; and
see "Rawlinson's Notes," Herod., Book vi. 65.
 :

IN MARRIAGE CEREMONIES. 21

rally adopted. The theory of Festus we

shall have occasion to notice hereafter
of that of Muller we observe that before
we can entertain it, we must suppose
that in the exceedingly lax community of
the Spartans, or at least within certain of
the tribes composing that community,
there had been an early period of austere
virtue, the tradition of which was still so
influential as to compel the Spartans to
observe in their marriages this custom
as the shadow of their former delicacy.

Now, of the existence of such a period

of prudery among the ancient Dorians,
or among the Pelasgi, or the Achaeans,
there is not a tittle of evidence. On the

contrary, such evidence as we have, points

to the Lacedaemonian customs as having

been an improvement on ancient prac-
tice. Savages are not remarkable for

delicacy of feeling in matters of sex, and

22 THE FORM OF CAPTURE

the wandering hordes, who in succession

overran the Peloponessus, were no better

than savages when they first come under
our observation.* Again, no case can be
cited of a primitive people among whom
the seizure of brides is rendered neces-
sary by maidenly coyness. On the con-
trary, it might be shown, were it worth
while to deal seriously with this view,
that women among rude tribes are usu-
ally depraved, and inured to scenes of
depravity from their earliest infancy. In
this state of the facts, it is remarkable
that any one should have been satisfied
with so improbable an explanation.
Rejecting, then, the primitive prudery
hypothesis, which requires for its basis
a declension from ancient standards of

* They were certainly as savage as the Khonds,

with whom they agreed in cultivating a religion
requiring human sacrifices.
 IN MARRIAGE CEREMONIES. .23

purity—of the existence of which we have

—
no evidence we proceed to examine the
various phases in which the symbol of
capture is presented. We shall find it in

places far from classic ground, and point-

ing, in all its varieties, so steadily to the

true theory of its origin, that the mere

exhibition of its phases will lead the
reader to anticipate much of what we
have to say on the subject. In order
to see what is the precise state of the
facts with which we have to deal, it is

necessary to say something of the nature

of the symbol, and to adduce at some
length such accounts of it as we find in

our authorities.
The symbol of capture occurs when-
ever, after a contract of marriage, it is

necessary for the constitution of the rela-

husband and wife that the bride-
tion of
groom or his friends should go through
24 THE FORM OF CAPTURE

the form of feigning to steal the bride,

or carry her off from her friends by
superior force. The marriage is agreed
upon by bargain, and the theft or abduc-
tion follows as a concerted matter of form,
to make valid the marriage. The test,

then, of the presence of the symbol in any

case is, that the capture is concerted, and
is preceded by a contract of marriage. If

there is no preceding contract, the case is

one of actual abduction.

So far of the nature of the symbol.

We proceed to examine the instances of

its occurrence. That the form was ob-
served in the marriages of the Dorians,
and was, equally with betrothal, requi-
site as a preliminary of marriage, rests
chiefly on the authority of Herodotus
and Plutarch.* The evidence of Hero-
dotus is indirect, and is contained in

* MuUer's " Dorians," ut supra.

 IN MARRIAGE CEREMONIES. 25

the well-known passage in which he ex-

plains how Demaratus robbed Lestychides
of his bride Percalus, to whom he had
been htivoi\].td—forestalling him in carry-
ing her off and marrying her.* The case
was one of actual abduction ; but the
language of Herodotus implies that it

remained for Lestychides, in order to

make Percalus his wife, that he should
go through the form of carrying her off.

With this must be conjoined the express

statement of Plutarch,! that the Spartan
bridegroom always carried off the bride

by feigned violence. He says, indeed, by

violence ; but at the same time he shews

, , that the seizure was made by friendly

concert between the parties. These pas-

sages must be held sufficiently to prove
that the custom existed at Sparta. It

is equally certain that it was observed

* " Herodotus," B. vL, 65. f " Life of Lycurgus."
26 THE FORM OF CAPTURE

at Rome,* in the plebeian marriages

which were not constituted by Confar-
reatio or Coemptio. The bridegroom
and his friends —the time agreed upon
having arrived — invaded the house of the
bride, and carried off the lady with feigned
force from the lap of her mother, or of
her nearest female relation if the mother
were dead or absent. The seizure is

vividly described by Apuleiusf in the

story of the Captive Damsel, in which

he is understood to have had the ple-
beian form of marriage in view. The
lady, narrating how she had been carried
off, says that her mother having dressed
her becomingly in nuptial apparel, was
loading her with kisses, and looking for-
ward to a future line of descendants, when

* Festus, ut supra — Rapi : Pothier, Pandectae, etc.,

App., Title II. book xxiii.

t Apuleius, de Asino Aureo, Book iv.

 IN MARRIAGE CEREMONIES. 27

on a sudden a band of robbers, armed

like gladiators, rushed in with glittering
swords, made straight for her chamber
in a compact column, and, without any
struggle or resistance whatever on the
part of the servants, tore her away half
dead with fear from the bosom of her
trembling mother. The custom is said
still to prevail to a great extent among
the Hindus.* It may well do so, for we
find what must, as we shall show, be held
to be the form of capture, prescribed as a
marriage ceremony to the Hindus in the
Sutras.f It prevails among the Khonds
in the hill tracts of Orissa. The marriage
being agreed upon, a feast, to which the
families of the parties equally contribute,

* M'Pherson's "Report upon the Khonds of the dis-

tricts of Ganjam and CuUack," p. 55. Calcutta, 1842.

t " Indische Studien," p. 325. Edited by Dr.

Weber. Berlin, 1862.
28 THE FORM OF CAPTURE

is prepared at the dwelling of the bride.

"To the feast," says Major M'Pherson,*
" succeed dancing and song. When the

night is far spent, the principals in the

scene are raised by an uncle of each upon

his shoulders, and borne through the
dance. The burdens are suddenly ex-
changed, and the uncle of the youth dis-
appears with the bride. The assembly
divides into two parties ; the friends of
the bride endeavour to arrest, those of the
bridegroom to cover her flight, and men,
women, and children, mingle in mock
conflict, which is often carried to great
lengths." " On one occasion," says Major-
General Campbell,! " I heard loud cries
proceeding from a village close at hand.
Fearing some quarrel, I rode to the spot,
* M'Pherson's " Report," ut supra.
t " Personal Narrative of Service, etc., in Khond-
istan,'' 1864, p. 44.
 —
IN MARRIAGE CEREMONIES. 29

and there saw a man bearing away upon

I

his back something enveloped in an ample

covering of scarlet cloth he was sur- ;

rounded by twenty or thirty young fel-

lows, and by them protected from the

desperate attacks made upon him by a
party of young women. On seeking an
explanation of this novel scene, I was
told that the man had just been married,

and his precious burden was his bloom-

ing bride, whom he was conveying to
his own village. Her youthful friends
as, it appears, is the custom —were seek-

ing to regain possession of her, and hurled

stones and bamboos at the head of the
devoted bridegroom, until he reached the
confines of his own village.* Then the

* The hurling of old shoes, etc., after the bride-

groom among ourselves, may be a relic of a similar
It is a sham assault on the person
carrying
custom.
off the lady ; and in default of any more plausible
30 THE FORM OF CAPTURE

tables were turned, and the bride was

fairly won ; and off her young friends

scampered, screaming and laughing, but

not relaxing their speed till they reached
their own village." The custom may be
presumed to prevail among the Koles, the
Ghonds, and the other congeners of the
Khonds ; but we are without authority on
the subject.
According to De Hell,* the form of
capture is observed in the marriages of
the noble or princely class among the
Kalmucks. The price to be paid for the
bride to her father having been fixed, the
bridegroom sets out on horseback, accom-
panied by the chief nobles of the horde

explanation, and we know of none such, it may fairly

be considered as probable that it is the form of capture
in its last stage of disintegration.

Xavier Hommaire de Hell, "Travels in the

*

Steppes of the Caspian Sea." Lond. 1847,

259. P-
 IN MARRIAGE CEREMONIES. 31

to which he belongs, to carry her ofif.

" A sham resistance is always made

by the people of her camp, in spite of

which she fails not to be borne away on

a richly caparisoned horse, with loud
shouts and feux de Joie." Dr. Clarke
describes the ceremony differently, and
it is possible that it assumes different

forms in the different nations of the Kal-

mucks. " The ceremony of marriage
among the Kalmucks," he says,* " is per-

formed on horseback. A girl is first

mounted, who rides off in full speed.

Her lover pursues ; if he overtakes her,
she becomes his wife, and the marriage is

consummated on the spot ; after this she

returns with him to his tent. But it

sometimes happens that the woman does

not wish to marry the person by whom
she is pursued ; in this case, she will not

* " Travels," etc., vol. i., p. 433-

32 THE FORM OF CAPTURE

suffer him to overtake her. We were

assured that no instance occurs of a Kal-
muck girl being thus caught, unless she
have a partiality to the pursuer. If she

dislikes him, she rides, to use the language

of English sportsmen, '
neck or nought,'
until she has completely effected her
escape, or until her pursuer's horse be-
comes exhausted, leaving her at liberty to

return, and to be afterwards chased by

some more favoured admirer." This ride

for a wife is never undertaken till after

the price for her has been fixed between

the friends of the parties, the lover hav-
ing to pay for as well as to catch her.

The custom is not mentioned in the ac-

count of the Kalmucks by Pallas, who
knew of their marriage customs only
by hearsay. But it favours the sup-
position that there are varieties of the
form in use among this people, that
 IN MARRIAGE CEREMONIES. 33

Bergman * describes the ceremony some-

what differently from both Clarke and

De Hell. The necessity for the appear-
ance of using force is satisfied, according
to Bergman, by the act of putting the

bride by force upon horseback when she

is about to be conducted to the hut pre-
pared for her by the bridegroom. And,
indeed, we find the form reduced to this

minimum of pretence in not a few cases.

Thus in North Friesland,t a young fellow,
called the bride-lifter, lifts the bride and
her two bridesmaids upon the waggon
in which the married couple are to travel

to their home.
Among the Tunguzes and Kamcha-

* Bergman's " Streifereien." Riga 1804, vol. 3, p.

145, ^/ seq.
Weinhold, pp. 250, 25 1 and see the other au-
,t ;

thorities for like cases noted by Dr. Weber, "Indische

Studien," ut supra.
34 THE FORM OF CAPTURE

dales, a matrimonial engagement is not

considered to be definitely concluded until
the suitor has overcome his beloved by
force, and torn her clothes —the maiden
being bound by custom to defend her
liberty to the utmost. * Also among
the Bedouin Arabs it is necessary for
the bridegroom to force the bride to en-
ter his tent.f A similar custom existed
among the French, at least in some pro-
vinces, in the 17th century. J In all the
cases just mentioned the form assumed
by the custom was analogous to the* rule
prescribed in the Sutras, where it was
provided that at a certain vital stage of

* "Travels in Siberia," Erman, vol. ii., p. 442—

1848 (Cowley's trans.)
t Burckhardt's "
Notes on the Bedouins and
Wahabys." Lond. 1830, vol. i., p. 108.
\ " Marriage Ceremonies," etc., Gaya, 2d ed. Lond.
1698, p. 30.
 IN MARRIAGE CEREMONIES. 35

the marriage ceremony, a strong man and

the bridegroom should forcibly draw the
bride and make her sit down on a red
ox-skin.*
There is good ground for believing

that the form of capture is observed in

the marriage ceremonies of the Nogay
Tartars. The rule which prohibits a Kal-
muck bride from entering the yurt of
her parents for a year or more after her
marriage, and which is undoubtedly con-
nected with the form of capture, pre-
among
vails the Nogais, as it does also
among the Kirghiz. At any rate, we
find the custom in the Caucasus in the
immediate neighbourhood of the Nogais.
The form which it assumes among the
Circassians, indeed, closely resembles that
observed in ancient Rome. The wedding
is celebrated with noisy feasting and
* " Indische Studien," ut supra.
36 THE FORM OF CAPTURE

revelry, " in the midst of which the bride-

groom has to rush in, and with the help
of a few daring young men, to carry off
the lady by force; and by this process
she becomes his lawful wife."* The cus-
tom also prevailed till a recent date

in Wales. Lord Kamesf says that the

following marriage ceremony was in his

day, or at least had till shortly before

been customary among the Welsh. " On

the morning of the wedding day, the

bridegroom, accompanied with his friends

on horseback, demands the bride. Her
friends, who are likewise on horseback,
give a positive refusal, upon which a mock
scuffle ensues. The bride, mounted be-

* Louis Moser, " The Caucasus and its People."

Lond. 1856, p. 31 and see Spencer's "Travels in

;

Circassia." Lond. 1837, vol. ii. p. 375 and "Bell's

;

Journal," vol. ii. p. 221. Lond. 1840.

f " Sketches of the History of Man," Book i., sec.

6, p. 449. Edin. 1807.

 IN MARRIAGE CEREMONIES. 37

hind her nearest kinsman, is carried ofif

and is pursued by the bridegroom and

his friends, with loud shouts. It is

not uncommon on such an occasion to

see two or three hundred sturdy Cambro-
Britons riding at full speed, crossing
and jostling to the no small amuse-
ment of the spectators. When they have
fatigued themselves and their horses,

the bridegroom is suffered to overtake

his bride. He leads her away in triumph,

and the scene is concluded with feasting

and festivity." Some such picture we
should have had from De Hell had he
expanded his account of the mock scuffle

among the Kalmucks of the hordes of the

bride and bridegroom.

We have now found the custom in

various parts of Europe and Asia ; it

occurs also in Africa and in America.

Lord Kames vouches for the custom
D
38 THE FORM OF CAPTURE

among the Inland Negroes.* "When

the preliminaries of the marriage are
adjusted, the bridegroom with a number
of his companions set out at night and
surround the house of the bride as if in-

tending to carry her off by force ; she and

her female attendants pretending to make
all possible resistance, cry aloud for help,
but no person appears." Spekef men-
tions an incident which he observed in
Karague, and which may have been the
sequel to a capture. " At night," he
says, " I was struck by surprise to see a
long noisy procession pass by where I sat,

led by some men who carried on their

shoulders a woman covered up in a
blackened skin. On inquiry, however, I

heard she was being taken to the hut of

* " Sketches," etc., ut supra.

t " Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the
Nile," 1863, p. 198.
 IN MARRIAGE CEREMONIES. 39

her espoused, where bundling fashion

she would be put to bed ; but it is only
with virgins they take so much trouble."

Traces of the custom are indeed frequently

met with in Africa, but in so distinct and
marked a form as that mentioned by Lord
Kames, we have not found it. His lord-

ship has not given his authority. He

mentions the custom, however, merely
for its singularity, and apparently in ig-

norance of its connecting itself with any

wide-spread practice of mankind, which
demanded investigation. Among the pri-

mitive races throughout the whole con-

tinent of America traces of the form of
capture (that is, customs seemingly of no
significance, except in the light of this
form) are of frequent occurrence. Among
the people of Tierra del Fuego, however,
the form itself appears almost in perfec-
tion. " As soon," says Captain Fitzroy,
40 THE FORM OF CAPTURE

Speaking of the Fuegians,* " as a youth is

able to maintain a wife by his exertions

in fishing or bird-catching, he obtains the

consent of her relations, and does some
piece of work, such as helping to make
a canoe, or prepare seal-skins, etc., for

her parents. Having built or stolen a

canoe for himself, he watches for an

opportunity, and carries off his bride.
If she is unwilling she hides herself in

the woods, until her admirer is heartily

tired of looking for her, and gives up
the pursuit, but this seldom happens."
These are among the best marked in-

stances of the Form with which we are ac-

quainted.f The instances fix our attention

* " Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle." Vol.

ii., p. 182 ; 1839.

t The reader will find in the Appendix A, a

marked example of the Form, occurring in Ireland,
and several other examples occurring elsewhere,
 IN MARRIAGE CEREMONIES. 41

especially upon a few geographical points;

But nothing in nature stands by itself.

Each example of the Form leads us to

contemplate a great area over which the
custom once prevailed, just as a fossil

fish in rock on a hill-side forces us to con-

ceive of the whole surrounding country
as at one time under water. Were we to
enumerate and examine all the customs
which seem to us connected with the
Form, we should be led into discussions

foreign to our purpose, and there would

be few primitive races with which we
should not have to deal. Suffice it,

that the Form which of old appeared so

well defined in the peninsulas of Italy
and Greece, may be traced thence, on
the one hand, northwards through France
and Britain, south-westwards through

which the author has not thought it necessary to in-

corporate in the text.

42 THE FORM OF CAPTURE, ETC.

Spain, and north - eastwards through

Prussia ; on the other hand, northwards
through ancient Thessaly and Macedonia,
into the mountainous regions on the Black
Sea and the Caspian ; again, that the
form which is perfect among the Kal-
mucks shades away into faint and fainter
traces throughout almost all the races of

the Mongolidae ; that we may assume it

of frequent occurrence in Africa, as it

unquestionably was among the red men

of America; that it occurs among the
Hindus, and may be assumed to have
been common among the aboriginal in-
habitants of the plains of India, of whom
we have a well-preserved specimen in the
Khonds of Orissa.
 THE ORIGIN OF FORM OF CAPTURE. 43

CHAPTER III.

THE ORIGIN OF THE FORM OF CAPTURE.

The question now arises, what is the

meaning and what the origin of a cere-
mony so widely spread, that already on
the threshold of our inquiry, the reader
must be prepared to find it connected
with some universal tendency of man-
kind ?

Those who approach the subject with

minds undisturbed by the views of Festus
and Muller will most naturally think, in

the first instance, of an early period of

lawlessness, in which it was with women

as with other kinds of property, that he
should take who had the power, and he
should keep who could. And it is a trite
fact, that women captured in war have
 —

44 THE ORIGIN OF

universally, in barbarous times and coun-

tries, been appropriated as wives, or as
worse. But little consideration is needed to
see that the symbol implies much more than
this ; for it is impossible to believe that
the mere lawlessness of savages should
be consecrated into a legal symbol, or to
assign a reason —could this be believed
why a similar symbol should not appear
in transferences of other kinds of pro-
perty. To a certain extent, indeed, the
first impression must be held to be a cor-
rect one. We cannot escape the conclu-
sion that there was a stage in the history

of tribes observing this custom when

wives were usually obtained by theft or
force. And unless the practice of get-
ting wives by theft or force was so general
where it prevailed that we may say it was
almost invariable, it is incredible that such
an association should be established in the
 —
THE 'FORM OF CAPTURE. 45

popular mind between marriage and the

act of rapine, as would afterwards require
the pretence of rapine to give validity to
the ceremony of marriage. It must have
been the system of certain tribes to cap-
ture women —necessarily the women of

other tribes — wives.

for But we may be
sure that such a system. could not have
sprung out of the mere instinctive desire
of savages to possess objects cherished
by a foreign tribe ; it must have had a
deeper source — to be sought for in their
circumstances, their ideas of kinship,

their tribal arrangements.

The fact that among savage tribes

whose normal relations with each other

are those of war —
a man could get a
woman of a foreign tribe for his wife only
by carrying her off, cannot, by itself, ex-
plain a symbolism which is so well estab-
lished, so invariable, where it occurs at
46 THE ORIGIN OF

all. Where savages had women of their

own whom they might marry, captive
women would naturally become slaves or
concubines rather than wives ; the men
would find their wives, or their chief

wives, within the tribe ; and the capture

of women could never become so impor-
tant in connection with marriage as to
furnish a symbolism for all marriages to
a later time. It may be doubted whether,
in the circumstances supposed, the form
of capture would, in a great number of
cases, be bequeathed to more peaceful and
friendly generations, even in the case of
intertribal marriages — in which only the
form could be expected to appear ; and at

any rate these, when first made subjects

of friendly compact, would be too infre-
quent for their ceremonies to override
those which were indigenous, and to be
transferred into the general marriage law.
 THE FORM OF CAPTURE. 47

Much more likely is it that indigenous

marriage forms should be employed in
the celebration of intertribal marriages
when they occurred. It is a fortiori, that
in the circumstances which we have been
considering —those of tribes among which
as among civilized peoples, the law of
marriage is mafrimoniMm liberum — no
system of capturing women for wives
could have arisen.
What circumstances then, what social
idea, existing among rude tribes, could
produce a system of capturing the women
of foreign tribes for wives ? It will be
convenient, that before we make the
answer we have to offer to this question,

we should consider the condition, in re-

spect of marriage, of a class of tribes with
which we believe . this system did not
originate.

It is clear, that if members of a family

48 THE ORIGIN OF

or tribe are forbidden to intermarry with

members of other families or tribes, and
free to marry among themselves, there is

not room for fraud or force in the consti-

tution of marriage. The bridegroom and
bride will live together in amity among

their common relatives. With the con-

sent of her relations, a woman will be-

come the wife of a suitor peaceably. If

a suitor forces her, or carries her off

against her will or that of her friends,
he must separate from these to escape
their vengeance. It follows that, among
tribes of this class, which we shall call

endogamous tribes* betrothal followed by

* As the words endogamy and exogamy are new,

an apology must be made for employing them. In-
stead of endogamy we might, after some explanations,
have used the word caste. But caste connotes several
ideas besides that on which we desire to fix attention.
On the other hand, the rule which declares the union
<if persons of the same blood to be incest has been
 —
THE FORM OF CAPTURE. 49

cohabitation at first, and, at a more ad-

vanced stage, betrothal and a religious or
other formal ceremony of appropriation
of the spouses to one another, are the
natural modes of marriage. To the prac-
tice of such tribes are to be referred the
two modes of constituting marriage of
which the Roman usus and confarreatio
may be taken as the types. These are
at any rate the forms appropriate to mar-
riages between members of the same
family-group or tribe ; and, so far as
appears at present, they could only have
originated among endogamous tribes, or
in the case of marriage within the tribe

hitherto unnamed, and it was convenient to give it a

name. The words endogamy and exogamy (for

which botanical science affords parallels) appear to

be well suited to express the ideas which stood in
need of names, and so we have ventured to use them,
taking care in the text to make their meanings dis-
tinct.
so THE ORIGIN OF

among tribes which allowed their mem-

bers to marry among themselves or into
other groups indifferently.
The form of marriage by gift, or that by
sale and purchase, could never have origi-
nated with purely endogamous tribes. A
tribe, in a primitive age, is just a group
of kindred —more or less numerous, with
common interests and possessions, where
they have any other property besides their
women ; living together as an ungo-
verned fraternity, or under the headship
of a pater-familias. Obviously within
such a group there can be neither barter
nor sale —neither the selling nor the buy-
ing of wives. On a marriage between
two of its members, there is no foreign
interest to be consulted or satisfied.

It is different if we conceive a number

of such tribes aggregated in a political
union to which the caste principle of its
 THE FORM OF CAPTURE. 51

parts is extended ; so that, while formerly

the members of each could only marry
among themselves, the members of all

have acquired the right of intermarrying

with one another. In forming this con-
ception, we pass from marriages within
the tribe to inter-tribal marriages. In an
inter-tribal marriage one tribe loses a
woman, the other acquires one; or, as

sometimes happens, one loses a man, the

other acquires one. In either case, there
is room and a necessity for compensa-
tion. Such a marriage must be a subject
of bargain, a matter of sale and purchase.
And we may now perceive that the mar-

riages of which coemptio may be taken

as the civilised type, have their origin in

intermarriages between distinct family
groups or tribes.

But it is not in a primitive age, not

until after a very considerable advance
52 THE ORIGIN OF

has been made in civility, that tribes are

ever found joined in a political union.

Such union indicates a state of friendli-
ness between the tribes, brought about by
common action for common objects. And
should inter-tribal marriages come to be
permitted among endogamous tribes, they

could from the first be carried through by

friendly negotiation. On the other hand,
the degree of political union presupposed to
explain the intermarriages must be such as
to exclude the idea of the members of any
tribe resorting to violence to obtain wives

from any other. We conclude that, among

this class of tribes, marriage by capture
could have had no place. Still more
certain is it that they could never come
to form such an association between
marriage and the act of rapine as would
lead them to adopt the symbol of capture
in marriage ceremonies ; on the contrary.
 THE FORM OF CAPTURE. 53

we should expect to find that they would,

out of respect to immemorial usage in
the case of marriages within the tribe,
celebrate even their intertribal mar-
riages — though really brought about
by sale' and purchase —by such cere-

monies as had been customary among

them in marriages between members of
the tribe. And if the symbol of capture
be ever found in the marriage ceremonies
of an endogamous tribe, we may be sure

that it is a relic of an early time at which

the tribe was organised on another prin-

ciple than that of endogamy.

And now let us postulate the exist-
ence of tribes, organised on what we shall

call, for the want of a better name, the

principle of exogamy —that is, which /;'^-

hibited marriage within the tribe —and
whose tribesmen were thus dependent on
other tribes for their wives. It is obvious
E
54 THE ORIGIN OF

that inter-tribal marriages could only be

peaceably arranged between tribes whose

relations were friendly. But peace and
friendship were unknown between sepa-
rate groups or tribes in early times, ex-
cept when they were forced to unite
against common enemies. The sections
of the same family —when it fell into sec-
tions —became enemies by the mere fact

of separation. And while this state of

enmity lasted, exogamous tribes never
could get wives except by theft or force.
If it can be shown, firstly, that exoga-
mous tribes exist, or have existed ; and
secondly, that in rude times the relations
of separate tribes are uniformly, or almost
uniformly, hostile, we have found a set of
circumstances in which men could get
wives only by capturing them —a social
condition in which capture would be the
necessary preliminary to marriage. And
 THE FORM OF CAPTURE. 55

if it be shown in a reasonable number of j

well-authenticated cases that these con-

ditions — exogamy as tribal law, and
hostility as the prevailing relation of

separate tribes towards each other — exist

or have existed, accompanied, as might
have been expected, by a system of cap-
turing wives, we shall be justified in con-
cluding — failing the appearance of any
phenomena inconsistent with such an ex-

planation —that the same conditions have

existed in every case where the system of
capture prevailed, or where the form of
capture has been observed as a ceremony
of marriage. Nothing more than this is

necessary to satisfy the conditions of a

sound hypothesis.
We are in a position_to^^ojthis anii
more-'WelhaUbe able to point to many^

tribes which habitually capture or cap-

to
tured their wives from foreign tribes ;
S6 THE ORIGIN OF

show that exogamy is or was the law of

these tribes ; also, that there are cases of
exogamous tribes whose tribesmen, marry-
ing women by compact, always go through
the form of capturing such women that ;

in all the modern instances where the

symbol of capture is best marked, mar-
riage within the tribe is prohibited as in-
cestuous. We shall also find various cir-
cumstances common to exogamous tribes,
and traceable in their case to the prin-
ciple of exogamy, appearing more or less
marked in the case of historical tribes
which have used the form of capture, sup-
porting the conclusion that such tribes
had once been exogamous.
It may easily be conceived how,
among exogamous tribes, out of respect
to immemorial usage, when friendly rela-
tions came to be established between
tribes and families, and their members
 !

THE FORM OF CAPTURE. 57

intermarried by purchase instead of cap-

ture, the form of invasion and capture
should become an essential ceremony at
weddings. It was unheard of from the
remotest times that a woman became a
man's wife except through being made his
captive, forced or stolen away from her
friends by him or for him. Surely some-
thing shall be wanting if there is not at
least the appearance of a capture! So
the Roman youths rush in with drawn
swords, and feign to enact a tragedy ; so

the Kalmuck girl rides, as if for life,

from her lord and master by pre-arrange-

ment
We now proceed to treat of the mat-
ter, in order, under the three following
heads : — Firstly ,
The prevalence of cap-

turing wives de facto /secondly, Whether

where that practice prevails, marriage be-

tween members of the same family-group,

58 THE FORM OF CAPTURE.

clan, or tribe, is forbidden, and the pre-

valence of that limitation of the right
of marriage ; and, thirdly. How far the

state of war prevails among primitive

groups ?
 PRACTICE OF CAPTURING WIVES. 59

CHAPTER IV.

ON THE PREVALENCE OF THE PRACTICE

OF CAPTURING WIVES, DE FACTO.

The tribes amongst which prevails or

has prevailed, the practice of getting wives

by theft or force, are both numerous and
widely distributed. We shall find them
in America, in Australia, in New Zealand,

in many of the islands of the Pacific, and

in various parts of Asia and Europe.
It is among the tribes of American

Indians that the practice is to be found

in the greatest perfection. In particular,

we find it fully displayed on the Ori-

noco, on the Amazons, everywhere in
fact, from the Caribbean Sea to Cape
Horn. The abject Fuegians, as we have
6o THE PRACTICE OF

seen,* have the practice in a modified or

symbolised form in the marriages of men
and women belonging to groups at peace
with one another. But they have the
reality as well as the fiction. Between
many of their tribes there is a chronic
state of war. ''Strangers" reported

Jemmy Button to Captain Fitzroy on

one occasion,t "had been there, with
whom he and his people had '
very much
jaw ;'
they fought, threw '
great many
stone,' and stole two women (in exchange
for whom Jemmy's party stole one), but
were obliged to retreat." The Horse In-
dians of Patagonia also, tribe against
tribe, are commonly at war with one
another, or with the Canoe Indians, the
issues of victory in every case, being the

* See ante, p. 40.

t " Voyages of Adventure and Beagle," ut supra,

vol. ii., p. 224.
 CAPTURING WIVES. 6i

capture of women and the slaughter of

men. But the Oens or Coin-men would
'

appear to be the most systematic of these

savage marauders, for every year at the
time of '
red leaf ' they are said to make
excursions from the mountains in the north
to plunder the Fuegians of their women,
dogs, and arms.* Farther north still than
the Oens men, we come successively on
the tribes of the Amazons and of the
Orinoco, all of which, excepting those re-
duced into missions, are continually at
feud with one another, and in turns rich
in women or impoverished ; feelings of

mutual hate and the desire for means of

subsistence being concurring causes of
war. Of the tribes on the Amazons the
accounts are not very distinct; but the
habits of the Manaos in the Rio Negro

* Idem, p. 205.
 —

62 THE PRACTICE OF

district —which, as reported by Mr Bates,*

are similar to those of the Coin-men
may be assumed not to be exceptional.
There is no doubt, however, that the pri-

mitive habits of most of the Indian tribes

have been much changed by the slave-
hunting expeditions, at one time fostered
by the Dutch and Portuguese. On slave-
hunting being introduced in America, as
in Africa, a market was found for captives
of both sexes, and men as well as women
became spoils of victory. No argument
is needed to show that when women
are systematically captured as in the
above cited cases, they are captured with

a view to the raising of children — in fact,

with a view to their performing the part
of wives. The fulness of the idea of a
wife, according to our conceptions, is not,

* "The Naturalist on the Amazons." Second

Edition, 1864, p. 199.
 CAPTURING WIVES. 63

we need scarcely say, to be looked for

amongst such savages. That idea can
nowhere be fully realised till the circum-
stances of a people enable men and women
to enjoy, or at least to look forward with

confidence, to a permanent consortship.

Of the tribes of the great Caribbean
nation we have happily a pretty full ac-

count from the pen of Alexander Von

Humboldt.* The Caribbees fall into

small tribes or family groups, often not

numbering more than from 40 to 50 per-
sons; Humboldt, indeed, takes frequent
occasion to say that an Indian tribe is no
more than a family. Where groups break
up into sections, as they tend to do, and

* "Personal Narrative of Travels, etc." (1826). The

passages bearing on the capturing of women among
the tribes of the Orinoco, from which our account is

taken, will be found at'vol. v., pp. 210, 293, 422, 425,

S48, 565 ; vol. vi., pp. 20, 21, 26; vol. vii., p. 449.
64 THE PRACTICE OF

live apart from one another, the sections

are found, though of one blood, and ori-

ginally of one language, soon to speak

dialects so different that they cannot un-

derstand one another. Become strangers,

they are enemies except when forced to
unite to make common cause against some
powerful tribe which has proved a scourge
to them all; enemies, and being at least
at the time when Humboldt wrote, can-
nibals, not only disposed to slay but to

eat one another. In their wars, we may

imagine, that while their male captives
furnished means of subsistence, the women
were preserved to be wives and luxuries.*
To such an extent, indeed, did all the
tribes of the Caribbean nation practise
the capture of women —depend on aggres-
sion for their wives —that the women of
any tribe were found to belong to different
* Compare Erskine's "Pacific," p. 425 (1863).
 CAPTURING WIVES. 65

tribes, and to tribes of other nations, and

that to such an extent, that nowhere were
the men and women of the Caribbean
race found to speak in one tongue.
Going northwards — to the wild In-
dians everywhere, as far as we follow them,
the same account is applicable in varying
degrees. It would indeed be misleading

toomit to notice that in both North and

South America tribes are to be found
occupying much more elevated platforms
of civility than those to which, for obvious
reasons, we have given our attention. As
among friendly groups of the Fuegians
we find marriages of consent and of pur-
chase (by labour commonly),* so also

among friendly Patagonians so also with ;

the nations of the Huron tongue and the

Attakapas, among whom the position of

* See ante, p. 40.

66 THE PRACTICE OF

the women is exceedingly good. Indeed,

all the processes have been going on
through which every species of marriage
would in time be developed. Even the
red men of America are far from being
primitive. A really primitive people in
fact exists nowhere. For many thou-
sands of years now, the various races
of men have been in the school of ex-
perience, all making progress therein,

though under different masters and in

different forms. Hereafter we shall see

how the old law of the red men, and of the

natives of Australia, which counts blood
relationship through females only, operates
as an agent of civilization, and tends to

supersede the barbarous practices of early

savagery, and especially to obviate the
necessity of capturing wives.
The capture of women for wives is
found to prevail among the aborigines
 —
CAPTURING WIVES. 67

of the Deccan,* and in Affghanistan.f

It prevailed, according to Olaus Mag-
nus, in Muscovy, Lithuania, and Livo-
nia.J The form which it assumed among
the peoples last named, so closely re-
sembled what Kames describes as the
custom among the Welsh, that we must
quote the Archbishop's account of it :

" Quicunque enim paganorum, sive rus-

ticorum, filius suus uxorem ut ducat
in animo habet, agnatos, cognatos,

caeterosque vicinos in unum convocat,

illisque talem isto in pago puellam nubi-

lem versari, quam rapi, et suo filio in

conjugem adduci proponit: hi commo-

dum ad hoc tempus expectantes, ac tunc
* Colonel Walter Campbell's "Indian Journal,"

1864, p. 400.
Vol.
t "Latham's Descriptive Ethnology."
ii.,

p. 215.
" Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus." Book
t
xiv., cap. ix., p. 481. Romx, 1555.
68 THE PRACTICE OF

armati, equites suo more unius ad aedes

conveniunt, posteaque ad earn rapiendam

profisciscuntur. Puella autem quoad
matrimonii contradictionem libera, ex in-
sidiis opera- exploratorum ubi moretur
per eos direpta, plurimum eiulando opem
consanguineorum amicorumque ad se libe-

randam implorat : quod si consanguinei

vicinique clamorem istum exaudierunt,
ipso momento armati adcurrunt, atque
pro ea liberanda proelium com^mittunt ut
qui victores ista in pugna extiterunt his
puella cedat." The difference between
the Welsh and the Muscovite practice
lay in this, that in Wales, in the celebra-
tion of the marriage, betrothal came first,

and the (sham) fight afterwards ; while

among the Muscovites an actual invasion
came first, and if the bridegroom's party-
succeeded in carrying off the lady, there
followed the consent of parents and the
 CAPTURING WIVES. 69

sponsalia: — "Nee ante completam hanc

celebritatem mutua carnali copula, pacto
parentum interveniente, se commiscere
Solent conjungendi ;
quia immane cunctis
gentibus crimen apparere dignoscitur si

ante sponsalia sacra stupri illecebris

virgo temeratur ; immo summoper6 cavent

puellae ne copulam anticepent quia per-
petuam cum prole sic suscepta infamiam
luent."* The intervention of the spon-
salia and consent of parents before the
consummation of the marriage, marks this

as a transitional form of the practice.

But it is none the less a case of actual

capture. Another advance and the spon-
salia will precede the capture, and the

fight be a farce.

According to Seignior Gaya,t this

transitional form of the practice prevailed
* " Olaus Magnus," ut supra, p. 482.
t "Marriage Ceremonies," etc., ut supra, p. 35.

F
70 THE PRACTICE OF

in his time in Poland, parts of Prussia,

Samogithia and Lithuania. A lad's father
having found where a girl lived, who
would make a suitable wife for his son,

he assembled his kindred and carried the

lady off, after which application was made
to her father for consent to complete the

marriage.
There is ample reason to believe that
the practice was general among the nations
in the north of Europe and Asia. Olaus
Magnus,* indeed, represents the tribes

of the north as having been continually

at war with one another either on account
of stolen women, or with the object of
stealing women, " propter raptas virgines
aut arripiendas." His brother Johannest
dilates on the same topic, and mentions

* Ut supra, p. 328.
t History of the Goths, Book xviii. ; and see
" Kames," ut supra, vol. i., p. 393.
 CAPTURING WIVES. n

numerous cases in which the plunderers

were of the royal houses of Denmark or
Sweden. As did the kings, so did their
subjects. Among the Scandinavians, be-
fore they became Christians, wives were
almost invariably fought for and wedded
at the sword-point. In Sweden, even
long after the introduction of Chris-

tianity, women were often carried off

when on the way to the church to be

married. A wedding cortege was a party
of armed men, and for greater security,
marriages were generally celebrated at

night. A pile of lances is said to be still

preserved in the ancient church of Husaby

in Gothland, into which were fitted torches;
these weapons were borne by the grooms-
men, and served the double purpose of
giving light and protection.* Such a
* " Book of Days," vol. i., p. 720. The grooms-
men are said to have been called "best men" in the
72 THE PRACTICE OF

prevalence of lawlessness existing after

the introduction of Christianity and com-
parative civilization, helps us to conceive
what the habits of these people were in a

more primitive age.

We find capture de facto coexistent

with capture as a form, and not unfre-

quent, among most of the rude tribes
observing the form ; its frequency depend-
ing partly on the degree of friendliness
established between the tribes, and partly
on the degree of fixity given by usage to
the price to be paid for a bride. Where
the parties cannot agree about the price,
nothing is more common among the Kal-
mucks, Kirghiz, Nogais, and Circassians,
than to carry the lady off by actual force
of arms. The wooer having once got the
lady into his yurt, she is his wife by the
north from the strongest and stoutest of the bride-
groom's friends being chosen for this duty.
 CAPTURING WIVES. 73

law, and peace is established by her rela-

tions coming to terms as to the price, after

the thing has gone so far that they cannot
help themselves. It is important to ob-
serve, that among these races the capture,
though an irregular proceeding, makes
marriage, even previous to terms being
made between the capturer and the friends
of the lady, and whether they are made
or not.
That the practice of getting wives by
capture de facto, prevails among the
natives of Australia, is a fact familiar to
most readers. It is not, however, now
the sole or regular mode of getting a wife
among the Australian tribes ;
and we do
not claim to do more than show that there
among them a practice of
at present exists

capturing wives so common as almost to

be? a system. And as we shall hereafter
show that they are exogamous, and also
74 THE PRACTICE OF

that exogamous tribes which begin with

a system of capturing wives, may pro-
gress —
consistently with exogamy— to a
system of betrothals, we shall ask the
reader, conceding to us for the present
that we shall be able to do so, to agree
with us that so general a practice of cap-
ture, subsisting as it does among the
Australians alongside of a system of
betrothals, points unmistakeably to a
previous stage when wives were usually
captured.
Among the Australasians, according to
one account,* when a man sees a woman
whom he likes, he tells her to follow him,
and when she refuses, he forces her to
accompany him by blows, ending by
knocking her down and carrying her

* See Appendix B, for an account of the practice

among the Australian Blacks, which has appeared as
this work was going through the press.
 CAPTURING WIVES. 75

off.* The same account (somewhat suspi-

ciously) bears that this mode of courtship

is rather relished by the ladies as a

species of rough gallantry. The cases
must indeed be rare in which a man
finds a woman detached from her lord
and protector, or the other members of
her family ; nor is it in human flesh and
blood to take kicks and cuffs as compli-
ments, in whatever spirit they may be
administered. The following is the ac-
count given by Sir George Grey —a good
authority :
— " Even supposing a woman
to give no encouragement to her admirers,"
he says,t " many plots are always laid to

carry her off, and in the encounters which

result from these, she is almost certain to

*Turnbull, "Voyage Round the World," 1805.

Vol. i., pp. 81, 82.

t "Travels in North-Western Australia," 1841,

Vol. ii., p. 249.
76 THE PRACTICE OF

receive some violent injury, for each of the

combatants orders her to follow him, and

in the event of her refusing, throws a
spear at her. The early life of a young
woman at all celebrated for beauty is

generally one continued series of cap-

tivity to different masters, of ghastly
wounds, of wanderings in strange fami-

lies, of rapid flights, of bad treatment

from other females, amongst whom she
is brought a stranger by her captor ; and
rarely do you see a form of unusual grace
and elegance, but it is marked and scarred
by the furrows of old wounds ; and many
a female thus wanders several hundred
miles from the home of her infancy, be-
ing carried off successively to distant
and more distant points." As an Aus-
tralian woman is always a wife, being
betrothed after birth to some man of a
different tribe or family-stock from her
 CAPTURING WIVES. 77,

own, a stolen or captured wife is always

stolen or taken from a prior husband.
And as men do not readily part with their
wives, and their tribesmen are bound to
make common cause with them for the re-
paration of injuries, the capture of wives
is a signal for war; and as the tribes
have little property, except their weapons
and their women, the women are at once
the cause of war, and the spoils of victory.*
The tribes, as might be expected, are
exceedingly numerous, and exceedingly
small,t being a species of family groups,
and, chiefly from the causes specified,

they are continually at war with one

another.^ The reader may imagine the

* " Turnbull," ut supra, p. 82.

t Sir George Grey says that the largest number

of natives his party ever saw together, " numbered
nearly two hundred, women and children included,"
ut supra. Vol. i., p. 252.

X Grey's "Travels," ut supra. Vol. i., p. 256.

 —

78 THE PRACTICE OF

extent to among these myriad

which,
hordes of savages; the women are being
knocked about, and the men accustomed
to associate the acquisition of a wife with
acts of violence and rapine.*
The native songs make frequent allu-
sion to the practice of capturing wives.
Here is the burden of one, sung by a
heavy-hearted woman, upbraiding her
lord, whose affections some recently ac-
quired captive has drawn away from her,

Wherefore came you, Weerang,

In my beauty's pride,
Stealing cautiously,
Like the tawny boreang,
On an unwilling bride.
'Twas thus you stole me
From one who loved me tenderly.
A better man he was than thee,

* The reader will find, p. 318, vol. ii. of " Grey's

Travels," a curious illustrative instance of the way in
which a war about women may arise.
 ; : !

CAPTURING WIVES. 79

Who having forced me thus to wed,

Now so oft deserts my bed.
Yang, yang, yang, yoh.

Oh, where is he who won

My youthful heart
Who oft -used to bless

And call me loved one

You, Weerang, tore apart
From his fond caress
Her whom you desert and shun ;

Out upon the faithless one

Oh, may the Boyl-yas bite and tear
Her, whom you take your bed to share.
Yang, yang, yang, yoh.*

Concerning the New Zealanders, it

must suffice to say that the theft or cap-

ture of women plays a leading part in
their popular legends, testifying to the
prevalence of the practice, at least in their
early history.t In New Zealand, and
in the Feejee and other islands of the
* Grey's " Travels," vol. ii., p. 313.

t " Polynesian Mythology, etc.," Sir George Grey,

1855, pp. 138, 147, 207, 235, 301.
 —

8o THE PRACTICE OF

Pacific, the capture of wives appears to

have been conjoined with cannibalism
the object of inter-tribal war being at once

to procure women for wives and men for

food, except in some districts where there

was a special relish for the flesh of
*
females.
In the Institutes of Menu we have
marriage by capture enumerated among
" the eight forms of the nuptial ceremony
used by the four classes."! It is the
marriage called Racshasa, and is thus
defined: — "The seizure of a maiden by
force from her house while she weeps
and calls for assistance, after her kins-

men and friends have been slain in battle

or wounded, and their houses broken
open, is the marriage called Racshasa."

* Erskine's " Islands of the Western Pacific," and

Jackson's "Narrative."
t Chap. iii.
33 (Jones and Houghton).
 —
CAPTURING WIVES.

Elsewhere* in the code it is mentioned

as appropriated to the military class.
" For a military man the before-men-
tioned marriages of Gandharvas and
Racshases —^whether separate or mixed,
as when a girl is made captive by her
lover, after a victory over her kinsmen
are permitted by law." The full scope
and effect of this provision we shall have
to consider hereafter. Meanwhile we
notice that we have here the exact pro-
totype of the Roman and Spartan forms,
embalmed in a code of laws a thousand
years before the commencement of our
era ; not as a form, but as living sub-
stance. This we hold to exclude any
hypothesis except that which we are

maintaining.f

* Chap. iii. 26 (Jones and Houghton),

t For the probable origin of the name Racshases,
see Appendix B.
82 THE PRACTICE OF

We may notice, as further illustrating

the subject, and as being in itself curi-

ous, that by the Mosaic Code the mili-

tary class were, in defiance of the gene-

ral law which declared that there was no
connubium between Jews and Gentiles,

allowed to take to wife women whom they

captured in war, to whatever races they
belonged. In Deut. xx. 10-14, the reader
will find forms and regulations provided
for the constitution of this species of mar-

riage, and if interested to know the mean-

ing of the rules, he will find a copious
and learned discussion of them - in the

works of Selden. *
Thus far we have been dealing with
facts. If we are right in our theory of thfe

symbol of capture, it must be held that

the Dorians, or at least some of the tribes

* "De Jure Natural! et Gentium Juxta Disciplinam

Ebraeorum." Lib. v., cap. xiii., fol. 617.
 CAPTURING WIVES. 83

composing the Spartan nation, and the

Latins, or at least some of the tribes form-
ing the commonalty of Rome, long had
experience in the capturing of wives by
force or stratagem. We leave to our
Hellenists to consider how far the Doric
legends may have new light thrown upon
them by our view of the Spartan custom.
How far, for instance, may the slaughter

by Hercules of Eurylus and his sons, and

the carrying away of lole to be the wife
of Hyllus —of Hyllus, who never occurs
in mythology except in connection with

the Dorians —be a mythical tradition of a

rape of women from another tribe ? How
far may the genealogies of Doric heroes
connected with the taking of Ephyra,—
the capture of Astyocheia,— the feat of
Hercules at Thespiae—the stories of Pluto
and Proserpine, and of Boreas and Orithya
—be but traditions of a quasi Caribbean
84 THE PRACTICE OF

prowess ? It must be kept in mind,

too, that the case cited from Herodotus in

proof of the custom at Sparta is one of

actual violence. At least, the lady was
not carried off in terms of arrangement.
Farther, to judge by what is reported of
Theseus —even accepting the tradition as

fabulous—we may conclude that the an-

cient Greeks generally were very lawless
in this matter. To that hero's charge are
laid numerous rapes of women whom he
carried off to be his wives — his crimes of

this description culminating in the seizure

of Helen. Plutarch, indeed, in describing

that affair, mentions a compact as having
been entered into between Theseus and
his companion in the seizure —^Tyndarus
—to the effect that he who should gain
Helen by lot should have her to wife, but
be obliged to assist in procuring a wife
for the other; which shows that these
 —
CAPTURING WIVES. 85

worthies trusted to their prowess to pro-

cure them wives.* As to the Romans
upon our theory —the story of the rape of
the Sabines must be accepted as a mere
mythical tradition of the ancient me-
thod of getting wives. The story, as
might be expected, is reproduced in the
traditions of many tribes, in many places,
and in many forms. For instance, in
the Irish Nenniusf there is a tradition

* There is no evidence that the Doric hordes who

overran and established themselves in the Peloponnesus,
were accompanied by their wives or children. It is

most unlikely that they were so attended ; and, except

a surmise founded on the degree of influence en-
joyed at a subsequent period by the women of Sparta,
there is nothing in favour of the supposition. But
that surmise proceeds on the ground that wives of a
race alien to that of their husbands are not so likely
to be well treated as they would be if they were of
the same blood. Against this we must simply pro-
nounce as being contrary to evidence.
t Pp. 245-251.
G
 — —

86 THE PRACTICE OF

of such a rape of wives by the Picts from

the Gael. In the very old poem, "The
Cruithnians who propagated in the land

of noble Alba,"* the Irish are represented

as giving three hundred wives to the Picts,
on the condition that the succession to the
crown among the Picts should always be
through their females :

" There were oaths imposed on them,

By the stars, by the earth,

That from the nobility of the mother

Should always be the right to the sovereignty."

The story of the oaths is no doubt a fable

to explain the descensus per umbilicum

of the Picts. But, in " Duan Gircan-
ash,"t a poem on the origin of the Goed-
hel, reciting the same event, the Picts are
represented as stealing the three hundred
wives :

* Vv. 115-120. The Irish version of Nennius,

1848, p. 141.
t Vv. 178-180, ut supra, p. 245.
 — —

CAPTURING WIVES. 87

" Cruithne, son of Cuig, took their women from them

It is directly stated

Except Tea, wife of Hermion,

Son of Miledh."

And in consequence of the capture, the

Gael, being left wifeless, had to form
alliances with the aboriginal tribes of

Ireland.

" There were no charming noble wives

For their young men,
Their women having been stolen, they made alliance
With the Tuatha Dea."

We have the same story in the history

of the Jews. Chapters xx. and xxi. of the

Book of Judges contain highly instructive

matter on this point, in a stoiy, which,
though laid in the time of the Judges, we
must hold to be of very old date —a Jewish
tradition belonging to the earliest history

of Israel. The women of the tribe of

Benjamin had been destroyed, and certain

of the tribes of Israel had sworn not to
 —

88 THE PRACTICE OF

give their daughters as wives to the men

of Benjamin, who again could not take
wives to themselves from the Gentiles, as
by law they could marry only into one or
other of the tribes of Israel. The difficulty
of procuring wives for Benjamin —^which
Israel made its own difficulty — ^was solved

by the wholesale slaughter of the inhabi-

tants of Jabez-Gilead, whose population
yielded 400 virgins: and next by the men
of Benjamin enacting a rape of the Sabines
for themselves, each man seizing and
carrying off one of the daughters of Shiloh
to be his wife, on an occasion when the
women met for a festival in certain vine-

yards near Bethel.*

* See Smith's Bible Dictionary —Art. MARRIAGE

where it is remarked, that the phrase in the Old
Testament {e.g., Num. xii. i ; i Chron. ii. 21), "taking
would seem to require to be taken in its literal
a wife,"
meaning in the run of cases "the taking" being the;
 CAPTURING WIVES. 89

We can now say we have found the

capture of women very extensively prac-
tised ; and there can be no doubt that in
most of the cases cited, the women cap-
tured were kept to be used as wives. In
a number of well-marked cases we have
found a system of capture — in the case
of the Caribbean tribes of America, a
system so general, that the women of a
tribe were commonly not only not of the
same tribe with the men, but did not
even speak the same language. We have
seen among tribes in a transition state,

in some cases, capture almost systemati-

cally practised, alongside of more civi-
lized institutions ; and in other cases, the

chief ceremony in the constitution of marriage. If the

writer of that article is we must beheve that
correct,

the Jews observed the form of capture, for in many

cases where the phrase occurs we know the marriages
were preceded by contracts.
90 THE PRACTICE OF

practice of capture in various stages of

progress towards a symbolism. We have

seen the marriage by capture embodied
in the code of India as an institution in
favour of the only class which could be
benefited by it —the warrior class ; and
no argument is needed to show that such
a rule must have been a generalisation
founded upon practice. A similar rule
subsisted in favour of warriors among the
Israelites. The former of these cases is,

perhaps, chiefly valuable as presenting in

a distinct shape the ante-type of the form
of capture —a description of marriage
by an actual capture so vividly recalling
incidents of fictitious capture, as practised
at Rome and elsewhere, as (in our opinion)
to set at rest the question in what way
the fiction originated. The latter case
shows a provision made for marriage
with foreign women, if captured, among
 —
CAPTURING WIVES. 91

tribes which, in no other case, allowed of

marriage with foreign women ; a provi-

sion indicating a very remarkable asso-
ciation between capture and marriage.
It is not easy to believe that such a regu-
lation, existing among endogamous tribes,

is referable to the feeling that a victorious

warrior should have the full disposal of

spoils of war ; it is much more likely that

it was a relic of a time when the tribes
or rather the race from which they sprung
— ^were not endogamous ;
and, if so, it

carries us back to a remote antiquity

when marriage and prowess in war were
closely associated. We have seen that the
mythic legends of various races, of which
been
hitherto no rational explanation "has
of pro-
given, can, with great appearance
bability, be referred to the existence
amongst such races in ancient times of a

systematic capture of wives.

92 PRACTICE OF CAPTURING WIVES.

Farther research, and the observation

of tribes hitherto unreported upon — at

present we have not been able to say any-

thing that would be satisfactory of the
races of the continent of Africa* — will,

we confidently expect, afford much addi-

tional evidence of the prevalence of this

practice. But we have done enough to

entitle us to affirm that there has existed

amongst various races of mankind a
system of capturing women for wives.

* See Appendix B.
 ;

EXOGAMY. 93

CHAPTER V.

OF THE RULE AGAINST MARRIAGE BETWEEN

MEMBERS OF THE SAME TRIBE OF
THE COINCIDENCE OF THIS RULE WITH
THE PRACTICE OF CAPTURING WIVES
DE FACTO, AND WITH THE FORM OF
CAPTURE IN MARRIAGE CEREMONIES.

We proceed to show the prevalence of

the rule forbidding marriage within the
tribe or group of kindred, and the con-
currence of this ban with the fact or
pretence of capturing wives.
Here, still more than in our former

investigation, we are made to feel how

imperfect and unconnected is the record

from which our facts have to be drawn

and farther, how difficult it is to bring

together such facts as have been observed,

94 EXOGAMY AND THE

owing to the wide field over which they

lie sparsely scattered. In many cases, the

authorities are silent just on the points

on which we are most eager for informa-
tion ; while on matters of no moment they
enlarge ad nauseam. But, too often, they
have nothing to tell. Skirting a coast-
line the traveller sees natives at points
here and there, and can describe their
dress and personal appearance; of their
habits he is as ignorant as a child of the
free life of the beasts he sees in a caravan.
Where the opportunities of observation are
better, the observer often does not know
what to look for. Of the jus connubii
among the Kalmucks not one word is said
by Clarke or Pallas or Strahlenberg and !

but for some remarks of Bergman's we

should be entirely in the dark on the
subject.

We begin with the Khonds. This

 FACT & FORM OF CAPTURE. 95

people presents us with capture as a form.

Major-General Campbell says that the
Khonds marry women from remote places,
the reason of which he takes to be, that
they have to buy their wives, and can
get them at lower prices at a distance.
" They pretend, moreover," he adds,*
" to regard it as degrading to bestow
their daughters in marriage on men of

their own tribe ; and consider it more

manly to seek their wives in a distant

country." Major M'Pherson —a more in-

telligent witness —gives us the distinct

statement, that among the Khonds inter-

marriage between persons of the same

tribe, however large or scattered, is con-

sidered incestuous, and punishable by

death ;t a view more consistent with other

* Ut supra, p. 141.

t
" An Account of the Religion of the Khonds in
96 EXOGAMY AND THE

known facts than that of General Camp-

bell. " Marriage," Major M'Pherson
tells us, "can take place only betwixt
members of different tribes, and not even
with strangers who have been long adopted
into or domesticated with a tribe, and a
state of war or peace appears to make
little difference as to the practice of inter-

marriage between tribes. The people

of Bara Mootah and of Burra Des, in

Goomsur, have been at war time out of

mind, and annually engage in fierce con-

flicts, but they intermarry every day.

The women of each tribe, after a fight,
visit each other to condole on the loss of
their nearest common relations." No
doubt these friendly intermarriages must
in time alter the relations of the tribes

to one another; no doubt also the time

Orissa," p. S7 ; and see M'Pherson's Report on the
Khonds, already referred to.
 FACT & FORM OF CAPTURE. 9;

was when the marriages were not effected

in friendly fashion.

Let us now examine the cases of the

Kalmucks and Circassia ns. To under-
stand that of the former, we must attend
a little to their political system. The
Kalmucks are divided into four great
nations or tribes under hereditary chiefs
or khans ;
—the Khoskots, the Dzun-
gars, the Derbets, and the Torgots. Each
of these, according to Pallas,* is under
the command of many little and nearly
independent princes, called Noions. The
horde commanded by a No'ion is called

an Oulouss, and is subdivided into

several Aimaks, each of which again is

commanded by a noble called Sai's-

sang. The Aimaks again are sub-

*
"Voyages dans Plusieurs Provinces de I'Empire
de Russia, etc.," Paris (no date), vol. ii., p. 191. Nou-
velle Edition.
98 EXOGAMY AND THE

divided into many companies or khatoun,

consisting of from ten to twelve tents, for
convenience in pasturing; and each kha-
toun has its chief, but whether of the
noble class we are not informed. It will

thus be seen that there is among the

Kalmucks a very large governing or
princely class. Now, it appears that they
have two systems of marriage law one ; for

the common people, and one for the nobles,

or princely class. The common people,
we are told by Bergman,* enter into no

unions in which the parties are not dis-

tant from one another by three or four
degrees ; but how the degrees are counted
we are not informed. We are told that
they have great abhorrence for the mar-
riages of near relatives, and have a pro-
verb — "The great folk and dogs know
* Bergman's "Streiferein." Riga, 1804, vol. iii.,

p. 145, et seq.
 FACT & FORM OF CAPTURE. 99

no relationship" —which Bergman says is

due to members of the princely class some-

times marrying sisters-in-law. We find^
however, that these sisters-in-law are
uniformly women of an entirely different
stock from their husbands — different,

or what is taken for different. For no

man of the princely class (and it is in

the marriages of the Kalmucks of this

class, according to De Hell, that the form

of capture is chiefly observed*), in any of

the tribes, can marry a woman of his own
tribe or nation. Not only must his wife
be a noble, but she must be a noble of a
different stock. For princely marriages,
says Bergman, " the bride is chosen from
another people's stock —among the Der-
bets from the Torgot stock ; and among
the Torgots from the Derbet stock ; and
so on." Here, then, we have the principle
* See ante, p. 30.
 a

lOO EXOGAMY AND THE

of exogamy in full force in regard to the

marriages of the governing classes —

large body in each nation, as we have seen,
and, which is most to our present purpose,
the body in whose marriages the form of
capture is said to be observed. Whether
or not the commonalty, with whom the
nobles have no intermarriage —the people
of black birth, as they are called — ^were

originally of an alien, inferior, and con-

quered race ; and whether or not the go-
verning classes were originally independ-
ent exogamous tribes, we have the pro-
hibition against marriage within the stock
here concurrent with the form of capture
in the weddings of the nobility. How
far the commonalty observe the form we
have no information, but it is not un-
likely that they mimic, after a fashion, the
marriage ceremonies of their superiors.
The case of the Circassians is simple,
 FACT & FORM OF CAPTURE. loi

and quickly told:— "The Circassian word

for their societies or fraternities," says
Bell,* " is '
tleush,' which signifies also
'
seeds. ' The tradition with regard to them
is, that the members of each all sprang
from the same stock or ancestry and thus ;

they may be considered as so many septs

or clans, with this peculiarity, that, like
seeds, all are considered equal. These
cousins-german, or members of the same
fraternity, are not only themselves inter-
dicted from intermarrying, but their serfs,
too, must wed with the serfs of another
fraternity and where, as is generally the
;

case, many fraternities enter into one

general bond, this law in regard to mar-
riage must be observed by all. The con-
fidential dependant, or steward, of our
host here is a tokao who fled to his pro-

* James Stanislaus Bell. "Journal of a Residence

in Circassia," 1840, vol. i., p. 347.
H
I02 EXOGAMY AND THE

tection from Notwhatsh, because, having

fallen in love with and married a woman
of his own fraternity, he had become liable
to punishment for this infraction of Cir-

cassian law. Yet his fraternity contained

perhaps several thousand members. For-
merly, such a marriage was looked upon
as incest, and punished by drowning now ;

a fine of two hundred oxen, and the resti-

tution of the wife to her parents, only are

exacted." Elsewhere,* Bell observes that
these fraternities sometimes embrace thou-
sands of persons, between whom marriage
is by this ancient law totally prohibited.
Here, too, as in Khondistan, and among
the Kalmucks, we find the form of capture
as well as the principle of exogamy.
Our next case is that of the Yurak Sa-
moyeds (Siberia) among whom no man can

Ut supra, vol. ii., i lo.

 FACT & FORM OF CAPTURE. 103

take a wife from the tribe to which he be-

longs.* These Samoyeds hold kinsman-
ship to be coextensive with the tribe. All
the members of the tribe, however large
or small, consider themselves relations,

even where the common ancestor is un-

known, and the evidence of consanguinity
is wholly wanting. They fall into three
divisions ; the members of any of which
may take wives from either of the other
two, but not from their own ; and as these
divisions occupy sites far removed from
one another, the Samoyeds have to go
great distances for their wives.
We find the same state of things

among the Kafirs, the Sodhas of northern

India, the Beduanda Kallung (Singapore),

and many others, including the Kirghiz

and the Nogais.t
* Latham, "Descriptive Ethnology," vol. ii. p. 455-
of capture
t It must not be thought that the form
 ;

104 EXOGAMY AND THE

The Warali (India) tribes fall into divi-

sions, and no man may marry a woman

of his own division ; he must go for a
wife to one of the others. The Magar
tribes fall into thums, all the members of

each of which are supposed to be de-

scended from a common ancestor: the

Magar husband and wife must belong to

different thums within one and the same
;

thum there is no marriage. Latham, in

noticing the Magars, says

— "This is the

first time* I have found occasion to men-

tion this practice. It will not be the last

on the contrary, the principle it suggests

is so common as to be almost universal.

occurs wherever exogamy prevails —that exogamy

and the practice of capturing wives, which at a certain
stage must be the resource of exogamous tribes, will
in every case leave the form of capture behind them.

We shall see the explanation of this hereafter. We

have no information whether or not the Samoyeds
practise the form of capture.
* Vol. i. p. 80, " Descriptive Ethnology."
 FACT & FORM OF CAPTURE. 105

We find it in Australia, in North and

South America, in Africa, in Europe ; we
shall suspect and infer it in many places
where the actual evidence of its existence
is incomplete." This is a sweeping state-
ment but before we conclude we hope
; to
show that it may fairly be accepted as
correct.

In the institutes of Menu it is laid

down that a twice-born man might elect
for nuptials " a woman not descended from
his paternal or maternal ancestors within

the sixth degree, and who is not known by

herfamily name to be of the same primitive
stock with his father."* This passage might

* " Institutes of Menu," cap. iii., sec. 5. The words

"or mother" occur in the gloss of Calluca. The rule
fixing the stock by the father is, as we hope to show,

far fi-om being archaic. The twice-born classes are

the sacerdotal, military, and commercial (Menu x. 4).
Nearly all the Indian castes are now divided into
nations that do not intermarry ; the nations into sects.
io6 EXOGAMY AND THE

be taken as a text for the discussion of the

whole question of prohibited marriages,
and we must dwell upon it somewhat, as
it has an important bearing on the present
investigation. The object of the rule is

to prevent marriages between members of

the same primitive stock ; and it points
out the family name as the test whether
persons are of the same stock or not. It

is as if a Fraser might not marry a Fraser,

nor a M'Intosh a M'Intosh. By compar-
ing the former state of the Highlands of
Scotland with their present condition,
especially with the condition of the town
populations, we may clear our ideas regard-

some of which do not intermarry. All the nations

are divided into certain families, called gotrams ; a
man cannot marry a woman of his own gotram.
Buchanan's "Journey from Madras," 1807, vol. i. pp.
273. 300, 354, 396, 419, 421, 423; Muir's "Sanskrit
Texts," Part II., 1859, PP- 378> 387 ;
" Vivada Chinta-
mani," Calcutta, 1863, Preface, p. 45.
 FACT & FORM OF CAPTURE. 107

ing the origin, meaning, and effect of this

institution. Of old each clan inhabited
its particular strath or glen, and had its

own well-defined hill ranges. In the Aird

district there were none but Erasers about ;

Moy were none but M'Intoshes. The mem-

bers of the clans are now interfused even

in the country districts, and in towns like

Inverness or Dingwall may be found mem-

bers of all the clans. Now, suppose that

originally aman was not allowed to marry

a woman of his own clan, and that, sub-
sequent to the interfusion of the clans,
that ancient prejudice remained ; the rule

for enforcing —the question of degrees

it

of affinity apart—would be the

just rule

of Menu. So, in considering the origin of

that rule, are we not remanded from the
social state in which it was fixed in a code,

to an earlier state, in which the population

consisted of distinct clans or tribes organ-
io8 £XOGAMY AND THE

ised on the principle of exogamy, and liv-

ing apart from one another, as all tribes

do in early times, until they are brought,

by conquest or otherwise, under a com-

mon government ? We have already had
examples of tribes with this rule, so that,
in this conception of the early state of the

Indian population, we are making no im-

probable supposition. On the contrary,
it is not only probable in itself, but it is

the only supposition that will explain the

fact ; and if we accept it as indicating the
origin of the rule of Menu, it gives us
such an idea of the prevalence of this law
of incest as we could never reach by the
contemplation of the individual tribes

among which it is the law. It will be re-

collected that the form of capture is found

among the Hindus.*

* Ante, p. 27, and see Appendix A.

 FACT & FORM OF CAPTURE. 109

We believe it may still be possible, in

the case of some communities in which
marriage between persons of the same
family name is prohibited, to analyse the
population into its constituent (stock)

tribes, and to prove that the tribes had

this law of incest. In one case, in par-
ticular, investigation seems to be courted.
The Munnieporees, and the following
tribes inhabiting the hills round Munnie-
pore —the Koupooees, the Mows, the
Murams, and the —are each
Murring
and all divided into four families— Koo-
mul, Looang, Angom, and Ningthaj^. A
member of any of these families may
marry a member of any other, but the
intermarriage of members of the same
family is strictly prohibited. In explana-
tion, so far, of these family divisions,*

*
"Account of the Valley of Munniepore and of the
Hill Tribes." M'CuUoch, 1859, PP- 49-69-
no EXOGAMY AND THE

we have the fact, well authenticated

in the history of Munniepore, that the
Koomul and Looang formerly existed as
distinct and powerful tribes, and that the
Koomul, in particular, at one time pre-
ponderated in the valley. Presuming that
these tribes held intermarriages of their
members to be incestuous, the origin of

two of the family divisions, and of the

marriage law, is plain enough, at least
so far as the hill tribes are concerned ; and
it is in the hills alone that the law is

strictly enforced. Most of the members

of the tribes would remain in the valley
and mix with the Meithei, by whose
prowess they were vanquished ; but we
can conceive that bands of the Koomul
and Looang might escape to the hills, and
mix with each other and with the tribes
of the Angom and Ningthajjl, whose ex-
istence in former times we must postulate.
 1

FA CT & FORM OF CA P TURE. 1 1

in explanation of the family divisions of

the same names. Is it beyond hope that

the farther examination of local tradi-

tions, or exploration of the wilds to the

south and north-east of Munniepore, may

yet furnish us with information regarding
the Angom and Ningthaja, or with data
from which their existence in former times

may be legitimately inferred, apart from

the present speculation ?

The conclusion at which we have ar-

rived as to the origin of the rule of

Menu, will also explain the case of the

native populations of Australia, North

and South America, and the islands in

the Pacific. In these quarters we obtain

light regarding the causes which lead to

the break up of the primitive exogamous
groups, and to the intermixture in local
tribes of people recognised as being of dif-

ferent bloods. Let us first attend to the

112 EXOGAMY AND THE

Australians, whom we find divided into

small tribes named after the districts

which they inhabit ; for though they are

nomads, their wanderings, like those of

the nomadic agriculturists of the Indian

hills, are circumscribed within well-defined
bounds. It appears that the tribe inhabit-
ing a particular district regards itself as

the owner thereof, and the intrusion of any

other tribe upon that district as an invasion
to be resented and punished ; and that
within the district individuals have por-
tions of land appropriated to them.* Thus
the tribal system is in force, with an ap-
parent perfect separation and independ-
ence of the tribes. But, on close exami-
nation, the tribes are found to be fused
and welded together by blood-ties in the

most extraordinary manner. According

* Letter, Dr. Laing to Dr. Hodgkin, 1840. " Re-
ports of the Aboriginal Protection Society."
 FACT & FORM OF CAPTURE. 113

to credible accounts,* the natives of dif-

ferent tribes extending over a great por-

tion of the continent, are divided into a
few families, and all the members of
a family, in whatever local tribes they
may be, bear the same name as a second
or family name. These family names
and divisions are perpetuated and spread
throughout the country by the operation
of two laws : first, that the children of
either sex always take the name of the
mother; and second, that a man cannot
marry a woman of his own family name.
The members of these families, though
scattered over the country, are yet to some
intents as much united as if they formed
separate and independent tribes ; in par-

ticular, the members of each family are

bound to unite for the purposes of de-

* " Grey's Journals," etc., vol. ii., chap. xi.

 ;

114 EXOGAMY AND THE

fence and vengeance, the consequence

being that every quarrel which arises be-
tween the tribes is a signal for so many-
young men to leave the tribes in which
they were born, and occupy new hunting
grounds, or ally themselves with tribes
in which the families of their mothers
may happen to be strong, or which con-
tain their own and their mother's nearest
relatives. This secession, if we may so
call it, is not always possible, but it is

of frequent occurrence notwithstanding

where it is impossible, the presence of so
many of the enemy within the camp affords
ready means of satisfying the call for ven-
geance ;
it being immaterial, according to
the native code, by whose blood the blood-
feud is satisfied, provided it be blood of
the offender's kindred. Thus, as the Aus-
tralians are polygamists, and a man often
has wives belonging to different families,
 FACT & FORM OF CAPTURE. 115

it is not in quarrels uncommon to find chil-

dren of the same father arranged against
one another ; or, indeed, against their
father himself, for by their peculiar law
the father can never be a relative of his
children.* Among the Kamilaroi, a nume-

* Mr. Maine has been unable to conceive how

human beings could be grouped on any principle more
primitive than that of the patriarchal system, or
be bound together by any ruder blood-ties than

those of agnation derived from the patria potestas.

We think his mistake has arisen from a too exclusive
attention, in his researches, to those systems of an-
cient law which, like the Hindoo, Roman, and Jewish,
belonged to races which were
. far advanced at the
which their history goes back. Had
earliest dates to

he examined the primitive races now extant, he cer-

tainly would not have written the following passage:*
" It is obvious that the organisation of primitive so-
cieties would have been confounded if men had called

themselves relatives of their mother's The relatives.

inference would have been that a person might be

subject to two distinct patriae potestates ;
but distinct

patriae potestates implied distinct jurisdictions, so that

' "Ancient Law," 1861, p. I49-

 ;

ii6 EXOGAMY AND THE

rous tribe residing to the north-west of

Sidney, the rules in force are very complex
and peculiar. These tribesmen fall into

anybody amenable to two of them at the same time

would have lived under two dispensations. As long
as the family was an imperium in imperio, a com-
munity within the commonwealth, governed by its
own institutions, of which the parent was the source,
the limitation of relationship to the agnates was a
necessary security against a conflict of laws in the
domestic forum." Here we see the ingenious thinker
trammelled by notions derived from Roman jurispru-
dence. Among the Australian Blacks — to confine our-
selves to a single instance —we have seen that men are
relatives of their mother's relatives, and of none other
and that their societies are, aliunde, held together,
notwithstanding the conflict of laws in the domestic
forum, engendered by polygamy, exogamy, and female
kinship. Kinship depends, in fact, not at all on con-
venience. The first kinship is the first possible —that
through mothers, about whose parental relation to
children there can be no mistake. And the system
of kinship through mothers only, operates to throw
difficulties in the way of the rise of the patria potestas,
and of the system of agnation. But of this here-
after.
 FACT & FORM OF CAPTURE. 117

divisions resembling castes, and at the

same time observe the rule against mar-
riages between members of the same
family.*
Our information is so imperfect that
we do not know whether there exist any-
where in Australia tribes whose distinc-

tive names are those of the families into

which the population is divided. But
we should not expect to find such tribes.

The constant tendency of groups to fall

to pieces, and of the parts to separa-

tionand independence of one another,

and the practice of naming groups from
their lands, would tend to obliterate the

traces of the original stock-groups, except

so far as they have been preserved in the

names of families to keep the blood pure
by avoidance of marriage between mem-
* Mr. Ridley's account quoted, p. 491. vol. ii.,

Pritchard's " Natural History of Man." Norris' edition.

I
ii8 EXOGAMY AND THE

bers of the same stock. But we cannot

doubt that such stock-groups at one time
existed, organised on the principle of exo-
gamy, and were the germs of the native
population. Whencesoever they were
derived, it was inevitable, that the law
which recognised blood relationship as
existing only through females, conspir-
ing with the primitive instinct of the race
against marriage between members of the
same stock, should tend in the process of

time to transfuse the blood of each stock

through all the tribal divisions. The
men of the group A marrying women of
the group B ; and the men of the group
B marrying women of the group A ; and
all the children of the women of B being
counted of the stock of B ; and all the
children of the women of A being
counted of the stock of A ; we at once
have so many B's within A, and so
 FACT & FORM OF CAPTURE. 119

many A's within B. And so on, until in

time A's from the northmost point appear
in the homes of Z at the southmost ; and
Z's in the homes of A. Each local tribe

would thus contain within itself members

between whom there was connubium ; the
original tribal divisions would be lost sight
of, and nothing would remain of the stock-
groups but the family names to which
they gave birth. Should the process of
transfusion go far enough, the state of
matters which would lead to the practice
of capturing wives would be modified, but
not extinct. The system of polygamy of
itself, and any want of balance between
the sexes of different families within a
tribe, would long tend to maintain this

practice; which, moreover, like every other

practice connected with marriage or reli-

gion, must be credited with a special
tenacity of existence. As we have seen.
120 EXOGAMY AND THE

there prevails among the Australians a

system of betrothals —always between
persons of different stocks —along with
an extensive practice of capturing wives.
This is just what might be expected if

our theory of the origin of capture be a

sound one. Since the tribes of Austra-
lians, while exogamous in principle, con-
tain persons who regard each other as of
different descent and free to intermarry,

marriage can be, and is, made the subject

of bargain. Again, habits formed in pre-
vious times of necessity —and no doubt
occasional necessity still existing —keep
up the practice of capture.

We now take the case of the Ameri-

can Indians — North and South. They
have political and district divisions;* but
besides these the nations among them

* " Archseologia Americana," vol. ii. p. 109.

 ;

FACT & FORM OF CAPTURE. 121

have had from time immemorial divisions

into families or clans. " At present, or

till —
very lately" ^we quote from the Ar-
chaeologia Americana — " every nation was
divided into a number of clans, varying in
the several nations from three to eight or
ten, the members of which respectively
were dispersed indiscriminately through-
out the whole nation. It has been fully
ascertained that the inviolable regulations
by which these clans were perpetuated
amongst the southern nations were, first,

that no man could marry in his own clan

secondly, that every child should belong

to his or her mother's clan. Among the

Choctaws there are two great divisions,

each of which is subdivided into four

clans, and no man can marry in any of
the four clans belonging to his division.
The restriction among the Cherookees, the
Creeks, and the Natches, does not extend
122 EXOGAMY AND THE

beyond the clan to which the man belongs.

There are sufficient proofs that the same
division into clans, commonly called tribes,
exists among almost all the other primi-
tive nations. But it is not so clear that
they are subject to the same regulations
which prevail amongst the southern In-
dians." At the root of these divisions and
prohibitions we find here, as in Austra-

lia, the feeling that marriage between

persons of the same blood is incestuous,
"They profess to consider it highly cri-

minal for a man to marry a woman whose

totem (family name) is the same as his
own, and they relate instances when young
men, for a violation of this rule, have been
put to death by their own relatives."* The

* From a circular by Mr. L. H. Morgan of

letter

Rochester, New York, issued by the United States

Government to its diplomatic agents and consuls in
foreign countries, and which contains much interesting
 —

FACT & FORM OF CAPTURE. 123

Indian nations, they say, were divided into

tribes just lest any one might, through

information regarding the laws of primitive relation-

,ship, we quote the following passage as the most
recent and authoritative statement regarding the tribal
divisions of the red men :

" Nearly all, if not all, of the Indian Nations upon

this continent were anciently subdivided into Tribes

or Families. These tribes, with a few exceptions, were

named after animals. Many of them are now thus
subdivided. It is so with the Iroquois, Delawares,
lowas. Creeks, Mol^ves, Wyandottes, Winnebagoes,
Otoes, Kaws, Shawnees, Choctaws, Otawas, Ojibewas,
Potowottomies, etc.

"The following tribes are known to exist, or to

have existed in the several Indian Nations .

— the
number ranging from three to eighteen in each : The
Wolf, Bear, Beaver, Turtle, Deer, Snipe, Heron, Hawk,
Crane, Duck, Loon, Turkey, Musk-rat, Sable, Pike,
Cat-fish, Sturgeon, Carp, Buffalo, Elk, Rein -deer,
Eagle, Hare, Rabbit, and Snake ; also, the Reed-
grass, Sand, Water, Rock, and Tobacco-plant.
" Among the Iroquois—and is the same to
the rule

the present day in most enumerated—

of the nations

no man is allowed to marry a woman of his own tribe,

all the members of which are
consanguinii. This was
124 EXOGAMY AND THE

temptation or accident, marry a near rela-

tion, which "at present is scarcely-possible,

unquestionably the ancient law. It follows that hus-

band and wife were always of different tribes. The

children are of the tribe of the mother, in a majority
of the nations ; but the rule, if anciently universal, is

not so at the present day. Where descent in the

female line prevailed, it was followed by several im-
portant results, of which the most remarkable was the
perpetual disinheritance of the male line. Since all

titles as well as property descended in the female line,

and were hereditary, in strictness, in the tribe itself, a

son could never succeed to his father's title of Sachem,
nor inherit even his medal or his tomahawk. If the
Sachem, for example, was of the Wolf tribe, the title

must remain in that tribe, and his son, who was neces-
sarily of the tribe of his mother, would be out of the
line of succession ; but the brothers of the deceased
Sachem would be of the Wolf tribe, being of the same
mother, and so would the sons of his sisters : hence
we find that the succession fell either upon a brother
of the deceased ruler or upon a nephew. Between a
brother of the deceased, and the son of a sister, there
was no law establishing a preference : neither as be-
tween several brothers on one side, or several sisters

on the other, was there any law of primogeniture.

 —

FACT & FORM OF CAPTURE. 125

for whoever intends to marry must take a

person of a different tribe,"* and the same
feeling has been remarked by Dobuzhof-
fer in South America. +
What we have said of the Australians
may be assumed to have been true, at
one time at least, of the New Zealanders.
In " The Curse of Mania"| and several
other of the New Zealand legends we have
evidence that the wife never belonged to the
tribe of her husband, and that the children
belonged to the family of their mother. So
among the Feejees, who appear to count

They were all equally eligible, and the law of election

came in to decide between them." Cambrian yournal,
vol. iii., second series, p. 149.
* Tanner's "Narrative," p. 313, quoted in Arch.
Amer., and by Grey, ut supra.
) " Account of the Abipones," vol. i. p. 69.
" Polynesian Mythology," ui supra, p. 162. In
\
" The Curse of Mania" the reader will find an instance
of children fleeing from the tribe of birth to that of

the mother's kindred.

126 EXOGAMY AND THE

blood relationship through the mother

only. In the system of vasu-ing, which
determines the claims of children upon
the tribe of their mother, we have evi-

dence that the mother always belongs

to a different tribe from the father, and
that the children are held to be of the
family or tribe of their mother.* At any
rate, vasu-ing is a relic of a stage in the
development of the Feejees wherein that
was the rule.

Curiously enough, there is reason for

believing that exogamy prevailed among
the Picts ; in other words, according to

the most approved doctrine, among the

Gael or Highlanders ; which fact bears at

once on the rapes of the Cruithnians, the

old Welsh and French customs, and the
plebeian marriage-ceremonies of Rome,
for the Celtic element was strong in
* Erskine's "Pacific," ut supra
pp. 153-215.
^
 FACT & FORM OF CAPTURE. 127

Rome. That the Celts were anciently lax

in their morals, and recognised relation-
ship through mothers only, are facts well
vouched;* and of such facts it is the
usual concomitant, that the children
should be named after the mother. The
facts brought out by the distinguished
antiquary, Mr. Skene, from a study of the
list of Pictish kings down to 731, when
Bede says that the law of succession
through females was still in force, may
to some extent be explained by the sons
taking the names of their mothers; but
they point to something beyond this. By
favour of Mr. Skene, we are at liberty to

give here the results at which he has ar-

rived, and which have not hitherto been
published.

* Caesar, "De Bello Gallico," lib. v. § 14. Xiphiline,

Monum. Histor..lxi. Solinus, idem. Irish Nennius,

liv.
128 EXOGAMY AND THE

\st, That brothers always succeeded

each other.
2d, That in no case does a son suc-
ceed a father ; after the brothers have
reigned a new family comes in.
%d, That the names of the fathers
and of the sons are quite different. In
no case does the name borne by any
of the sons appear among the names of
the fathers, nor conversely is there an
instance of a father's name appearing
among the sons.
6fth, The names of the sons consist of a
few Pictish names borne by sons of dif-

ferent fathers. These are —6 Drusts, 5

Talorgs, 3..Nectans, 2 Galans, 6 Gart-
naidhs, 4 Brudes. In no case does the
name of a father occur twice in the list of
fathers.

5/^, In the list there are two cases of

sons bearing Pictish names whose fathers
 FACT & FORM OF CAPTURE. 129

are known to have been strangers, and these

are the only fathers of whom we have any
account. They are — i.Talorg Macainfrit.
His father was undoubtedly Ainfrit, son

of Aethelfrith, King of Northumbria, who

took refuge among the Picts, and after-
wards became King of Northumbria; 2.

Brude Mac Bile. His father was a Welsh-

man, King of the Strath-Clyde Britons.
In an old poem Brude Mac Bile is called

son of theKingof Ailcluaide, i.e., Dumbar-

ton; and when, by the battle of Drunichen,

he became King of the Picts, another old

poem says, " to-day Brude fights a battle

about the land of his grandfather."

The fact that the only fathers of whom
we have any account are known to have
been strangers — especially when taken

along with the other facts which we pos-

sess about the Picts—raises a strong pre-

sumption that all the fathers were men of

130 EXOGAMY AND THE

Other tribes. At any rate there remains

the fact, after every deduction has been
made, that the fathers and mothers were
in no case of the same family name.
— We have now, by an irresistible array

of instances, established the fact of exo-

gamy being a most widely prevailing
principle of marriage-law among primitive
races. We have found the areas to be,
for the chief part, conterminous within
which exogamy and the practice of captur-
ing wives de facto prevails. Farther, in
all the modern instances in which the
symbol of capture is most marked, we
have found that marriage within the tribe
is prohibited as incest, as among the
Khonds, the Fuegeans, the Kalmucks,
and Circassians; also that in several cases
where traces of the symbol appear, as
among the Nogais and the Kirghiz, exo-
gamy is more or less perfectly observed.
 ;

FACT & FORM OF CAPTURE. 131

We have seen good reason for thinking

that exogamy and the practice of capture
de facto, co-existed among the old Celts
and that in that co-existence lies the ex-

planation of the symbol among the French,

the Welsh, and the plebeians of Rome.
Of ih^Jus connubii of the Muscovites and
Livonians in former times we have no
direct information. Magnus is silent on
the subject. But it is implied in his nar-
rative that husband and wife invariably
belonged to different kinships and village
communities. We have found exogamy
and the symbol co-existing in ancient
India. Not to dwell on the slighter and
more doubtful instances, we think it must
now be admitted that we have sufficiently

proved both the existence of exogamous

tribes, and that among such tribes there

prevails, or has prevailed, a system of

capturing women for wives. ^
132 ON THE STATE OF HOSTILITY.

CHAPTER VI.

ON THE STATE OF HOSTILITY.

The state of hostility is a theme which

requires no research to illustrate it. It is

a fact too familiar to require demonstra-

tion. If war is a lamentable feature of
human life, it is not quite so ugly among
savages as when waged by civilized men.
In proportion to their masses and the
weight of the interests at stake, the ad-
vanced nations are perhaps quite as
frequently embroiled as the most bar-
barous ; also in their case the natural
beneficence — if we may so call it —of the
impulse to feud is not always apparent.
In the lower stages of society we recognise
war as a condition of the rise of govern-
ments, of the subordination of classes, of
 —
ON THE STATE OF HOSTILITY. 133

civility — its agonies as the growing pains

of civil society ; in the higher it appears
too often as a mere scourge of mankind, de-
forming and impairing, if not destroying,
the precious results and accumulations of
long periods of peace and industry.
If the wars of savages are petty, they are
habitual. While the domestic affections
are little pronounced, the social are con-
fined to the smallest fraction of humanity.
Whoever is foreign to a group is hostile
to it. Even in comparatively advanced
stages of savagery, groups rarely combine
for common purposes ; when they do
the object of the combination being ac-
complished —they return to their isolated

independence. And when tribes have

combined in nations, and the nations have
become polite, it is yet some time before a

distinction drawn between strangers

is

and enemies. No wonder if the dis-

K
134 ON The state of hostility.

tinction be not made by savages. Who-

ever is not with them is against them
—a rival in the competition for food,

a possible plunderer of their camp and

ravisher of their women. Lay out the
map of the world, and wherever you
find populations unrestrained by the
strong hand of government there you
will find perpetual feud, tribe against
tribe, and family against family.
It would be superfluous to select

particular districts from which to illus-

trate this truth, exemplifications of which
we have already, in so many instances,
had occasion to see. The state of hosti-
lity is the normal state of the race in

early times. It is incidental to the sepa-

ration and independence of men in small

communities; and, while the arts are as
yet in their infancy, small communities
are a necessary result of the conditions of
 ON THE STATE OF HOSTILITY. 135

subsistence. Thus Lot separates from

Abraham. Jacob goes one way and Esau
goes another. And with separation comes
estrangement — differences of language and
habits — hostility. Till in a short time
blood relations are as much apart —as
foreign to one another —as people of dif-

ferent races and states.

 ,

136 EXOGAMY AND

CHAPTER VII.

EXOGAMY : ITS ORIGIN — COMPARATIVE

ARCHAISM OF EXOGAMY AND EN-
DOGAMY.

At the outset of oi^r argument it was

seen that if it could be shown that exo-
gamous tribes existed, and that the usual
relations of savage tribes to each other

were those nf hnt;ti]ity^ w^ should have_

f ound a social condition in which it was
Jnpvif:ahle that wives should svstemati-

xallv be procured by capture. It also ap-

peared that if the existence of exogamous

tribes either actually capturing their
wives, or observing the symbol of cap-
ture in their marriage ceremonies, should
be established in a reasonable number of
cases, it would be a legitimate inference
 ENDOGAMY. 137

that exogamy has prevailed wherever we

find a system of capture, or the form of
capture, existing. We now confidently
submit that the conditions requisite for

this inference have been amply esta-

blished in the three preceding chapters ;

so that we may conclude that wherever

capture, or the form of capture, prevails,

or has preva iled, there prevails, or has
prevailed, exogamy. |
Conversely, we may
say that, wherever exogamy can be found,
Iwe may confidently expect to find, after
(due investigation, at least traces of a

^system of capture. We have traced the

law and the corresponding practice among
tribes scattered over a large portion of

the globe. What farther knowledge of

rude tribes now existing may show to us

it would be idle to conjecture; but it

might be plausibly maintained, upon the

facts already known to us, that the prin-
138 EXOGAMY AND

ciple of exogamy has in fact prevailed,

and the system of capturing wives in fact

been practised at a certain stage among

every race of mankind.
Perhaps there is no question leading
deeper into the foundations of civil so-

ciety than that which regards the origin

of exogamy, unless it be the cognate
question of the origin of caste, which ad-
mits, however, more readily of ingenious
surmises, and what mathematicians call

singular solutions. W£_hdieYe-_this_rer

stric tion on marri ag-e to he rnnnprfH ^^
^^f

th e^ practice in early times of female jn-

fanticide. which, rep derinor wnmpn grarr-P

kd at onre tn pnl^^anHr^r wjfli in thp tn'hp

and the capturing of wnmpn frnm .yi'thont

Female — common among

infanticide
savages everywhere — prevails as a sys-
tem, and has been customary from time
immemorial amongst many of the races
 ENDOGAMY. 139

that exhibit the symbol of capture.* With

some of the exogamous races it appears
to be the rule to kill all female children,
except the first-born when a female. To
tribes surrounded by enemies, and, un-
aided by art, contending with the diffi-

culties of subsistence, sons were a source

of strength, both for defence and in the
quest for food, daughters a source of
weakness. Hence the cruel custom
which, leaving human
the primitive
hordes with very few young women of
their own —
occasionally with nonef —
* The Circassians have not the practice. But
there is reason to believe that they only commenced
sparing their daughters when they found a profitable

market for them. For an explanation of the eifect of

the law of blood-feud on the practice of infanticide,

see the end of chap. viii.

t In one village of the Phweelongmai, on the

eastern frontier of India, Colonel Macculloch found
in 1849 that there was not a single female child.
 —

I40 EXOGAMY AND

and, in any case, seriously disturbing

the balance of the sexes within the
hordes, forced them to prey upon one
another for wives. Usage, induced by
necessity, would in time establish a pre-

judice among the tribes observing it

a prejudice strong as a principle of reli-

gion, as every prejudice relating to mar-

riage is apt to be —against marrying
women of their own stock. A survey of
the facts of primitive life, and the break-
down of exogamy in advancing commu-
nities, exclude the notion that the law
originated in any innate or primary feel-
ing against marriage with kinsfolk. In-
deed, we shall hereafter see that it is

probable that necessity may have estab-

lished the prejudice against marrying
women of the group even before the facts
of blood-relationship had made any deep
impression on the human mind. At pre-
 —
ENDOGAMY. 141

sent it may be observed that the exist-

ence of infanticide, so wide-spread in it-

self, indicates how slight the strength of

blood-ties was in primitive times. To
form an adequate notion, on the other
hand, of the extent to which tribes might,
by means of infanticide, deprive them-
selves of their women, we have only to

bear in mind the multitude of facts which

testify to the thoughtlessness and impro-
vidence of men during the childish stage
of the human mind.
To show that the analysis by which
the true solution of the questions respect-
ing endogamy and exogamy is to be
obtained, is the analysis of a series of
phenomena which appears to form a pro-
gression, we notice the following as the
divisions into which the less advanced
portions of mankind fall when ranked ac-

cording to their rules as to connubium :

142 EXOGAMY AND

Exogamy Pure.— i. Tribal (or family)

system. —Tribes separate. All the mem-
bers of each tribe of the same blood, or
feigning themselves to be so. Marriage
prohibited between the members of the
tribe.

2. Tribal system. —Tribe a congeries

of family groups, falling into divisions,
clans, thums, etc. No connubium be-
tween members of same division : connu-
bium between all the divisions.
3. Tribal system. —Tribe a congeries
of family groups embracing several village
communities or nomadic hordes : mem-
bers of families (or primitive stock groups)
somewhat interfused. No connubium be-
tween persons whose family name points
them out as being of the same stock. /

4. Tribal system. —Tribe in divisions.

No connubium between members of the

same divisions connubium between some
:
 —
ENDOGAMY. 143

of the divisions ; only partial connubium

between others e.g., amayman of one
marry a woman of another, but a woman
of the former may not marry a man of the
latter. Approach to caste.

5. Tribal system. —Tribe in divisions.

No connubium between persons of the

same stock connubium between each
:

division and some other. No connubium

between some of the divisions. Caste.
Endogamy Pure. 6. —
Tribal (or

family) system. —Tribes separate. All the

members of each tribe of the same blood,

or feigning themselves to be so. Connu-
bium between members of the tribe : mar-
riage without the tribe forbidden and

punished.
7. Tribal system indistinct. — Mem-
bers of primitive (stock) groups interfused,
(i.) Marriage forbidden except between
persons whose family name points them
144 EXOGAMY AND

out as being of the same stock. (2.) Mar-

riage forbidden except between the mem-
bers of particular families. Persons having
connubium marked as a caste, old tribal
divisions being lost sight of.

Although these tribal systems may be

arranged as above so as to seem to form
a progression, of which the extremes are
pure exogamy on the one hand, and en-
—
dogamy transmuted into caste of the
Mantchu and Hindu types on — the
other, we have at present no right to say
that these systems were developed in

anything like this order in tribal history.

They may represent a progression from

exogamy to endogamy, or from endo-
gamy to exogamy or the middle terms,
;

so to speak, may have been produced by

the combination of groups severally or-
ganised on the one and the other of these
principles. The two types of organisa-
 ENDOGAMY. 145

tion may be equally archaic. Men must

originally have been free of any pre-
judice against marriage between relations
—not necessarily endogamous, /. e., for-

bidding marriage except between kindred,

but still more given to such unions than

to unions with strangers. From this

primitive indifference they may have ad-
vanced, some to endogamy, some to exo-

gamy.
The separate endogamous tribes are

nearly as numerous, and they are in some

respects as rude, as the separate exoga-
mous tribes. It may be noted, however,

that endogamy appears in populations

formed by the fusion of many tribes, as

the almost uniform characteristic of the

dominant race. Hereafter we shall see

how a tribe organised on the principle of

endogamy might be developed from one
organised on the principle of exogamy,
 146 EXOGAMY AND

in perfect consistency with the law against

the intermarriage of relations. And
while the existence of tribes like those
of the Mantchu Tartars, who prohibit
marriages between persons whose family
names are different, is of great weight in
favour of endogamy as a primitive type
of organisation ; on the other hand,
castes like those of India, embracing
members of several different families, and
with a marriage law like that of Menu,
strongly suggest that many endogamous
tribes have been developed from tribes
organised on the opposite principle.
Since, moreover, the reconversion of a
caste or of an endogamous tribe into an
exogamous tribe is inconceivable — we
have no experience of caste disappearing
except in advanced communities, and then
only on a revolution of sentiment being
produced by political influences — the
 ENDOGAMY. 147

choice seems to be between regarding the

two classes of tribes as organised ab
initio on distinct principles, or holding
the exogamous to be the more archaic.

We may notice as strange, that fre-

quently tribes thus oppositely organised
are found inhabiting the same area.

On the sub-Himalayan ranges, for ex-

ample, are the Sodhas, who intermarry

with the Rajputs, not with each other;
the Magars, who prohibit marriages be-
tween members of the same thum ; and,
again, the Kocch, Bodo, Ho, and Dhumal,
who are forbidden to marry except to mem-
bers of their own tribes or kiels. And, in
some districts—as in the hills on the
north-eastern frontier of India, in the Cau-
casus, and the hill ranges of Syria — ^we find

a variety of tribes, proved, by physical

characteristics and the affinities of lan-
guage, of one and the same original stock,
148 EXOGAMY AND

yet in this particular differing fo^o ccelo

from one another —some forbidding mar-
riage within the tribe, and some proscrib-
ing marriage without it.

What has been said is enough to show

that the question of the comparative
archaism of exogamy and endogamy is as
difficult as it is interesting. We shall in

the next chapter lead up to a fuller dis-

cussion of that question, while investigat-
ing more minutely than we have hitherto
done the conditions of the form of cap-
ture being evolved. We shall there
endeavour to establish the following pro-
positions :
— I. That the most ancient
system in which the idea of blood-rela-
tionship was embodied, was the system
of kinship through females only. 2. That
the primitive groups were, or were as-
sumed to be, homogeneous. 3. That the
system of kinship through females only
 ENDOGAMY. 149

tended to render the exogamous groups

heterogeneous, and thus to supersede
the systerti of capturing wives. 4. That
in the advance from savagery the system
of kinship through females only was suc-
ceeded by a system which acknowledged
kinship through males also ; and which,
in most cases passed into a system which
acknowledged kinship through males only.
5. That the system of kinship through
males tended to rear up homogeneous
groups, and thus to restore the original
condition of affairs —-where the exoga-
mous prejudice survived —as regards both
the practice of capturing wives and the
evolution of the form of capture. 6. That
a local tribe, under the combined influ-

ence of exogamy and the system of female

kinship, might attain a balance of persons
of different sexes regarded as being of
different descent, and that thus its mem-
ISO EXOGAMY AND ENDOGAMY.

bers might be able to intermarry with

one another, and wholly within the tribe,

consistently with the principle of exo-

gamy. 7. That a local tribe, having
reached this stage and grown proud
through success in war, might decline
intermarriage with other local tribes and
become a caste. 8.That on kinship be-
coming agnatic, the members of such a
tribe might yield to the universal tendency
of rude races to eponomy, and feign them-
selves to be all derived from a common
ancestor, and so become endogamous^
And 9. That there is reason to think that
some endogamous tribes became endo-
gamous in this manner.
 SYSTEMS OF KINSHIP. 151

CHAPTER VIII.

ANCIENT SYSTEMS OF KINSHIP AND

THEIR INFLUENCE ON THE STRUC-
TURE OF PRIMITIVE GROUPS.

The earliest human groups can have had

no idea of kinship. We do not mean to

say that there ever was a time when men

were not bound together by a feeling of
kindred. The filial and fraternal affec-

tions may be instinctive. They are ob-

viously independent of any theory of
kinship, its origin or consequences ; they
are distinct from the perception of the
unity of blood upon which kinship de-
pends ; and they may have existed long
before kinship became an object of
thought. What we would say is, th^t

ideas of kinship must be regarded as

152 ANCIENT SYSTEMS

growths —must have grown like all other

ideas related to matters primarily cogniz-

able only by the senses ; and that the
fact of consanguinity must have long re-
mained unperceived as other facts, quite
as obvious, have done. In other words,
at the root of kinship is a physical fact,

which could be discerned only through

observation and reflection —a fact, there-

fore, which must for a time have been

overlooked. No advocate of innate ideas,
we should imagine, will maintain their
existence on a subject so concrete as
relationship by blood.
A group of kindred in that stage of
ignorance is the rudest that can be ima-
gined. Though they were chiefly held
together by the feeling of kindred, the
apparent bond of fellowship between the
members of such a group would be that
they and theirs had always been com-
 OF KINSHIP. 153

panions in war or the chase —joint-ten-

ants of the same cave or grove. To one
another they would simply be as com-
rades. As distinguished from men of
other groups, they would be of the
group, and named after it.

Hence, most naturally, on the idea

of blood-relationship arising, would be
formed the conception of Stocks. Previ-
ously individuals had been affiliated not
to persons, but to some group. The new
idea of blood-relationship would more
readily demonstrate the group to be
composed of kindred than it would evolve
a special system of blood-ties between
certain of the individuals in the group.
The members of a group would now have
become brethren. As distinguished from
men of other groups, they would be of the
group-stock, and named after the group.*

* It is a question for philologists how far the

 —

154 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

The development of the idea of blood-

relationship into a system of kinship,
must have been a work of time —at least

the establishment over any great area of

any such system as an institution of cus-

tomary law must have been slowly ef-

fected. It is most improbable that that

idea, when first formed, was anywhere at
once embodied in a well-defined system
of kinship.
We shall endeavour to show
I. That the most ancient system in
which the idea of blood-relationship was

earliest words which denote a human group involve

the idea of blood. In one case they seem not to have
done so. Grant, in his "Origin and Descent of the
Gael," says that teadhloch and cuedichc or coedichc,
Gaelic names for family, mean the first having a com-
mon residence ; the second those who eat together.
The Gael had, however, the more general terms finne
and cinne —the former meaning born of the same
stock, and the latter denoting the tribe.
 —
THROUGH FEMALES ONLY. 155

embodied, was a system of kinship

through females only.
Once a man has perceived the fact

of consanguinity in the simplest case

namely, that he has his mother's blood
in his veins, he may quickly see that he
is of the same blood with her other child-
ren. A little more reflection will enable

him to see that he is of one blood with

the brothers and sisters of his mother.
On further thought he will perceive that
he is of the same blood with the chil-

dren of his mother's sister. And, in pro-

cess of time, following the ties of blood

through his mother, and females of the

same blood, he must arrive at a system

of kinship through females. The blood-

ties through females being obvious and
indisputable, the idea of blood-relation-
ship, as soon as it was formed, must have
begun to develop, however slowly, into a
 —

IS6 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

system embracing them. What further

development this idea might have
whether it would simultaneously have a
development in the direction of kinship
through males — must have depended
on the circumstances connected with
paternity. If the paternity of a child
were usually as indisputable as the ma-
ternity, we might expect to find kinship
through males acknowledged soon after
kinship through females.* But however

* It has been doubted whether the blood-tie

through the father is entitled to rank with that
through the mother. It may be that the connec-
tion between father and child is less intimate than
that between mother and child as regards the trans-
mission of characteristics, mental or physical. And
the former tie is unquestionably less obvious than
thelatter. It is, however, an undoubted blood-tie,

and must have been thought of soon after that

through mothers. All that it concerns us to show in
the text is, that when the idea of it was formed it

could only receive development into a system of

 THROUGH FEMALES ONLY. 157

natural it might be that men should think

of blood-ties as possible to be propa-
gated through fathers, blood-ties through
fathers could not find a place in a system
of kinship, unless circumstances usually
allowed of some degree of certainty as
to who the father of a child was, or of
certainty as to the father's blood.* A
system of relationship through fathers
could only be formed —as we have seen
that a system of relationship through
mothers would be formed —after a good
deal of reflection upon the fact of pater-

nity. And fathers must usually be

known before men will think of relation-

ship through fathers —indeed, before the

kinship on certain conditions, which were not easily
satisfied.

* It will be seen that there may be certainty

as to the father's blood (as where all the possible
fathers are brothers) without there being certainty
as to the father.
158 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

idea of a father can be formed. There

could be no system of kinship through
males if paternity was usually, or in a

great proportion of cases, uncertain. The

requisite degree of certainty can be had
only when the mother is appropriated to
a particular man men
as his wife, or to
of one blood as wife, and when women
thus appropriated are usually found
faithful to their lords.

Considering that the history of all

the races of men, so far as we know it,

is the history of a progress from the

savage state ; considering the social con-
dition of rude tribes still upon the earth,
—remembering that the races which can
be traced in history had all a previous
history, which remains unwritten, — it

cannot seem a very strange proposition

that there has been a stage in the de-
velopment of human races when there
 THROUGH FEMALES ONLY. 159

was no such appropriation of women to

particular —
men when, in short, marriage,
as it exists among civilized nations, was
not practised. We believe we shall
show, to a sufficient degree of proba-
bility, that there have been times when
marriage, in this sense, was yet undreamt
of. Wherever this has been the case the
paternity of children must have been
uncertain ; the conditions essential to

a system of kinship through males being

formed would therefore be wanting; no
such system would be formed ; there
would be — there could be — kinship
through females only.
Not to assume that the progress of the

various races of men from savagery has

been a uniform process, that all the stages
which any of. them has gone through have
been passed in their order by all, we shall

be justified in believing that more or less

 —

i6o THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

of promiscuity in the connection of the

sexes, and a system of kinship through
females only have subsisted among races
of men among which no traces of them
remain, when we have shown their exist-
ence in a considerable number of cases
if in these there appear nothing exceptional.
After what has been said above, it must
be plain that kinship through females only,
if it exist at all, must be a more archaic
system of relationship than kinshipthrough
males —the product of an earlier and ruder
stage in human development than the latter
—somewhat more than a step farther back
in the direction of savagery. To prove its

existence on such a scale as to entitle it to

rankamong the normal phenomena of
human development, is, we may now say,
to prove it most ancient system of
the
kinship. As customs tend to perpetuate
themselves and die hard, it will not in any
 THROUGH FEMALES ONL Y. i6i

degree make against our explanation of

the origin of kinship through females only,
that it should be found in some cases
along with marriage relations which allow
of certainty as to fathers. It is inconceiv-

able that any thing but the want of cer-

tainty on that point could have long pre-
vented the acknowledgment of kinship
through males ; and in such cases we
shall be able to conclude that such cer-
tainty has formerly been wanting —that
more or less promiscuous intercourse be-
tween the sexes has formerly prevailed.
The connection between these two things
—uncertain paternity and kinship through
females seems so necessary— that of
only,

cause and —that we may confidently

effect

infer the one where we find the other.

Let us see, then, what can be said for
the proposition that there has been a
stage in the progress of men in which a
i62 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

woman was not usually appropriated to

a particular man as his wife.
All the evidence we have goes to show
that men were from the beginning gre-
garious. The geological record distinctly
exhibits them in groups naked hunters —
or feeders upon shell fish leading a pre-
carious life of squalid misery. This
testimony is confirmed by all history.

We hear nothing in the most ancient

times of individuals except as being
members of groups. The history of pro-
perty is the history of the development of
proprietary rights inside groups, which
were at first the only owners,* and of all

other personal rights —even including the

right in offspring— may be said that
it

their history is that of the gradual asser-

tion of the claims of individuals against

the traditional rights of groups.
* " Ancient Law," ut supra, p. 268.
 THROUGH FEMALES ONL V. 163

We, of course, know nothing about the

co-ordination of the sexes in the earliest
groups. The reader knows already what
must be our conjecture as to what it was.
We can trace the line of human progress
far back towards brutishness ; finding as
we go back the noble faculties peculiar to
man weaker and weaker in their manifest-
ations, producing less and less effect, — at

last scarcely any effect at all —upon his

position and habits. As we go back, we
find more and more in men the traits of

gregarious animals ; slighter and slighter

indications of operative intellect. As
among other gregarious animals, the
unions of the sexes were probably in the
earliest times, loose, transitory, and in

some degree promiscuous.

Before the invention of the arts, and
the formation of provident habits, the
struggle for existence must often have be-
i64 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

come very serious. The instincts of self-

preservation, therefore, must have fre-

quently predominated and shaped the

features of society freely, as if the unsel-
fish affections had no place in human
nature. None of the races of mankind
can have been spared the cruel experience
of this initiatory stage; or can have
escaped the effects of that experience on
its character and customs. Even those
most favourably situated must have had
long periods of trial, and have suffered
from the incessant hostility of neighbours.
So, without supposing the course of human
events to have been uniform, we must
conceive of early human society as having
been throughout affected by influences of
the same general, unfriendly, character,
and as having been determined, though
perhaps by unequal pressures, toward^s.
one uniform type in all its parts.
 THROUGH FEMALES ONL Y. 165

Foremost among the results of this

early struggle for food and security, must

have been an effect upon the balance of
the sexes. As braves and hunters were
required and valued, it would be the in-

terest of every horde to rear, when possi-

ble, its healthy male children. It would
be less its interest to rear females, as they
would be less capable of self-support, and
of contributing, by their exertions, to the

common good. In this lies the only ex-

planation which can be accepted of the
origin of those systems of female infanti-
cide still existing, the discovery of which
from time to time, in out of the way
places, so shocks our humanity. It is

of no consequence by what theories the

races who practise infanticide now de-
fend the practice.* There can be no
* Often, as among the Khonds, it is found to be
an institution of religion.

M
1 66 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

doubt that its origin is ever3rwhere re-

ferable to that early time of struggle
and necessity which we have been con-
templating.
What is now true in varying degrees
of all the rudest races may be assumed to
have been true of all the earliest groups.
We may predicate of the primitive groups
that they were all or nearly all marked by
a want of balance between the sexes —the
males being in the majority. The reader
will have little difficulty in granting that
we may do so when he reflects on the pre-
valence of exogamy, the origin of which
must be referred to that want of balance.
And we think he will be still more ready
to make the concession when we shall
have surveyed the facts connected with
polyandry —the origin of which must be
referred to the same cause.
What diminished the number of the
 THROUGH FEMALES ONL Y. 167

female sex would increase the importatnce

of women. The first result of the balance
of the sexes being against the females,
must have been to give every woman
more than one, it might be several wooers.
Apart from any disproportion of the

sexes, we might expect the more engag-

ing females of a horde to be surrounded
by suitors. Savages are unrestrained by
any sense of delicacy from a copartnery
in sexual enjoyments ; and, indeed, in

the civilised state, the sin of great cities

shows that there are no natural restraints
sufficient to hold men back from grosser

copartneries.But within a horde possess-

ing few women, such copartneries would
be a necessity. And as savages assert

for themselves a high degree of independ-

ence, it is obvious that grave difficulties

must have surrounded the constitution

and regulation of such copartneries. And
1 68 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

to the consideration of these difficulties

we are led, the instant we conceive of
the primitive groups as containing fewer
women than men.
The men of a group must either have

quarrelled about their women and se-

parated, splitting the horde into hostile

sections ; or, in the spirit of indifference,
indulged in savage promiscuity. That
quarrels and divisions were of frequent
OQCurrence cannot be doubted. These
were the first wars for women, and they
went to form th^ habits which established
exogamy. And whether quarrels arose
or not, we are led to contemplate groups
—the horde or its sections —indulging in

a promiscuity more or less general. The

quarrels must have been between sections
of the hordes rather than between indivi-
duals. No individual at that stage could
well carry off a woman, isolate himself.
 THROUGH FEMALES ONLY. 169

and found a family. However brave and

strong, he could scarcely maintain his
independence for any time against nume-
rous assailants. Unless these quarrels
went the length of completely disin-
tegrating the groups —a result which
the gregarious nature of men tended
to prevent — we must arrive at last

at groups within which harmony was

maintained through indifference and pro-
miscuity.
These groups would hold their women,
like their other goods, in common. And
the children, while attached to mothers,
would belong to the horde.* We find

* The tie between mother and child, which exists

as a matter of necessity during infancy, is not unfre-
quently found to be lost sight of among savages on
the age of independence being reached. The liability
of mothers to be carried off would, among exogamous
races, simplify the general filiation of dhildren to the

group, rather than to mothers.

 —

I/O THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

traces of the former existence of groups

of this description ; and it is probable
that before the rise of kinship, all the

human groups were of that model. On

the rise of kinship, the difficulty due to
the scarcity of women would more easily
be overcome. The first advance from a
general promiscuity —assuming its exist-

ence —would naturally be to a promiscuity

less general— to arrangements between
small sets of men to attach themselves
to a particular woman. Previous to the
establishment of a system of kinship
when men were bound to each other only
by the tribal tie — it is obvious that there
would constantly be difficulties in the
way of their forming such combinations.
When, however, the system of kinship
through females only, had been firmly
established, every group stood resolved
into a number of small brotherhoods.
 THROUGH FEMALES ONLY. 171

each composed of sons of the same

mother. And within these, the feeling
of close kinship would simplify the con-
stitution of the polyandrous arrange-
ment.
Now, here, at length, we are upon the
firm ground of fact. We have examples
of general promiscuity ; and examples of
modified promiscuity, in which, with a
pretence of marriage, the woman may
bestow her favours upon any one, under
certain restrictions as to rank and family.
We have numerous examples of poly-
andry, and they are such as to show that
polyandry must be regarded as a modi-
fication of and advance from promiscuity.
We have examples of polyandry in which
the wife has several husbands, who are
not necessarily relatives ; and very many
examples of polyandry in which the hus-
bands are all brothers. We often find
172 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

these two forms of polyandry in the same

district, in different sections of the popu-
lation : here, the husbands as a rule, are

no relations ; there, the husbands as a rule,

are brothers. Farther, where the hus-

bands are not brothers, we find the system
of relationship through females only; and,
so enduring is custom, we very often find
that system where marriage has long
been so regulated as to permit of kin-
ship through males. In many cases we
find traces of the system of kinship
through females only, lingering about
the laws of marriage and succession to
estates and titles, even where male kinship
has been long established. Moreover, in
nearly all the cases in which traces are
to be found of kinship through females
only, traces of polyandry also remain.
Thus, what we find is' just what was
to be expected if the account we have
 THROUGH FEMALES ONL Y. 173

offered of the origin of polyandry were

correct.

We repeat, that in showing the pre-

valence of polyandry, we shall be showing
the prevalence of a modification of pro-
miscuity. This is manifest as regards
the ruder species of polyandry, in which
the husbands are not relations. It is

equally, though less obviously, true of

the less rude polyandry in which the
husbands are brothers. From the way
in which polyandry is presented to us,
we shall have a proof that the less rude
polyandry was developed from the ruder
by the help of the system of kinship
through females only —was superinduced,
that is, upon a promiscuity less quali-
fied than itself. Promiscuity, produ-
cing uncertainty of fatherhood, led to
the system of kinship through mothers
only. This kinship paved the way for
 ;

174 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

polyandry such as we commonly find it

and this form of polyandry introduced

male kinship.* That, along with the
ruder polyandry, we always find the sys-

tem of kinship through females only, and

that where the less rude form prevails we
can generally trace that system, is more-
over a proof a posteriori of what we have
shown must be the case, that the origin
of kinship through females only is refer-

able to uncertainty of male parentage.

We shall not concern ourselves with
the direct evidence which might be ad-
duced to show that there once prevailed

* We shall see farther on how numerous the known

cases are in which the progress to male kinship and the
patriarchal system was a progress having this kind
of polyandry for one of its stages. The other main
highway of progress must have lain through the
system of confining women —a system probably es-
tablished by exogamy and the practice of capturing
wives.
 THROUGH FEMALES ONL V. 175

among men a promiscuity less quali-

fied than polyandry. We may how-

ever recall the fact, that tradition is

found everywhere pointing to a time

when marriage was unknown, and to
some legislator to whom it owed its
institution among the Egyptians to
:

Menes the Chinese to Fohi the Greeks

; ;

to Cecrops the Hindus to Svetaketu.*

;

And we shall proceed to show how much

evidence remains to give verisimilitude
to these traditions. Passing over com-
munities in which, according to ancient
historians, something like a general pro-
miscuity prevailed —such as the Massa-
getae, Agathyrsi, and the ancient Spar-
tans ;
passing over also the numerous
races now existing, which, according to
modern travellers, have no conception

* See Muir's Sanskrit Texts, i860. Part ii. p. 336.

1/6 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

of conjugal fidelity* —we shall now go

on to consider the regulated promiscuity

* It may be as well to append some modern ex-

amples of promiscuity, and of practices which have the
same effect in rendering uncertain male parentage.
The Ansarians have their wives in common ; the people
of Martawan, of the tribe of Ansarians, let out their
wives and daughters (Volney, " Travels," chap, xxvii.)
The Keiaz (Paropamisans) lend their wives to their
guests (Latham, "Des.Ethn.," vol. ii. p. 246) ; so do the
Eimauk (Caubul), —Elphinstone, 18 15, p. 483; so,

we are informed, do the Kandyans. The Mpongme

(Africa) lend wives (Reade, " Sav. Afr.," p. 259) ; so
do the Koryaks and Chukchi, who lend out daugh-
ters as well (N. E. Siberia) —
Erkman, vol. ii. p. 531,
and V. Cochrane's "Journey," 1825, vol.i. p. 336. The
Koryaks are also polyandrous. The same disregard
of conjugal fidelity appeared in Caindu, Cascar (Turk-
istan Tartary), and in Cumana (Gaya, p. 104 ; Marco
Polo, ut infra, p. 258). We find it now among the
Aimaks ("Des. Ethno.," vol. i. p. 333). It was cus-
tomary in Kamul (Marco Polo, Bohn's edition, p.
1 10). Montesquieu, b. 16, c. viii., remarks on the
licentious wantonness of the women of Patan, against
which the men had to adopt measures of self-prdtec-
tion. Mr. Wilson of Mussoorie, in an admirable report
 THROUGH FEMALES ONL V. 177

known as polyandry, and see to what ex-

tent it exists, and what traces of its

former existence still remain.

on the Puharies of Gurwhal ("A Summer Ramble

in the Himalayas," q. v. p. 182), says of the Gun-
garees and Perbuttees : "Their immorality is some-
thing incredible — chastity being little appreciated,
even where it does exist." In various other quarters
we find practices fatal to certainty of male parentage,
such as frequent divorces, e. g., among the Bedouins,
Burckhardt, " Notes," I. 1 1 1 ; and marriages for an
agreed upon term of endurance, usually short.

Such marriages were usual in Sounan, Arabia

Felix (Hamilton's "New Account of the East
Indies," vol. i. p. 51); in Siam (Id., vol. ii. p. 279).
In China such marriages are said to be still cus-
tomary. In a recent report of the proceedings of
the Society of Sainte-Enfance in China, in the Esper-
ance of Nancy, it is said that, in many parts, China-
men may repudiate their wives, and marry again, every
year. As a result, the children belong to the mother,
who has over them the power of life or death. The
same must have been the case in Turkistan (Marco
Polo, ut supra, p. 99). According to Livingstone
("Travels," p. 394), marriage in Loando is almost un-
known —an unsettled concubinage. And see Idem,
 ;

178 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

Let US first see what is the area over

which polyandry now prevails. It pre-

vails universally in Tibet, and is common

in the Himalayan and Sub-Himalayan
regions adjoining Tibet ; in the valley of

Kashmir ; among the Spiti, in Ladak

in Kistewar and Sirmor. It occurs

p. 436, for an example of savage indifference as to

marital purity. In the Polynesian Mythology, we
have an excellent casual proof of the uncertainty of
male parentage, even where there is marriage (poly-
gamous). A young man distinguishes himself, and
turns out to be the chief's son. He was " a young
man, the name of whose father had never been told
by his mother." The lady was one of the chief's
wives! And see Turner's "Tibet," p. 10, and M'Cul-
loch's " Munniepore," for examples of a system of
pawning wives. See also, for similar or worse cus-
toms, Buchanan's "Journey from Madras," 1807, vol. ii.

pp. 129, 492, and vol. iii. p. 66 ; Krusenstern's "Voy-

age," 18 1 3, vol. ii.p. 24s (Kamschatka) ; La Perouse's
Voyage," 1798, vol. ii. p. 195 (Island of Maouna) ;

Maundeville, chap, xxiii. (Chatay) ; and Hue's

"Travels," vol. ii. p. 142, Nat. Illus. Lib.
 THROUGH FEMALES ONLY 179

among the Telingese ; in the Sivalik

mountains, and in Kasia. There are un-
mistakeable traces of its existence till re-

cently in Gurwhal, Sylhet and Cachar.

Farther south in India we find poly-
andry among the Tudas of the Nil-
gherry Hills, the Coorgs of Mysore, and
the Nairs, the Maleres, and Poleres of
Malabar. We find it off the Indian
coast in Ceylon ; and going eastward
strike on it as an ancient though now
almost superseded custom in New Zea-
land, and in one or two of the Pacific
Islands. Going northward we meet it

again in the Aleutian Islands ; and taking

the continent to the west and north of the
Aleutians we find it among the Koryaks
to the north of the Okhotsk Sea. Cross-
ing the Russian Empire to the west side
we find polyandry among the Saporogian
Cossacks ; we thus have traced it at
i8o THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

points half round the globe. This is not

all, however. Polyandry is found in

several parts of Africa and of America.

We have the authority of Humboldt for
its prevalence among the tribes on the
Orinocco, and he also vouches for its

former prevalence in Lancerota one of

the Canary Islands.*

* Turner's " Tibet," 1800, p. 348. Vigne's " Kash-

mir," 1S42, vol. i. p. 37. Cunningham's "Ladak,"
1854, p. 306. Buchanan's "Journey," etc., 1807,
vol. ii. pp. 408-412. Archer's "Upper India," 1833,
vol. i. p. 185. Latham's "Descriptive Ethnology,"
1859, vol. i. pp. 24-28 ; vol. ii. pp. 398, 496, and 462.
Humboldt's "Personal Narrative" (William's Transla-
tion), 1 8 19, chap, i., vol. i. p. 84, and vol. v., part ii.,

p. 549. Hamilton's " New Account of the East

Indies," 1727, vol. i., p. 274 and 308. Reade's
" Savage Africa," p. 43. Erkman's " Travels in
Siberia," voL ii. p. 531. "Marriage Ceremonies," by
Seignior Gaya, 1698, pp. 70 and 96. Tennent's
"Ceylon," 1859, vol. ii. p. 429. "Legend of Rupe,"
Grey's "Polynesian Mythology," 1854, p. 81. "A
Summer Ramble in the Himalayas," i860, p. 202.
 THROUGH FEMALES ONL Y. i8i

From ancient history we learn that

polyandry at one time existed over even a
greater area. Traces of it remained in

the time of Tacitus among the Germans.*

And while in certain cantons of Media,
according to Strabo,t polygunia was au-
thorised by express law which ordained
every inhabitant to maintain at least

seven wives ; in other cantons the op-

posite rule was in force : a woman was
allowed to havemany husbands, and they
looked with contempt on those who had
less than five. Caesar informs us that in
his time polyandry prevailed among the

Fisher's "Memoir of Sylhet, etc.," in Journal of Asiatic

Soc, Bengal, vol. ix. p. 834. " Asiat. Res.," vol. v.

p. 13. Our information regarding the Saporogian

Cossacks has been obtained from Sir John M'Neil.
* " German." xx., Latham's Edn., p. 67, et seq.
t Lib. ii. p. 798 ; and see Goquet, vol. iii. book
vi. c. i.

N
1 82 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

Britons.* We find direct evidence of its

existence among the Picts in the Irish

NenniuSjt not to mention traces of it in

the Pictish Laws of Succession. Fur-

ther we find traditions of it among the
Hindus! — especially among the Raj-
puts. And we find it among the Getes
of Transaxiana (the Yuti or Yuechi of
the Chinese historians).! To see where
else it prevailed we must go back upon
our authorities and examine the various
phases of polyandry which they present,
and obtain a test for detecting its pre-
sence where historical evidence of its

existence is awanting.
The ruder form of polyandry, as we
* " De Bello Gallico," lib. v., c. xiv.
t Appendix LI.

I Tod's "Annals, etc., of Rajasthan,'' 1829, p. 48 ;

and see Max Milller's " Hist, of Sans. Anc. Lit." pp.
45, et seq.; Tod's "Travels," 1839, p. 464.
§ Tod's " Travels," ut supra.
 THROUGH FEMALES ONL Y. 183

have said, is that in which the husbands

are not brothers ; the less rude is that in
which they are brothers. The polyandry
of the Kasias, the Nairs, and the Saporo-
gian Cossacks, appears to be purely of
the ruder sort, and is attended by the
system of kinship through females only.
It is left doubtful what is the form of the
institution in some instances, as in the
Aleutian Islands, and among the Koryaks.
But in all the other cases in which poly-
andry occurs, the authorities show that the
ruder form occurs among the lower classes

wherever the less rude occurs, except in

Tibet, where polyandry is universal and

the husbands are always brothers ;

except

in Malabar, where polyandry is universally

practised by all classes, saving the Brah-
mans only, but is of the ruder species
among the high caste Nairs, and of the
less rude among the lower castes, the
 1 84 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

Teers, Maleres, and Poleres. It is in the

nature of the case that all the possible
forms of polyandry must lie in between,
or be embraced in, the Nair and Tibetan
forms.
Let us attend then to the accounts we
have of these two forms. Of the Nair
polyandry we have three accounts. The
account in the "Asiatic Researches"* is

thatamong the Nairs it is the custom for

one woman " to have attached to her two
males, or four, or perhaps more, and they
cohabit according to rules." With this
account that of Hamilton agrees,! except-
ing that he states that a Nair woman
could have no more than twelve husbands,
and had to select these under certain re-
strictions as to rank and caste. On the
*
Vol. V. p. 13.

t "Account of the East Indies," ut supra, vol. i.

p. 308.
 THROUGH FEMALES ONLY. 185

other hand, Buchanan states* that the

women after marriagef are free to co-

habit with any number of men, under

certain restrictions as to tribe and
caste. It is consistent with the three
accounts, and is directly stated by Hamil-
ton, that a Nair may be one in several
combinations of husbands ; that is, he
may have any number of wives. The
accounts, however, differ in regard to one
important particular. Buchanan repre-

sents the wife as living in family with

her mother or brother, while Hamilton
represents her as having " an house built
for her own conveniency" on being mar-
ried to the first of her husbands. In the

* Buchanan's "Journey," vol. ii. p. 411.

In the "Asiatic Researches" it is said, "The Nairs

f
practice not marriage, except as far as may be implied

from their tying a thread round the neck of the woman

on the first occasion."
 —

1 86 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

"AsiaticResearches"thewifeisrepresented
as living with her mother or brother. The
probability is that both arrangements are

occasionally adopted, the more usual

course being for the wife to remain in the
family of her mother and brothers. In
Ceylon, where the higher and lower poly-
andry co-exist, marriage is of two sorts
Deega or Beena —according as the wife
goes to live in the house and village of
her husbands, or as the husband or hus-
bands come to live with her in or near
the house of her birth.* And among the
Kandyans the rights of inheritance of a
* See Forbes' "Ceylon," 1840, vol. i. p. 333. Mr.
Starke, late Chief-Justice of Ceylon, says that " some-
times a deega married girl returned to her parents'
house and was there provided with a beena husband
who lived with her in family" (private letter). The
beena husband's tenure of office seems to have been
very insecure. See Forbes, ut supra. The Kandyans
are now under British rule, and their marriages regu-
lated by a special ordinance.
 —
THROUGH FEMALES ONL Y. 187

woman and her children are found to de-

pend on whether the woman is a beena or
a deega wife.
The three accounts which we have of
the Nair polyandry are agreed that the
Nair husbands are usually not brothers
usually not relatives —and that the institu-
tion leaves male parentage and the father's

blood quite uncertain. "In consequence

of this strange manner of propagating
the species," says Buchanan,* "no Nair
knows his father, and every man looks
upon his sister's children as his heirs.
He indeed looks upon them with the
same fondness that fathers in other parts
of the world have for their own children,
and he would be considered as an un-
natural monster were he to show such
signs of grief at the death of a child,
which from long cohabitation and love
Ut supra, vol. ii. p. 412.
 ;

1 88 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

with its mother, he might suppose to be

his own, as he did at the death of a child

of his sister. A man's mother manages

his family ; and after her death his eldest
sister assumes the direction. Brothers
almost always live under the same roof
but if one of the family separates from the
rest he is always accompanied by his
favourite sister. A man's movable pro-
perty, after his death, is divided among
the sons and daughters of all his sisters ;

and if there are lands, their management

falls to the eldest male of the family."*
Now here, derived from the ruder
polyandry, is an exceedingly rude, the
rudest, form of family system with which
we are acquainted. And it is a sort of
family system which is found, more or
less modified in some of its features, in
several cases, where marriage is now
See Buchanan, vol. ii. p. 594.
 THROUGH FEMALES ONLY. 189

either monogamous or polygamous. Its

chief features are the absence of a pater-

nal head, and the system of female suc-
cession. Among the Kocch, with whom
marriage is now monogamous, we find

the same system, excepting that the

family circle includes the daughter's hus-

band, as a subordinate member of the

family. A Kocch man goes, on his mar-

riage, like the beena husband of Ceylon,
to live in family with his wife and her
mother ; on his marriage all his property

is made over to his wife ; and on her

death her heirs are her daughters.* Here
we conclude that the advance from the
ruder polyandry to monogamy took place
in some way consistent with the pre-
servation of the main features of the
family system peculiar to the ruder poly-
andry — consistent with the mother's
* " Des. Ethn.," vol. i. p. 96.
I go THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

maintaining her position as the head of

the family, and with an increase of the
influence of women as connecting links
in the social and proprietary systems.
We shall presently see that the advance
in this direction must be counted excep-
tional ; at the same time it cannot well be
doubted that such a family system as we
find among the Kocch had its origin in
the ruder species of polyandry.
What, then, was the normal line of

progress ? We think that we shall be

able to show what it was —that it lay
between the lower and higher polyandry.
In the accounts we have, we can detect
stages of preparation for the change
from the former species of polyandry to
the latter. We must regard as the rudest
cases those in which the wife lives not
with her husbands, but with her mother
or brothers. In these cases a woman's
 —
THROUGH FEMALES ONLY. 191

children are born in and belong to her

mother's house. In the cases next in
order of rudeness, the wife passes into
cohabitation, according to fixed rules,

with the husbands, in a house of her

own —becoming thus detached from her
family, though still connected with it

through the right of her children to be-

come heirs to the family estate. Her
children would still belong to her mother's
family — the
want of a community of
blood and interests among the husbands
preventing the appropriation of the child-
ren to them. Such cases, however —de-
taching the woman from her family
would prepare the way for a species of
marriage still less rude, in which the
woman passed from her family, not into
a house of her own, but into the family
of her husbands, in which her children
would be born, and to which they would
192 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

belong. This could only happen when

the husbands were all of one blood, and
had common rights of property — in short,

when they were brothers.

This last was a most important step
in advance. The girl of a house no longer
remained at home with her mother and
brothers —aiding in and succeeding to the
management; she passed into another
family, associating with the. sons thereof
as wife ; while her place at home was
assumed by a stranger —as wife to her
brothers. There being now a commu-
nity of blood and interests in the hus-
bands, there was nothing to prevent the
appropriation to them of her children
— an appropriation which would dis-
qualify the children for being heirs to
the property of her mother and brothers.
To give effect now to the old law of
succession, would be, not to keep pro-
 THROUGH FEMALES ONL Y. 193

perty in families, but to introduce a

system of exchanges of family estates.

Moreover, when this form of marriage

became general, and when conjugal fide-

lity was secured by penalties, we should

expect to find that the system of kinship
through males would appear — this species

of marriage allowing of certainty as to

the father's blood, though not of certainty
as to fathers. A woman's children would
become the heirs of the husband's family

in which they would be born, and to

which they would belong.

Now it is this highest development of
polyandry, and of the family system which
polyandry admitted of, which we find in

Tibet.
" Here," says Turner, speaking of
Tibet,* " we find a practice —that of poly-
andry — universally prevailing ; and see
* Turner's "Tibet," 1800, p 348.
194 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

one female associating her fate and for-

tune with all the brothers of a family,

without any restriction of age or of num-
bers. The choice of a wife is the privilege

of the elder brother The number

of husbands is not, as far as I could learn,
defined or restricted within any limits ; it

sometimes happens that in a small family

there is but one male ; and the number,

perhaps, may seldom exceed that which a
native of rank, during my residence at
Teshoo Loomboo, pointed out to me in

a family resident in the neighbourhood,

in which five brothers were then living
very happily with one female, under the
same connubial compact. Nor is this

sort of league confined to the lower ranks

of people alone : it is found also fre-

quently in the most opulent families."

Let us now see to what extent poly-
andry of the Tibetan type can be traced
 THROUGH FEMALES ONLY. 195

elsewhere than in Tibet ; and what evi-

dence there is of its being an advance from

the Nair species of polyandry. The autho-
rities already cited* exhibit the Tibetan
as the prevailing species of polyandry in
nearly the whole of the Himalayan and
sub-Himalayan regions: Kashmir, Ladak,
Kinawer, Kistewar, and Sirmor. It is

the general form of polyandry in Ceylon.

It is the form which Humboldt found
among the red -men. " Among the
Avaroes and the Maypures," he says,
"brothers have often but one wife." It

is the form which Caesar found among

the Britons. " Uxores habent deni duo-
denique inter se communes, et maxime
fratres cum fratribus, et parentes cum
liberis ; sed si qui sunt ex his nati, eorum
habentur liberi a quibus primum virgines
quseque ductae sunt."t And to show that
* Ante,- p. 180. t
" De Bello Gallico," v. xiv.
196 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

the two forms of polyandry are stages in

a progress, we repeat that almost every-
where, outside Tibet, we find the lower

form accompanying the higher. In some

quarters the lower only is known —as in

Kasia and among the Nairs. In others

— Kooloo, for example — the lower form
is prevalent ; the higher* also is known,
but is exceptional. Again, in numerous
quarters the higher is the general form,
and the lower the exceptional — as in
Ceylon ; and lastly, in some quarters, as
in Tibet, we lose sight of the lower form

% Archer, in his "Upper India" (1833), v. i.

pp.
235-6, says of the Grooah (Kooloo) :
"
Here one
woman cohabits with two, three, and four men, and
they may even be all brothers ; this practice is univer-
sal. I was informed of the rules and modes of inter-
course, all evincing a state of society least beholden
to civilization, or less sophisticated than any yet
known."
 THROUGH FEMALES ONL Y. 197

altogether. The higher polyandry has

become a national institution.

And finding the higher polyandry a

national institution, we observe that we
are in a position to show that most pro-
bably polyandry formerly prevailed over
a still vaster area than that within which
we have hitherto found it. We have
seen that with polyandry, of the Tibetan
type, wherever it was long and generally
established, kinship through males must
have been introduced ; the father's blood,
though not the father, being certain,

where the wife was faithful. We have

also seen, in the case of the Britons, that
the children of the woman were accounted
to belong to the husband who first es-
poused her ; and that in Tibet, the right

of choosing the wife belongs to the eldest

brother, to whom, also, the children of
the marriage are held to belong- We
o
 ;

198 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

must now, to obtain what we have been

in search of —a test of the former presence
of polyandry —look at the Tibetan form
of polyandry in a state of decadence.
We find it in such a state in Ladak.
" In Ladak," says Moorcroft,* "when an
eldest son marries, the property of his
father (more properly the family estate)
descends to him, and he is charged with
the maintenance of his parents. The
parents may continue to live with him, if

he and his wife please ; if not, a separate

dwelling is provided for them.f A
younger son is made a Lama.
usually
Should there be more brothers, and they
agree to the arrangement, the juniors
become inferior husbands to the wife

* Moorcroft's and Trebeck's "Travels," 1841, v.

i. p. 320.

t See M'Culloch's " Munniepore," pp. 8 and 67, for

a similar custom among the Loohoopas.
 ;

THROUGH FEMALES ONL Y. 199

all the children, however, are considered

as belonging to the head of the family.
The younger brothers have no authority
they wait upon the elder as his servants,
and can be turned out of doors at his

pleasure, without it being incumbent

upon him to provide for them. On the
death of the eldest brother, his property,
authority, and widow, devolve upon his
next brother." And that whether the
younger brother has agreed to the poly-
androus arrangement or not. He has a
a customary right of succession to his
brother's property, and to his widow, and
he cannot take the one without taking the
other.

Here we are brought to consider the

meaning and origin of the legal obli-
gation which we find laid on younger
brothers, among certain peoples, to marry
in their turn the widow of their de-
200 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

ceased elder brother. There can be no

doubt that that obligation was in its

origin the counterpart of a legal right of

succession. It is so with the Kirghiz,
Aenezes, and Mongols —the next brother
being heir even where the elder leaves
issue.

When history begins, the Hebrew law

preferred the issue to the next brother;

but when he or the next of kin succeeded,

it was on the old footing. This is clear

from the book of Ruth.* The hereditatis

emptor of the deceased took to wife at
the same time his widow, " to raise up
the name of the dfead upon his inheri-
tance." The obligation to marry the
widow was the counterpart of the right
of succession. And we can see the con-
nection between the obligation and heir-

* Chap. iv. ver. 6.

 —
THROUGH FEMALES ONL Y. 201

ship dropping slowly out of view. In

Deuteronomy* it is provided that the
husband's brother shall " perform the
duty of an husband's brother" to the
widow, only when the brethren dwell
together, and one of them dies childless.

The obligation is here presented pure

as a duty falling on the brother, which
it was disgraceful to neglect.
In India, by the time when the In-
stitutes of Menu were compiled, the ob-
ligation was laid on the brother only in

case the deceased left no son. Grave

doubts had arisen as to the extent and
propriety of the obligation, the number
of sons to be begotten on the widow, f
and the terms on which the brother
should live with her. " The first object
of the appointment being obtained, ac-

* Chap. XXV. ver. 5-10. + Chap. ix. ver. 61, 62.

202 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

cording to law, both the brother and the

widow must live together like a father
and daughter by affinity." Again, it is

doubted whether the obligation extends

to the twice-born classes. " Such a com-
mission to a brother or other near kins-
man is nowhere mentioned in the nuptial
texts of the Veda. . . . This practice, fit

only for cattle, is reprehended by learned

Brahmans ;
yet it is declared to have
been the practice even of men while Vena
had sovereign power."* Yet elsewhere
in the code the obligation is contemplated
as legal, and provision is made for the
rights of succession of the issue of the
Levirate union. " Should a younger bro-
ther have begotten a son on the wife of

his deceased elder brother, the division

(of the estate) must then be made equally

Chap. ix. ver. 66.

 ;

THROUGH FEMALES ONL Y. 203

between that son, who represents the de-

ceased, and his natural father : thus is

the law settled." We repeat, that in

Menu's time the obligation had not only

been, to some extent, dissociated from the
corresponding right of inheritance, but
was falling into disrepute. We see it

also falling into desuetude among the

Hebrews. In the earliest age the Levir
had no alternative but to take the widow
indeed she was his wife without any form
of marriage!^ By the Mosaic Law, how-
ever, he might get quit of her if he chose

by submitting to the ceremony of " loos-

ing the shoe."

It is impossible not to believe that
we have here presented to us successive
stages of decay of one and the same ori-

ginal institution ;
impossible not to con-

* Lewis' "Hebrew Republic," 1725, vol. iii. p. 268.

 —
204 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

nect the obligation, in its several phases,

with what we have seen prevailing in

Ladak ; impossible not to regard it as
having originally been a right of succes-
sion, or the counterpart of such a right,
derived from the practice of polyandry.
Regarded as in its origin a right of
succession, it exhibits the next younger
brother as succeeding to the universi-
tas of the elder —taking up all his rights
and obligations inter alia, his widow.
But how came the right of succession
to open, as in the ruder cases, to the
brother in preference to the son of the
deceased ? We repeat, that the only ex-
planation that can be given of this is,

that the law of succession was derived

from polyandry. The succession of bro-
thers to one another, in order of age, is a
feature of the law of succession under
both forms of polyandry. Under the
 "

THROUGH FEMALES ONL Y. 205

ruder, brothers succeed one another ; and

failing brothers, the sister's children come
in : under the less rude, brothers succeed

one another ; and failing brothers, comes

in the eldest son of the brotherhood. And
nowhere, excepting where there is or has
been polyandry, have we such a system
of succession — brothers succeeding in
preference to sons.
The same conclusion is forced upon
us from another point of view. In the
lowest cases of polyandry the children
belong to the mother ; in the more ad-
vanced to the eldest brother (an approach
towards agnation). Now the peculiarity
of the obligation is, in all cases, that it

was an obligation " to raise up seed

to the elder brother. The children
begotten by the younger brother were
accounted the children of the elder de-
ceased. It is obvious that it could more
2o6 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

easilybe feigned that the children belonged

to the brother deceased, if already, at a

prior stage, the children of the brother-

hood had been accounted the children of
the eldest brother, i.e., if we suppose the
obligation to be a relic of polyandry.
Curiously enough, Dr. Latham would
invert the order of development by pro-
ducing the ruder fact —polyandry—from
the less rude obligation. But, clearly,
this is an inversion of the order of nature
—which is progressive — in which the
ruder gives birth to the less rude, not the
less rude to the ruder.*
Assuming the correctness of this view
of the origin of that obligation, we must

* The subject of polyandry has been most care-

lessly, it seems to us, handled by Dr. Latham. It is
enough to refer to " Des. Ethn.," vol. ii. p. 463, et seq.,

where he recklessly lays it down that the descensus

per umbilicum is part and parcel of polyandry.
 THROUGH FEMALES ONL Y. 207

hold that polyandry in the Tibetan form

prevailed at one time throughout India.*
Among the race from which the ancient
Hebrews were descended ; among the
Moabites and the ancient Persians, t
Among the Druses and all the Arab tribes

in Syria ; \ the Mongols, Ostiaks, Kirghiz

Turks, and tribes of the Caucasus. §

Among the Makololo, and, we may be-

lieve,many other peoples in Africa.! It is
needless to repeat that we must also con-
clude that among the peoples just enume-
rated the Tibetan form of polyandry was
preceded by the Nair, and, at a still earlier

date, by utter promiscuity.

* " Institute of Menu," c. and c ix., §

iii., § 173,

57-58, and § 182 ;

" Asi. Res.," vol. iii. p. 35. + Deut.
XXV. 5-1 1 ; Ruth i. 11- 13; Kleuker " Zendavesta,"
iii. p. 226. Volney's " Travels," vol. ii. p. 807
X ;

Burckhardt's " Notes," vol. i. 1 12. § " Des. Ethn,,"

vol. i. pp. 312, 346, and 455 ; Hanthausen, "Trans-
Caucasia," p. 403. II Livingstone, p. 185.
2o8 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

We have found polyandry in so many

lands, among so many races, and in such
phases of progressive development, that
we are surely justified in classing it among
the phenomena most distinctive of —the
most likely to occur at —the earlier stages

of the progress of any race of men. Its

origin can only be ascribed to a scarcity

of women as compared to men. And the
vast area over which it anciently prevailed,
can leave no doubt in the mind that in
former times the balance of the sexes must
have been seriously disturbed (artificially),

and that we were right in predicating of

the primitive groups that they usually
contained fewer women than men. When
the phenomena of exogamy —also due to
a scarcity of women —are contemplated
along with the phenomena of polyandry,
the impression of this fact produced on
the mind is almost as strong as the feel-
 THROUGH FEMALES ONL Y. 209

ing produced by demonstration. To

whatever extent a want of balance between
the sexes prevailed, to that extent certainty
as to male parentage was in the earlier

stages of progress excluded. With poly-

andry itself there is uncertainty upon this
point. In the lower cases the uncertainty
is absolute. And regarding, as we must
do, the higher as an advance from the
lower, we are forced to conclude that
wherever we have found polyandry, or
traces of it, there must anciently have
.

prevailed the system of kinship through

females only.
In a preceding chapter we found the
system of kinship through females only,
universally prevailing among the Aus-
tralian Blacks;* prevailing among the
majority of the nations of the American

* Ante, p. 113.
210 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

Red-men ;
* and among the South Sea
Islanders.f That is, we found it among
peoples now practising polygunia, and
which have advanced far towards the patri-
archal system. We infer that with these
peoples the unions of the sexes were origin-
ally promiscuous or polyandrous. With
regard to the Red-men, indeed, there is

little room for doubting that they formerly

all practised polyandry. It is now occa-
sionally to be found among them, and
their system of relationship — their names
for kinsmen and kinswomen —point to
its having been their universal custom.
Mr. Morgan of Rochester, New York,
whose account of the Indian nations we
have already had occasion to refer to,

gives the following as radical features

of the system of relationship prevailing

Ante, p. 124. f Ante, p. 126.

 THROUGH FEMALES ONLY. 211

among them: i. "All the brothers of a

father are equally fathers to his children
(this where there is now no polyandry).
2. All the children of several brothers
are brothers and sisters to each other;

all the grandsons of a man's brothers

are his grandsons."* These features of
the system bear the stamp of a poly-
androus origin ;t they are features of
the system of relationship which might

* Camb. Journ., i860, pp. 144, 145.

-f-
It may be asked why the Red-men should not
now have kinship through males if they have passed,
as they appear to have done, through the stage of
polyandry of the Tibetan type. Our answer is, that
in some cases they have male kinships, and that pro-
bably in Australia, and among the majority of the
nations of the red-men, the earlier species of kinship
has been perpetuated by the system of capturing
wives. We shall hereafter see that the system of
capture introduces uncertainty as to male parentage,
independently of the causes of such uncertainty which
we have been considering. We shall also see that

all polyandrous peoples may not have been exoga-

 2

21 THE S YS TEM OF KINSHIP

be expected to accompany the higher

polyandry. The schedules returned to
Mr. Morgan show that among the Tamul
and Telugu, peoples of Southern India,
numbering about twenty-four millions,
" all the brothers of a father are usually
called fathers, but in strictness, those who
are older than the father are called great
fathers, and those who are younger, little

fathers." And both the Tamul and Telugu

are still, as we have seen, to some extent
polyandrous. The same system of relation-
ship is found among the Puharies, a peo-
ple on the skirts of the Tibetan region,
and that manifestly practised polyandry
till a late date. With the Puharies, all

the brothers of a father are equally fathers

to his children.*

mous, while all exogamous peoples must have been

polyandrous.
* Report of Mr. Wilson, ut supra.
 THROUGH FEMALES ONLY. 213

We have seen that the Kasias, the

Nairs, and the Saporogian Cossacks, have
the system of kinship through females
only. We find that system in Tulava, in
the neighbourhood of the Nairs. "Among
the Buntar "
—the highest rank of Sudras
in Tulava — "a man's children," says Buch-
anan, " are not his heirs. During his life-

time he may give them money ; but all of

which he dies possessed goes to his sisters

and to their children." The cause must be

the same in either case, though marriage
in Tulava has shifted from polyandry to
polygunia.* Among the Rajputs we
have traces of the system of female kin-
ship.f The Kocch have kinship and
succession through females only ; and so
have the But {^Q)^6).i Farther, we find

* Buchanan, ut supra, vol. iii., p. 16.

t Tod's " Annals," etc., ut supra, p. 48^

X "Des. Ethn.," vol. i., pp. 96, 109.

P
 —
214 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

that system among the Banyai,* in Ashanti,

Aquapim, and Congo, and are assured
that traces of it are to be found all over
Africa.f We have already had occasion to
notice its occurrence among the Chinese.^
Let us now see what evidence there is

of the former existence of the system of

kinship through females only. We recal
the fact that, in an earlier chapter, we saw
reason to believe that it anciently prevailed
among the Celts. § We infer that among
the Celts there was anciently no certainty
of male parentage. We now notice that
we find traces of such a system in India
in the Sutras of Gautama. In these,
marriage with the daughter of a maternal
uncle 2i cousin on the mother's side — is

emphatically prohibited as being clearly

* Livingstone's "Travels," pp. 617-622.

+ Reade's " Savage Africa," p.
43.
J Ante, p. 177. § Ante, p. 127.
 — ;

THROUGH FEMALES ONL V. 215

against the principles of the sacred writ-

ings.* Such a prohibition, found with
an exogamous race —and almost all the
Indian races were and are, as we have
seen, exogamous —can be referred only to

the system of kinship through females

only. And it is impossible to avoid con-
necting with this the tradition that the five
Pandava princes —brothers so called
were husbands of one wife. " How is it,"

asks Max Muller.f in discussing the cha-

racter of the Mahabharata, "that the five

Pandava princes who are at first repre-

sented as receiving so strictly Brahmanic

an education, could afterwards have been
married to one wife? This is in plain

opposition to Brahmanic law, where it is

said '
they are many wives of one man
* Max MuUer's "Hist, of Anc. Sans. Liter.," 1859,

P- 53.
t Idem, p. 46.
 6

21 THE S YS TEM OF KINSHIP

not many husbands Such a

of one wife.'
contradiction can only be accounted for by
the admission that in this case epic tradi-
tion in the mouth of the people was too
strong to allow this essential and curious
feature in the life of its heroes to be
changed." In other words, we have here
the tradition " that the races among whom
the five principal heroes of the Mahabha-
rata were born and fostered," practised
polyandry. This is confirmed by all that
is related of the Pandava princes. They
were the reputed sons of Pandu, — but, in
fact, three of them were sons of one of his
wives by three different gods, and the
other two were sons of another wife by
the Aswini-Kumaras.* Pandu himself was

* Williams' "Indian Epic Poetry,"

1863, p. 17. It
is worthy of notice that in a passage of the Maha-
bharata, Book w. 4719-22, which has been trans-
i.,

lated by Dr. Muir ("Sanskrit Texts," Part ii. p.

336),
 THR O UGH FEMA LES ONL V. 217

the son of a marriage with a brother's

widow. When the five princes married
one wife, the eldest was first married
to her by the family priest, and then the
other four in their order, according to
priority of birth. The princes are repre-
sented as living in family with Kauli,
their mother —the head of their house.

we have the following account of the freedom of

women in the early world. " Women were formerly
unconfined, and roved about at their pleasure, in-
dependent (within their respective castes). Though
in their youthful innocence they abandoned their
husbands, they were guilty of no offence ; for such

was the rule in early times. This ancient custom is

even now the law for creatures born as brutes, which

are free from lust and anger. This custom is supported
by authority, and is observed by great Rishis, and it is

still practised among the Northern Kurus!' In a note.

Dr. Muir adds that the practice of promiscuous inter-
course was, according to the legend, abolished by
Svetaketu, son of the Rishi Uddalaka, who was in-

censed at seeing his mother led away by a strange

Brahman. Svetaketu established conjugal fidelity.
 —

2i8 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

In the poem, Bishma, their granduncle

grandfather's brother — is often styled their
grandfather ; and though Bishma was
really the uncle — father's brother — of
Pandu, he is sometimes styled his father *
All these circumstances point to a system
of polyandry of the Tibetan type. The
very terminology is that of polyandry, and
which polyandry has left behind it among
the Tamul, the Telugu, the Puharies, and
the red-men of America. In short, though
the original tradition has obviously been
tampered with, enough of it remains to
oblige us to acknowledge it as a genuine
tradition of a stage of Aryan civilization,
when the marriage system was polyandrous
as it is now in Tibet. It is almost need-

less to point out that we have, in this

tradition, a confirmation of our view of
* See Williams' "Indian Epic Poetry,"
1863, pp.
93, 99, and 1 14.
 —

THROUGH FEMALES ONLY. 219

the origin of the obligation which, in the

code of Menu, is recognised as imposed
on brothers in turn to marry the widow
of a brother deceased. We shall find a
further confirmation of that view in the
case of the Hebrews.
We are not without evidence of the
existence in early times of the system of
female kinship among the Semitic races.
It would appear that while Abraham still

lived, his tribesmen as yet recognised

only that primitive kinship in some im-
portant relations in life e.g., as affecting
the right of intermarriage. Between the
times of Abraham and the promulgation
of the Levitical law, a complete revolu-
tion took place in Jewish custom. The
patriarch himself married his sister-ger-
man, or by the same father ; and his
brother Nahor married his niece,* the
* Genesis x j. 26-29 !
^"'^ ^^^ ^^' ' 2-
220 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

daughter of a brother. So Amram, the

father of Moses and Aaron, married his
father's sister (Exod. vi. 20). These
women were not relatives, in a full legal

sense, of their husbands. They were con-

nected with them through males only,
and through males in those times there
was not, as yet, a perfect kinship. We
have similar evidence of the existence of
the system of kinship, through females
only, among the Phoenicians.*
Among the Greeks, traces of this early
law remained in historic times. To pass
over the tradition that in Greece before
Cecrops children always bore the names
of their mothers,+ we have the fact that
at Athens a brother might marry a sister-

* " Achilles Tatius," lib. i.

+ Varro, apud August: de Civ. Dei, 1. 18, c. 9.

Suidas, voce wjo^^tf, t. 3, p. 189 ; and v. Goquet, B. i.,

vol. 2.
 ;

THROUGH FEMALES ONL Y. 221

german, but not a sister-uterine or con-

sanguineous. Here again we have a relic

of the doctrine that a child had no pater-

nal relatives. A sister-uterine was a
near kinswoman, but a sister-german was
no kinswoman at all. Montesquieu*
ascribes this Athenian rule to a device of
the legislature for regulating successions
but he belongs to the class of philoso-
phers who make more of enactments
than of popular usages. As Bunsenf has
pointed out, there can be no doubt that
the true meaning and origin of the rule

were what we have indicated.

There is one case which might be
cited to throw doubt upon some of the
conclusions at which we have arrived
in this chapter. This is the report
of Philo, that the Spartans allowed
* Book v., c. 5.

+ De Jure Hered. Athen., p. 148 ; Gottingen, 1813.

222 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

a man to marry his sister-uterine, but

not his sister-german, or by the same
father.* This may have been circulated

for the sake of the contrast which it pre-

sented to Athenian custom ; at any rate,

we hold it to be incredible —as discordant

with old law as with- the habits of the
Lacedaemonians. It is beyond belief

that there was this superior regard for the

father's blood in ancient Sparta, where the

marriage tie was so loose that men lent

their wives to one another, and cared

little by whom children were begotten,
provided they turned out strong and
healthy. It is incredible, that in a com-
munity where any sort of importance was
* The reader may suspect that this is a relic of
strict agnatic law. But for the reasons stated in the

text, we hold that view to be excluded. The system

of relationship, through males only, has never, in any
well authenticated case, been developed into such a
rule as this.
 THROUGH FEMALES ONL V. 223

attached to blood, the unquestionable

blood tie between children of the same
mother should be so disregarded. If we
are to credit the report at all, it must be
on the supposition that the Spartans were
exceptional in their development like the
ancient Persians (from whom the Druses
derived their customs). And we do not
regard the case of the Persians as of
weight against our reasoning, but the
contrary. The Persian customs were
just those of hordes who consecrated an
incestuous promiscuity into a system.
If they allowed the marriages of brothers
and sisters consanguineous, they also
sanctioned the unions of sons and
mothers, and of fathers and daughters,
and in some cases required them for the

purposes of religion.*

See a full account of the Persian customs in Sel-

den's "Jus Naturale," iit supra, chap. xi.

 —

224 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

At the outset of our argument we saw

that if the system of kinship through
females only could be shown to exist, or

to have existed, it must be accounted a

more archaic system of kinship than the
system of relationship through males,
the product of an earlier and ruder stage
in human development ; and that to prove

its existence on such a scale as to entitle

it to rank among the normal phenomena
of human development would be to prove

it the most ancient system of kinship.

We now submit that we have amply
established our proposition. We have
collected abundant evidence of the non-
existence in many places of the conditions
necessary for the rise of kinship through
males ; in many of these cases —some of
them cases of great populations —we
have been able to adduce evidence of the
existence of the system of kinship through
 THROUGH FEMALES ONL Y. 225

females only. We have seen that poly-

andry must be accepted as a stage in the
progress towards marriage proper and
the patriarchal system. The lower forms
of polyandry we have found to be accom-
panied by the system of kinship through
females only. We have seen polyandry
change its form till it allowed of kinship
through males, and then die away into
an obligation on younger brothers in

turn to espouse the widow of the eldest

brother; and in some cases, Indo-Euro-
pean as well as Semitic, in which we
found that relic of polyandry, we have
found, or found traces of, the system of
kinship through females only. Had the
facts bearing on our inquiry ever been
systematically observed, noted, and col-
lected, it is probable our case might be
made to appear stronger than it does.

But as it is, we submit that we have

 —
226 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

done quite enough to establish the truth

of our proposition.
Before leaving this subject we would
observe that, whether the system of
kinship through females only prevailed
universally at the first or not, it must
have prevailed wherever exogamy pre-
vailed — exogamy and the consequent
practice of capturing wives. Certainty
as to fathers is impossible where mothers
are stolen from their first lords, and liable

to be re-stolen before the birth of child-

ren. And as exogamy and polyandry
are referable to one and the same cause
a want of balance between the sexes
we are forced to regard all the exogamous
races as having originally been polyan-

drous.While polyandry supplied a method

whereby the want of balance might be
the less felt, and may thus have retarded,
and in some cases prevented, the estab-
 THROUGH FEMALES ONL Y. 227

lishment of exogamy, wherever exo-

gamy took root polyandry must have
been practised. Therefore we must hold
it to be beyond dispute that among exo-

gamous races the first system of kinship

was that which recognised blood-ties

through mothers only.

We may be pardoned for here advert-

ing to the views of ancient kinship ad-

vanced by Mr. Maine. We have already
pointed out* that Mr. Maine seems not
to have been able to conceive of any
social order more primitive than the
patriarchal. And as he found agnation
—or kinship exclusively through males
—to be a common concomitant of the
patriarchal system, he has committed
himself to the opinion that that was the
only kinship known to primitive times.

* Ante, p. 115.
228 THE SYSTEM OF KINSHIP

He argues, indeed, against the possibility

of kinship through females in early times
as being inconsistent with social order
and stability. The learned and ingenious
writer must be held to have taken up the
threads of legal history where they be-
gan to unwind themselves, of new, after
the completion of a social revolution. It

is quite undoubted, as he says, that few

indigenous bodies of law belonging to
communities of the Indo-European stock
do not exhibit peculiarities which are
referable to agnation.* With the ad-
vance of society^-the growth of mar-
riage laws —the superiority of the male
sex must have everywhere tended to
establish that system. But, before that
result could be reached, many stages of
progress had to be traversed. And while

See post, p. 235.

 THROUGH FEMALES ONL Y. 229

traces of agnation are to be found in the

early customs of most of the Indo-
European races, we have seen that the
indigenous customs of most early com-
munities—^whether of the Indo-European,
Turanian, or Semitic race— exhibit pecu-
liarities intelligible only on the supposi-
tion that kinship and succession through
females were the rule before the rise of
agnation. Farther, we have seen that
wherever non-advancing communities are
to be found — isolated in islands or main-
taining their savage liberties in mountain
fastnesses —there to this day exists the

system of kinship through females only.

The state of old, says Mr. Maine, recog-
nised as its units not individuals, but
families. True. But at a yet older date

we must conclude that neither the state,

nor the family, properly speaking, existed.
And at that earlier time the unnamed
Q
 — —
230 THE STRUCTURE OF

species of kinship —the counterpart and

complement of agnation —^was the chief
determinant of social phenomena.
We now go on to show

II. That the primitive groups were,

or were assumed to be, homogeneous.

It appeared at the outset that indivi-

duals must have been primarily affiliated
not to persons but to groups, and that the
first effect of the rise of the idea of kin-
ship must have been to give birth to the
conception of stocks ; farther, that the
establishment over any great area of the
system of kinship through females only
must have occupied a considerable period
of time. Until that system was firmly
established, there could be no such inter-
ference with the homogeneity of the
groups as to be worth consideration. An
amount of heterogeneity short of that
 THE PRIMITIVE GROUPS. 231

which would introduce at least the germ

of a system of betrothals may fairly be
overlooked. While as yet there was no
system of kinship, the presence of captive
women in a horde, in whatever numbers,
could not introduce a system of betrothals.
\Heterogeneity as a statical force can only
lave come into play when a system of kin-
ship led the hordes to look on the children
)f their foreign women as belonging to the
stocks of their mothers ; that is, when the
sentiments which grew up with the system
of kinship became so strong as to over-
master the old filiation to the group (and
its stock) of the children born within it.

We may depend upon it that this was a

stage of progress which it took long to
reach, and thus that it was long before
the original homogeneity of the groups
was substantially impaired. That in the

stage of progress we are contemplating,

232 THE STRUCTURE OF

adoption was practised (the adoption of

one group by another to which some
writers ascribe such great effects), is alto-

gether unlikely. If it was, it would most

probably — as in later times —proceed on
the fiction that the uniting groups were
of the same original stock. But looking
to the state of hostility between groups at
the stage we are consid enhgT^nd the de-
gree^r~advahce ment implied in th e^con-
ception of adoption, we cannot believe that
the "groups then tended to amalgamate,
howe-ver. J:hey_inayLJia¥e^tended to d i vide.

We conclude that we must regard the

primitive groups as having been, or hav-
ing been assumed to be, homogeneous up
to that stage when, through the joint
operation of exogamy and the system of
kinship through females only, foreigners
recognised as such began to be systema-
tically born within them.
 —
THE PRIMITIVE GROUPS. 233

III. The system of kinship through

females only tended to render the exoga-
mous groups heterogeneous, and thus to

supersede the system of capturing wives.

We may here be very brief. We have

already seen* the effects of the joint ope-
ration of exogamy and this system of
kinship among the Australians. Indeed,
what their effects must have been is ex-
ceedingly obvious. Owing to exogamy^
the mothers in each horde were foreign-
ers, and, owing to the system of kin-
ship, the children born to them were es-
teemed foreigners also. Thus, so far as

the system of infanticide allowed, the

hordes contained young men and women
accounted of different stocks, who might
intermarry consistently with exogamy.
Hence grew up a system of betrothals.

* Ante, p. 118.
 —

234 AGNATION.

and of marriage by sale and purchase.

In Australia and America we saw that in
spite of the law of blood-feud, the hetero-
geneity is now such that the system of
betrothals is well established, and that of
the original stock-groups the names alone
appear to remain.

IV. As civilization advanced, the

system of kinship through females only
was succeeded by a system which acknow-
ledged kinship through males also : and
which in most cases passed into a system
which acknowledged kinship through
males only.

It is obviously needless to say any-

thing in support of the first branch of this
proposition. The difficulty was to show,
as we have done in our first proposition
in this chapter, was a more
that there
archaic system which did not acknowledge
 AGNATION. 23s

kinship through males. With the fact of

kinship through males in advanced com-
munities, every reader is familiar. Farther,
as to the second branch of the proposi-
tion, it is unnecessary to adduce evidence,
or to do more than give some explana-
tions. Those who are acquainted with
Mr. Maine's (in many respects admirable)
chapter on primitive society and ancient
law, will see from the terms of our pro-
position, that we have not altogether
adopted his view that agnation at one
time or other prevailed everywhere in the
'advancing communities ; but it is beyond
dispute that its prevalence was most
general. As it will be convenient hereafter
to speak of agnation as a familiar system,

we must here say something of its nature.

This system, as it long prevailed in Rome,
may be best explained by using the ter-

minology of Roman Jurisprudence — to

236 AGNATION.

which indeed its name belongs. Its

general description is that it embraced

only the ties of blood through males.
But it will be well to see who were thus
included in the kindred. Those united
by ties of blood through descent from the
same married pair being called cognates ;

the agnates were those cognates who

traced their connection exclusively through
males. By a fiction, adopted persons
and their descendants through males
were within the agnatic bond. All the
children of a married pair were agnates,
as well as all the grandchildren through'
sons, but the grandchildren through
daughters were not in the number of
agnates. The children of the same father
by different mothers were kindred, but
the children of the same mother by dif-
ferent fathers were not relations to any
legal effect. The sons of brothers were
 AGNATION. 237

kinsmen, but the sons of sisters or of

brother and sister were no relations ; for

a woman's children were held to be not of

the kin of their mother but of their father.
And in no case was there a tie of kinship
between a woman's children and her
natural relatives unless there was an af-

finity between her and her husband. It

is needless to say that the cognates who

remain over, after deducting the agnates,
are those who would be relatives under
the system of kinship through females
only. If the one system involved ano-
malies so did also the other. Where
female kinship prevails, a Rajah's son may
become a hodman —taking the state of
his mother —while the son of the Rajah's
sister mounts the throne. The nephew
—a sister's child — is a relation of the
Rajah, but his son is none at all. No
more is his brother's son ; for through
238 THE GROWTH OF

a male under that system there is no

blood-tie.

Under each system, while it prevailed,

the effects of kinship were confined to

those who according to it were relations.

And often it is in the laws of succession

thatwe find the best evidence of the former

existence among a race of either system.
The rule preserved in the customs of Nor-
mandy, which prohibited uterine brothers
from succeeding to one another's lands,
attests the former prevalence there of
agnation ; and, in some quarters, as in
Congo, the descent of the crown from the
uncle to the sister's son is nearly all that
remains to witness to the former preva-
lence of the system of kinship through
females. It will be a curious chapter in
history which successfully narrates the
progress of the revolution by which the
passage from the earlier to the later of
 AGNATION. 239

these systems was effected ;

exhibiting the
stages in the development of the family
system, as based upon the patria-potestas,
and of agnatic kinship as deduced there-
from.
Let us see whether we cannot in a few
sentences suggest some of the steps in
that progress. The reader must suppose
the progress to commence as soon as,
through the joint operation of exogamy
and the system of female kinship, the
groups have been rendered so far hetero-

geneous as to permit of marriage within

the group.
Children having been affiliated to

mothers instead of to groups, the first

approach to a family system would be

through a separation of residences^ — all

of a group having no longer a common

haunt or dwelling, but at first all of the
same- stock within a group associating as
240 THE GROWTH OF

a gens or house ; and next, mothers and

their children occupying separate homes.
With this separation of residences would
come a closer knitting together of the
kindred first in the gens, and next of
mothers and children in the family — rude
proprietary rights distinct from the tribal,
distinct from the gentile — in the common
home, weapons, and garnered food. There
would be introduced such a species of
family system as we find among the Nairs
—the rudest that can be imagined. And
from this to the family system, peculiar

to polyandry of the Tibetan type, we

have seen the stages of development.
In the Nair stage, kinship would be of
importance chiefly in two respects
— (i),

as determining the right of intermar-

riage'; (2), as determining the right of
succession. It might be expected that
the system of kinship through females
 ;

AGNATION. 241

only would first lose importance in regard

to successions.
While the Nair family system lasted,
we may assume that the common home
of the brothers and mother would not
often be such as to permit (conveniently)
of a general succession — failing the
brothers — of all the sister's children,
where there was more than one sister

and that the first advance to a restricted

system of succession would be through
the limitation of the right of succession,
primo loco, to the children of the eldest
sister. We have seen the practice* grow-
ing of fathers making gifts, inter "vivos,

to women's children whom they had reason

to think their own ; and as this practice

grew with the number of cases in which

there was a degree of certainty of male

Ante, p. 213.
242 THE GROWTH OF

parentage, there would be a farther prac-

tical restriction of the right of succession
through females. And with the practice
of gifts, inter vivos, to putative children,
would grow a feeling against allowing es-
tates to pass from the house of the brothers
to that of, or to the putative children
of, the polyandrous husbands of their
sister,and a corresponding disposition
towards a system of marriage which would
allow of the property passing to the bro-
ther's own children. The system which
would suggest itself would be the Tibetan
system — to have a wife in common in the
house of their mother. This system would
produce certainty of the children being of
their own blood; they would be born in

the house, and would become its heirs.

The next step in advance is obvious.

The succession of the younger brother to
the elder was a feature of the earliest law
 AGNATION. 243

— sister's sons only succeeded failing their

uncles. Now, everything conspired to in-
vest the eldest brother, when he came into
the succession, with some of the attri-
butes of a paterfamilias. This he did
only on the death of all the polyan-

drous fathers. But — in his relation to his

younger brothers — in respect of his being

the first to marry, reaching puberty first,

and choosing the future wife of himself

and brothers — in respect of the first-born,

and frequently more than one of the child-

ren of his marriage being unquestionably

his offspring — it was natural that the fic-

tion should be formed that his were all

the children. Women had already, and
in the recourse to Tibetan polyandry,

been deposed from the sovereignty and

management of families and now, with ;

additional guarantees for the wife's fide-

lity, parentage was either become certain.
244 THE GROWTH OF

or feigned to be so ; the elder brother was

a sort of paterfamilias, the right to suc-
ceed him being in his younger brothers
in their order ; after them, in their eldest
son. Thus, the idea of fatherhood —
formed under the system of Nair poly-
andry —attained something like maturity
under the Tibetan, and took its place in
customary law. And so far as it was a
step towards, or accompanied by kinship
through males, it was a step away from
kinship through females, and especially as
regards rights of succession.
Apart from such certainty of father-
hood as was incidental to the marriage of
eldest sons, the earliest examples of such
married life would give certainty of
as
male parentage would probably be fur-
nished by the chiefs of tribes, who might
have the power to secure to themselves
one, or perhaps several wives. In Kan-
 —
AGNATION. 245

dya, Ceylon, where polyandry is universal

among the lower and middle classes, the

chiefs are strictly monogamists, appa-

rently regarding polyandry as a low prac-
tice, unworthy of men in their position.

As settled habits arose, as property accu-

mulated, and the sexes became more evenly

balanced, the example of the chiefs would
find more and more imitators, and their

cases would furnish a model for an im-

proved system of succession. Thus would
arise a practice of monogamy or of poly-

gamy. Brothers would not now always

be co-husbands ; the Tibetan form of poly-

andry would die out, and the marriage

of a brother to his elder brother's widow
would become first an act of succession
necessary for the assumption of the bro-
ther's place as head of the family; next, as
the succession of sons was introduced as
in right prior to the brother of a father
R
 —
246 THE GROWTH OF

chiefly through the brothers leaving the

house and contracting separate marriages
— it would become an obligation founded
on usage, and which, being unproductive
of material advantages, would not unfre-
quently, from men's other marriages, bfe

found irksome and inconvenient. Finally,

the obligation itself would die out under
the influence of ideas of propriety, which
grew up with the improved marriage sys-
tem. In the Institutes of Menu the ob-
ligation is seen in a state of decadence

under the influence of such ideas.

Paternity having become certain, a
system of kinship through males would
arise with the growth of property, and a
practice of sons succeeding, as heirs
direct, to the estates of fathers ; and as
the system of kinship through males
arose, that through females would —and
chiefly under the influence of property
 —
agnation: 247

die away. The cases of Abraham and

Nahor, however, show that it would be
long before that system ceased to be
influential as regards intermarriages ;

that it might, as regards them, linger to

some effect even after men had reached
the patriarchal state. From the patri-
archal state, with such a customary law
as prevailed in Abraham's time, to the
system of agnation as it prevailed in

Rome, is still a long progress. Every

step in it, we may be sure, was affected

by considerations derived from property.

While wives were captured, if there was
any sense of property at all, wives would
be regarded as property. When at a

later stage they came to pass from the

houses of their birth into alien houses
by purchase —they would still be pro-
perty. And with the wives considered as
property, it is easy to conceive how there
248 THE GROWTH. OF

would have arisen a sense of property in

children. Hence, additional features of

the patria potestas. And when a woman
had been sold to her husband by her
father, and had thus come to be con-
sidered the husband's property, it is easy
to see how neither her original family, nor
that into which she had married, should be
able to inherit any property through her.
But the right of inheritance, as property
became abundant, tended to become, and
did become, the test of kinship. And in
course of time, the notion of kinship de-
rived through females would disappear
among a people who cared nothing for a
kinship barren as regarded patrimonial
advantages. The result would be the
system of agnation.
It is not necessary foi* us here to do
more than repeat that we have, in nume-
rous cases, found agnation, or at least
 AGNATION. 249

kinship through males, preceded by the

system of kinship through females only.
It was so in the cases of the Hebrews,
Hindus, Celts, and Greeks; it was pre-
sumably so in all those cases in which
we find kinship through males accom-
panied by that relic of polyandry —the
obligation laid on younger brothers in
turn to marry the widow of the elder
brother deceased. And since we have
shown special cause for believing that all
the exogamous races had originally the
system of kinship through females only,
we are entitled to assume that it was so
among those exogamous peoples with

which, as with the Khonds, the Circas-

sians, and the Kalmucks, we find rela-

tionship to be agnatic.

system of kinship through,

Y.—The
males tended to rear up homogeneous
2SO THE EFFECTS OF

groups, and thus to restore the original

condition of affairs among exogamous

races, as regards both the practice of
capturing wives and the evolution of the
form of capture.
The first effect of kinship through
males must have been to arrest the pro-
gress of heterogeneity. The introduc-
tion of foreign women into a tribe no
longer brought into it children accounted
foreigners ; for either the children were
no longer of the mother's stock, but of
the father's, or, if of the mother's, they
were yet of the father's also. Where,
then, in a tribe, a balance of persons of
different stocks had not been reached, it

was henceforth unattainable. Farther,

with kinship through males would arise
the habit of feigning acommon descent
from some distinguished man a fiction —
which would lead in many cases to the de-
 AGNATION. 251

nial or neglect of such heterogeneity as

existed. Of the new groups that were
formed, the homogeneity was perfectly

secured. The family now tended to

grow into the tribe of kinsfolk. The

children born to a polygamist husband
were all kinsfolk, of whatever stocks
their mothers were. The children of

brothers, '
though they married women
of different stocks, were kinsfolk. And
however the family increased by the
addition of generations, its members
were all within the kindred. And that,

as well where the exogamous prejudice

survived as where it perished. Where
it survived the women of a family could
find no mates within its bounds, and
marrying into other groups would fol-

low, and their children with them, the

kindred of their husbands. They would
be out of the group. Thus, within such
 —

252 THE EFFECTS OF

exogamous groups as were remodelled,

and within such new exogamous groups
as were formed, under this species of
kinship there could be no marriage with-
in the group. There would be no place
for a system of betrothals; and except
where friendly relations subsisted be-
tween the groups to allow of marriage
by purchase, their members would once
more be able to get wives only by cap-
turing them. Thus, even if, in the first
stage, the system of capture had —as we
see in Australia that it partially has
been superseded, the exogamous races,
in entering on a new phase of advance-
ment, had reserved for them a farther
experience of that system, to confirm or
re-establish the old association between
marriage and the act of rapine. And
we cannot doubt that many exogamous
peoples have had this twofold experience.
 AGNATION. 253

We know of several exOgamous races

which, after having had kinship through
females, had kinship through males ; and
we cannot doubt that the same was the
case with the other exogamous races that
have had the form of capture and ag-
natic relationship. And indeed, as in
the later stage, the experience must
have been more uniform and continuous,
there being nothing, in the absence of
friendliness between the groups, to inter-
fere with the system of capture, so it is

observable that the form of capture is

now most distinctly marked and impres-

sive just among those races which have
male kinship. It might be doubted, but
for the case of the Fuegians and traces of
the symbol, as if of a thing decayed, oc-
curring in America, whether the expe-
rience of the earlier stage could generate

the form. There is no doubt it can, and

 —

2S4 THE RISE OF

has frequently done so ; but the question

whether it could have done so, might, on
mere general reasoning, have been de-
cided in the negative.

VI. Under the combined influence of

exogamy and the system of female kin-
ship, a local tribe might attain a balance

of persons regarded as being of different

descent, and its members might thus be

able to intermarry with one another, and

wholly within the tribe, in consistency
with the principle of exogamy.

This sufficiently appears from what

has preceded ; and it farther appears
from what has preceded, that such a
balance of the sexes as would render a
group independent of other groups in
the matter of marriage would more
speedily be reached in respect of the
practice of polyandry.
 —

CASTE. 255

VII. A local tribe having reached

the stage contemplated in the last pro-
position, and having grown proud through
successes in war, might become a caste.

It is obvious that the feeling of supe-

riority to other tribes, concurring with
independence of them as regards mar-
riage, might lead a tribe first to avoid,

and then to decline and prohibit, inter-

marriage with the tribes which it es-

teemed inferior. And a tribe with a

marriage-law restricted by such a pro-
hibition is a caste, or has made an ap-
proach towards being a caste. That castes

have, in fact, been produced in this way,

is rendered certain by the fact already
referred to — that nearly all the Indian
castes, from the highest to the lowest, are
divided into gotrams or families, and that
marriage is prohibited between persons

of the same gotram, who, according to the

256 THE RISE OF

rule of Menu, are shown by their common

name to be of the same original stock.

We hold that this at once shows the

caste to have been composed of members
of different original stocks, and the stocks
themselves to have been originally exo-
gamous. There can, we think, be little

doubt that all castes of this description

were formed by the processes which we
have been explaining. The Kamilaroi
among the Australians appear to be such
a caste. And were the natives of Aus-
tralia to be left to themselves, their
system of kinship remaining what it is,

we might expect hereafter to find among

them numerous caste tribes of this de-
scription.*

* It is worth mentioning that many of the rude caste

tribes in the hills of India,—such as the Kocch,— have
the blood-tie through mothers only. Whether mar-
riage is subject to any, or what, restrictions within
 —
CASTE. 257

It is a rider on what has preceded

that caste may appear at that stage of a
people's progress while they are yet poly-
androus. And of caste among people at
that stage we have several instances.

VIII. On kinship becoming agnatic,

the members of a caste, formed as above
—
explained, might yielding to a common
tendency of rude races—feign themselves
to be all descended from a common an-
cestor, and thus become endogamous.
On the appearance of kinship through

these caste tribes, we have no information. The

reader will understand that, in speaking of castes,
we distinguish between castes proper —the divisions of
a people as determined by the right of intermarriage
-
—and the classical subdivisions of castes proper,
which are often met with, and which are also frequently
called castes. We believe with Dr. Roth that the di-

vision into classes resulted from the growth and es-

tablishment of professions, and was of later date than

the division into castes proper.
258 THE RISE OF

males, much confusion must for a time

have prevailed in the application of the
principle of exogamy. Some marriages
that were formerly allowable would be-
come illegal : as, for instance, the marriage
of brother and sister-german, or of the
children of brothers ; on the other hand,
some marriages that were before illegal
would become allowable, as for instance
the marriages of sisters' children. At
least the marriages last mentioned would
be consistent with exogamy where rela-
tionship became agnatic. And as the old
rules thusbecame inapplicable new rules
would be formed, which in some cases
might ignore the principle upon which the
old proceeded. At any rate it is manifest
that, while the application of the principle
in the new circumstances was in dubio,
the fiction of a common descent from an

illustrious ancestor, should it be put for-

 ENDOGAMY. 259

ward, would come in aid of the confu-

sion to destroy or render obsolete the
principle of exogamy. The members of
the caste already restricted to marriages
among themselves, and now feigning
themselves all to be kindred, would be-
come endogamous.
Indeed, all that is necessary for the
production of an endogamous tribe is, that

a caste tribe composed of members of dif-

ferent stocks should, anyhow, at any time,
yield to the tendency to eponomy. We
see, however, that in the stage of transi-
tion from the system of female kinship to
agnation, or to a system of male kinship,
there must have been a time highly favour-
able for the introduction of the fiction of a
common descent, and of the destruction
thereby of exogamy. Of the tendency of
rude races to employ that fiction, it is un-
necessary that we should say anything ; it
26o THE RISE OF

is familiar to all students of early history.

Nothing is more common than to find the

belief in a common descent among peoples

obviously heterogeneous ; sometimes the
belief is found even in communities which
are not only heterogeneous, but the com-
position of which is known to be entirely
artificial.*

And ifwe anywhere find the form of

capture among an endogamous race, as we
do among the Bedouin Arabs, and appear
to do among the Hebrews, it is not, we
think, too much to say that the presence of
the form is confirmatory of the supposi-
tion that the race became endogamous
through employing this fiction, and by the
processes which we have been explain-
ing. At least this is the only explanation
which we can offer of the appearance

" Ancient Law," 1861, p. 263.

 ENDOGAMY. 261

among an endogamous people of the form

of capture.*
We have now gone over the ground
laid out at the close of the last chapter.

It will be seen that some of the proposi-

tions mutually support one another. For
example, the observed heterogeneity of
certain castes which are subject to the
rule of exogamy, goes to show that their
ancestors must have had the system of
* As to the unity of physical characteristics ob-
served in most castes, we notice that even in the stage
when exogamy is yet observed, they were, owing to
their intermarriages and the close connections per-
mitted by a system of kinship which ignored half of
the natural blood-ties, steadily advancing to one type,
Where the caste became properly
as consanguinii.
endogampus the circumstances were only just more
favourable to the production of that type. There is

nothing in the observed unity discordant with the as-

sumption of original heterogeneity; nothing, especially
when we consider the periods of time at our disposal,
to allow for the production of a uniform type among a
people strictly limited to marriages among themselves.
S
262 THE LA W OF

kinship through females only ; for exo-

gamy, by itself, will not explain the

welding together, in a group, of persons
of different original stocks. And to those

who, from the earlier chapters, have formed

the opinion that we are right in our theory
of the origin of the form of capture, the
appearance of the form among an endo-
gamous race will strengthen the supposi-
many endogamous races, which
tion that

—
have not or which we do not know to
—
have the form, may originally have been
exog'amous.
We may fitly close this chapter with
some surmises —thrown out for what they
are worth —as to some of the effects on
early society of the law of blood-feud
which exists everywhere, so far as we
know, among rude races, and which of
course grew up with, and out of kinship.
So far as the law of blood-feud retarded
 BLOOD-FEUD. 263

the production of heterogeneity within

the groups in any district, it was un-
friendly to progress. From another point
of view it appears that it must have fa-

voured progress, especially among exo-

gamous races, at that stage when kinship
was through females only. It bound all
the kindred to avenge the death of any
one, and the obligation was a point of
religion. At first, probably, the protec-
tion to the person which this law af-
forded may have extended only to adults,
but in time it came to be extended even

to infants. This extension indeed was a

logical necessity. And when infants

came within the benefit of the law, their

lives must often have been spared to avoid

the blood-feud with their mother's kin-

dred —a body of protectors, as we have
seen, usually living outside and foreign
to the gens or house of birth. Thus the
264 THE LA W OF

law of blood-feud must be credited with a

mitigation, perhaps in some cases with
the suppression, of infanticide, male as
well as female, in exogamous societies,

at that stage when kinship is through

mothers only. And by checking this
practice it tended to restore the balance
of the sexes, to allow of the rise of poly-
gunia and the decay of polyandry. It is
a curious fact that nowhere now, that we
are aware of, is infanticide a system where
exogamy and the earliest form of kinship
co-exist.

When, however, with agnation, groups

became homogeneous, containing none but
kindred, and containing in fact all the
kindred, this beneficial action of the
blood-feud must have ceased. Where
necessity or convenience prompted to in-
fanticide among agnatic groups,
the law of
blood-feud opposed no impediment to the
 BLOOD-FEUD. 265

practice. If the children perished it was

at the hands of their kindred. Accord-
ingly the most impressive systems of in-
fanticide— chiefly systems of female in-

fanticide—now existing, occur among

exogamous races which have male kin-
ship.

On the one hand, then, the law of

blood-feud would seem to have played an
important part in introducing monogamy,
polygunia, and the patriarchal system ; on
the other hand, it would seem at a later
stage to have favoured the perpetuation of
exogamy, and of systems of infanticide.
266 THE DECA Y OF EXOGAMY

CHAPTER IX.

THE DECAY OF EXOGAMY IN ADVANCING

COMMUNITIES.

It will complete the view of early society,

to which we have been led by our investi-
gation of the origin of the form of cap-
ture, if we point out the principal causes
of the breakdown of exogamy in advanc-
ing communities. We have seen the
liability of the principle to decay in the
confusion incident to the growth of the
system of kinship through males ; and
have found reason to think that it gave
place to endogamy in many tribes which
had, previous to the revolution in kinship,
nearly attained a balance— sufficient for
the purposes of marriage— of persons ac-
counted of different stocks. It remains.
 IN ADVANCING COMMUNITIES. 267

then, that we should consider the causes

of the neglect of the principle where it

perished gradually, and without the people

becoming endogamous.
To indicate the causes in any case
will be sufficient for our purpose. We
select the cases of Greece and Rome as

>being those which, to the generality of

readers, are most familiar. That the
Greeks and the Romans were originally
exogamous may be inferred from three
distinct grounds, separately, and in com-
bination, (i). They present us with the
Form of Capture in marriage ceremonies.
(2), Many of their mythic traditions
are

incapable of a rational explanation, except

on the hypothesis that they anciently had
the system of capturing women for wives.

(3), The composition and organization of

their tribes and commonwealths cannot

well be explained, except on the hypothe-
268 THE DECA Y OF EXOGAMY

sis that they resulted from the joint ope-

ration, in early times, of exogamy, and.
the system of kinship through females
only. The two first grounds we have
already noticed ; on the third, we must
now dwell somewhat. It not only affords
new evidence of the prevalence of exo-
gamy, but introduces us to the chief causes
of its decay in advancing communities.
The old theory of the composition of
States, was based upon the tendency of
families to multiply round a central fa-
mily, whose head represented the original
progenitor of them all. The family,
under the government of a father, was
assumed to be the primary group —the
elementary social unit ; in it were found at
once the germs of the State, and of sove-
reign authority. Many circumstances re-
commended this theory, and none more
than its apparent simplicity. It was easy
 IN ADVANCING COMMUNITIES. 269

to find abundant analogies for the pro-

longation of the family into the State.

A family tends to multiply families around
it, till it becomes the centre of a tribe,

just as the banyan tends to surround

itself with a forest of its own offshoots.

And it is obvious, to follow up this figure,

by remarking that the feelings of kindred

which hold families together in tribes,

tend to bind together, in nations, tribes

which, like the Greek races, trace back
their descent to kinsmen.
The origin of the State on this view
is so simple, that a child may comprehend
it. But it is very easily shown that the
theory cannot be supported. In the first

place, it is not borne out by history. The

tribes are numerous whose members claim
to be descended from a common progeni-

tor. Inquiry, however, everywhere dis-

closes the fact, that the common progenitor

270 THE DECA V OF EXOGAMY

is a fiction —a hero or god, called into

being to explain the tribe —from whom
the tribe did not derive its being. In
many cases, not only the fact that the
genealogy is fictitious, but even the time
when it was invented, can be shown ;* and
nowhere can tribes or nations be traced
back to individuals. Also, the theory
turns on a fundamental error as to the
primitive state. It postulates that human
history opens with perfect marriage, con-
jugal fidelity, and certainty of male parent-
age-^that, from the first, all the necessary
conditions of the rise of a perfect family
system were satisfied. Demonstrably,
history did not so begin ; and hence,
demonstrably, the family — the social
unit of the theory — is not the primary
unit it is assumed to be. Farther, and

* This can be done in regard to the Greek races

which traced their descent to the sons of Helen.
 IN ADVANCING COMMUNITIES. 271

apart from these objections, the theory

is wanting in this essential quality of
a good theory, viz., that it should ex-
plain, or be capable of being made to
appear to explain, the facts. The more
acute thinkers who have adopted it, and
who at the same time have rejected,

as they felt constrained to do, the prin-

ciple of contiguity, as a principle on
which groups in early times united,*
have discerned serious difficulties in the

way of entertaining the theory. Mr.

Maine especially seems to have been im-
pressed with these difficulties, and to have
been unable to find any proper solution
of them.

* Aristotle kept clear of many of the difficulties

which surround the theory of the derivation of the
state from the family, by making the combination
of families of different stocks depend on contiguity of
residence, and on convenience.
272 THE DECA Y OF EXOGAMY

" In most of the Greek States, and in

Rome," says Mr. Maine,* " there long re-

mained vestiges of an ascending series of

groups, out of which the State was at

first constituted. The family, house, and
Romans, may be taken as the
tribe of the

type of them and they are so described

;

to us, that we can scarcely help conceiv-

ing them as a system of concentric circles,

which have gradually expanded from the

same point. The elementary group is the
family connected by common subjection
to the highest male ascendant. The ag-
gregation of families (which elsewheret he
calls the fictitious extension of the family)
forms the gens or house. The aggrega-
tion of houses makes the tribe. The ag-
gregation of tribes forms the common-
wealth."

* "Ancient Law," p. 128. t P. 200.

 IN ADVANCING COMMUNITIES. 273

Obviously, this is not an explanation

of the growth of the commonwealth. It

does not show how, consistently with the

assumption of the family as the elemen-
tary unit, the various aggregations spoken
of were effected. The gens, clan, or house,

which occurs in early tribes wherever we

look, was in India, Greece, and Rome, as
elsewhere, composed of all the persons in
the tribe (included in families, of course),
bearing the same name, and accounted
of the same stock. Were the gentes
really of different stocks, as their names
would imply, and as the people believed ?

If so, how came clans of different stocks

to be united in the same tribe ? The pro-

duction of a tribe of one stock —of a
homogeneous agnatic group — is readily

on the family hypothesis.

conceivable
But how came a variety of such groups
^—of different stocks— to coalesce in a
 ;

274 THE DECA Y OF EXOGAMY

local tribe? On the other hand, how

came a tribe of descent to be divided into
clans situated in different local tribes

how came such a tribe to be at all divided

into clans or houses ?

To these questions no proper answer

has, so far as we know, been given. The
common supposition is, that the hetero-
geneity of the local tribes was somehow
brought about by the fiction of adoption.

It is supposed that the agnatic groups

must have united through this fiction,
the one adopting the other on the pre-
tence of kinship; although, after their
union, they preserved their distinctive
names. Mr. Maine does not expressly
say that the observed combination of
heterogeneous elements in tribes, and
hence in the commonwealth —often as-
sumed to be composed wholly of kindred
—was due to the employment of the
 IN ADVANCING COMMUNITIES. 275

fiction of adoption; but he leaves that

conclusion to be drawn by his readers.
" If," he says, " adoption had never
existed, I do not see how any one of the
primitive groups (?>., the agnatic brother-
hoods, for he contemplates none other),
whatever were their nature, could have
absorbed one another ; or, on what terms
any two of them could have combined,
except those of absolute superiority on
the one side, and absolute subjection on
the other," Here the difficulty is dis-
tinctly perceived ; but, is it overcome ?

What is the evidence that the fiction of

adoption was ever employed on so grand
a scale as we must suppose, to explain
the heterogeneity of such groups as the
tribes of Rome, Greece, or India? We
say that there is none. It is a case of
error, induced by the maxim " causa aequat
effectum." As the fiction of adoption
276 THE DECA Y OF EXOGAMY

was the only cause conceived of, that

might have produced the observed phe-
nomena, it has been assumed to have been
employed on the scale required by its

supposed effects. But, we repeat, there

is no evidence that it was so employed.
And there is no likelihood that it was so
employed. Our belief is, that adoption
has been much more extensively employed
by philosophers to explain, than it was by
rude races to produce, heterogeneity. It

is of no consequence how families and

gentes were adulterated by the practice of
adoption. The. difficulty to be got over
does not lie so much in any want of purity
of the so-called stocks, as in the union of
different stocks—admittedly different— in
the same tribe.

The phenomena we have been con-

templating offer no difficulty when re-
garded from the point of view to which
 IN ADVANCING COMMUNITIES. 277

we have been led by our investigation.

To satisfy the reader of this, we must to

some extent recapitulate. We started in

the last chapter from the conception of

populations, the units of which were
homogeneous groups or tribes, which, on
the introduction of kinship, became the
stock groups of each particular district or
country, and gave their names to the

variety of stocks subsequently known to

the district or country. Arid we saw
how, into the groups, and into their sec-
tions, if they divided, exogamy con-
jointly with the system of kinship through
females only, while it endured, systemati-
cally imported strangers, and thus in

time rendered the groups heterogeneous,

and the general population to the same*

* That is to the same recognised extent, but really

to' a much greater, half the blood-ties being over-

looked.
T
278 THE DECA Y OF EXOGAMY

extent homogeneous. We saw how thus

every local tribe came to consist of per-
sons of different stocks ; also how all of
the same stock, in each, were bound to-

gether by rights and obligations spring-

ing out of kinship ; and how they were
also united — though to less practical
effect —to all others of the same stock in

whatever local tribes residing. Farther,

we saw that, when kinship became agnatic,
the character of the local tribes became
stereotyped, the causes of heterogeneity
ceasing to operate.
In each local tribe all the men of the
same stock and name were bound by
kinship tocommon action, in certain
cases, against the men of other stocks,
both in the tribe and elsewhere. Here
we have the gentes in the local tribe.
And gentes of the same stock and name
would exist in different neighbouring
 IN ADVANCING COMMUNITIES. 279

local tribes. We shall learn from this

how the causes which led to the diffusion

of the stocks throughout the population,
favoured the union of the population in
the commonwealth. Most probably con-
tiguous tribes would be composed of pre-
cisely the same stocks — would contain

gentes of precisely the same names, and

thus be in the strictest sense akin —kin-
dred. There is no difficulty in conceiv-

ing equal unions taking place between

such tribes under the influence of kin-
ship, similarity of elements and struc-

ture, contiguity and convenience. And

on the union of several local tribes under
a common government, the gentes of each
stock in the combination would be recog-
de-
nised as forming together a tribe of
would do. Thus,
scent, as in reality they

the tribes of descent in the common-

gentes
wealth would each embrace several
28o THE DECA Y OF EXOGAMY

which had taken shape, and acquired

special rights and property in the local

tribes in which they respectively were,

before the union in the State. As the
gens (or the germ thereof) would arise
under the influence of female kinship, it

would precede —probably long precede^

agnatic kinship and the family system as
they existed in Rome. And we have
already seen something of the processes
by which the gentes would be resolved
into rude family groups, and the family
system gradually advance into the patri-
archal, till the gentes would be resolved
into a series of families of the Roman
type. The order of social development,
in our view, is then, that the tribe stands

first ; the gens or house next ; and last of

all, the family. We are satisfied that the
more the reader studies the phenomena
of early tribal composition —the phratries
 ;

IN ADVANCING COMMUNITIES. 281

and such-like unions of persons in dif-

ferent tribes —the more he will be con-

vinced that this was the order of the

genesis of tribes, gentes, and families
and that in no other way can the pheno^
mena of the composition of early states
be satisfactorily explained.*
Assuming that we have given the true

* We recommend to the reader a perusal of the

Translator's Preface to the Oxford translation (1830)
of C. O. MuUer's " History and Antiquities of the
Doric Race"— the translators being Henry Tufnell
and Sir George Cornwall Lewis. If the reader keeps
in view that we have good evidence of the existence

at one time of the system of kinship through females

only among the Dorians, we believe he will not be
translated
able to peruse the passage of Dicaearchus
in that preface, and the Editor's comments thereon,
are
without being strongly impressed that our. views
the only views on which the phenomena of early

Doric communities can be made intelligible. And if

Part of Mr. Grote's

he farther study Chap, x.. ii.

" History of Greece," we believe his impression of the

correctness of our views will be deepened.

282 THE DECA Y OF EXOGAMY

account of the origin of clans of different

names and stocks in local tribes, and of
the appearance of distinct houses of the
same name in tribes of descent, in ancient

commonwealths, we might greatly extend

the area of exogamy. But to do so is not
our present purpose. We observe that
the breakdown of exogamy in advancing
communities must have been most inti-

mately connected with this evolution of

clans and families, and of clan and family
estates within the tribe. As we have
already had occasion to point out, the
only species of property known anywhere
originally appears to have been pro-
perty in common. Everywhere it would
appear that the groups were at the first
the only owners. And the history of the
right of property, as we have it, is just
that of the growth mstc^e groups of pro-
prietary rights distinct from the tribal.
 IN ADVANCING COMMUNITIES. 283

It was an advance when clan estates were

recognised as distinct from the tribal ; it

was a farther advance when family estates

were recognised as distinct from those of
the clan. Barbarism was already far in

the rear when individual property made

its appearance.
Now, when the authentic history of
Rome begins, marriage-laws had not only
become stringent, but modern in char-
acter, conjugal fidelity had become com-
mon, and, as the consequence, relationship
had become agnatic. The tribal system,

moreover, had been stripped of several of

its leading features. Property had long
been localized in families as distinct from
gentes and this localization had cut the
;

families off from one another, and to a

large extent from the gentes. Families

were still associated in gentes ;

the gentes

in tribes, for political purposes ;

and there
284 THE DECA Y OF EXOGAMY

remained to the gentiles the right and

spes successionis to family estates, failing
legitimate heirs. But already the laws of
succession which had sprung up with
family property —which were springing
up with individual property —^were train-
ing the people to consider a few persons
only as their kinsmen in any special
sense. And the course of decadence of
the recognition of extended kinships in
Greece followed much the same path.
However strongly implanted the principle
of exogamy may have originally been, it
must have succumbed to the influences
which tlius disintegrated the old bonds of
kinship. So complete was the disintegra-
tion, that in Rome while the right of isuc-

cession still remained in the gentiles as

evidence of kinship, and its rights and

obligations, having been originally co-
extensive with the gens, we find this so
 IN ADVANCING COMMUNITIES. 285

far lost sight of in the nebulosities of

legal terminology, that the lawyers de-
clared that all consanguinity ended with
their names for its seven degrees—names
invented with a view to the regulation of
successions ; ended there, " quia ulteriuS
per rerum naturam nee nomina inveniri
nee vita succedentibus prorogari potest."*
A maxim, by the way, which proved
very convenient to those pontiffs who
maintained that the Levitical rule pro-
hibited marriage between all blood

relations, and which is probably found

very convenient now in Russia where the
Greek church still asserts that view of
the Levitical rule. For the rest, it must
be enough to say that exogamy died
out with the blood-ties on which its
existence depended, and that the process

* Paulus, Senten. Recept., Lib. iv., Tit ii.

 286 THE DECA Y OF EXOGAMY.

of destruction of those ties which the laws

of succession inaugurated, was carried on
and completed by the law of Testaments.
If to this general view anything should be
added, perhaps it is that the earliest viola-
tions of the rule of exogamy would appear
to have been called for in the case of fe-

male heiresses. Such ladies, if they made

proper marriages according to old law — at
that stage of progress when a wife was
usually what they call in Ceylon a deega
wife, i.e., passed from her own family into
the family and village of her husband-
must have carried their estates into other
tribes or gentes, and so have cut off their
own gentiles from the prospect of succeed-
ing them. Numbers xxxvi. contains an
account of the origin among the Israelites
of the rule prohibiting a female heiress
from marrying out of the tribe of the
family of her father. And the prohibition
is not uncommon.
 CONCL USION. 287

CHAPTER X.

CONCLUSION.

Here our argument ends. Apparently

simple as was the problem to be solved,
it has now received a solution for the first

time. That solution opens a new series

of problems for the consideration of the

philosopher; of some of which, indeed,
we have offered solutions, which, in the

fervour of the first conception, may have

been put forward in too sanguine a spirit.

It will be something, however, if, in pro-

posing and trying to solve such problems,

we have at least succeeded in showing
their importance, by displaying them on
the level of the foundations of civil society.
The chief of these questions respect the
origin of exogamy and of endogamy. As
288 CONCL USION.

to the origin of the former, it will be re-

marked that we have not spent time on

the consideration of the question, whether
it may not have been due to a natural feel-
ing against the union of near kinsfolk. Its

general description\might dispose one to

think that it might have been due to such

a feeling. But, owing to the nature of

ancient kinship, as we have seen it, exo-
gamy afforded no proper security against
the intermixture of persons near of kin.
It permitted, in reality, many marriages
which we now disallow. Ties of blood
that were not recognised —though that

they were ties of blood must have been

vaguely perceived —were practically non-

existent. And, in the first stages of

ihuman development, was agreeable to
it

exogamy that brothers and sisters of the

half-blood should marry, while uncles
might marry nieces, ^nd nephews aunts.
 CONCL USION. 289

Afterwards, unions equally incestuous,

as we should say, were allowable in con-
sequence of the limitation in blood-ties
derived from agnation. One thing is

very clear, that in ancient times such

questions as have been raised by modern

science, as to the propriety of the mar-
riages of near relatives, were never consi-
dered. On the whole, the account which
we have given of the origin of exogamy ,

appears the only one which will bear

examination. The scarcity of women

within the group led to a practice of

stealing the women of other groups, and

in time it came to be considered im-

proper, because it was unusual, for a man

to marry a woman of his own group.

Another important question respects the

universality of kinship through, females
only. The strong a priori presump-
tions in favour of that, as the most
290 CONCL USION.

archaic system of kinship, backed by

so much evidence as we have been able
to adduce, seem to us satisfactorily to
establish the position which we have
taken up. On the other hand, much
labour and investigation will yet be
needed to show clearly that that kinship
was not merely a concomitant of exo-
gamy and polyandry, should cases occur
in which must be held that neither poly-
it

andry nor exogamy was primitive custom.

Assuming the universality of that kinship,
the question remains : What were the
stages of development of the family sys-
tem, founded on the principle of agnation,
as at Rome ? Some of these questions we
have grappled with; at others we have
done little more than glance. Are we too
sanguine if we venture to predict that
their solution will yet be reached, and
will exhibit early human history in a very
 CONCL USION. 291

different light from that in which it has

hitherto been regarded, by what Dugald
Stewart calls " that indolent philosophy
which refers to a miracle whatever ap-
pearance both in the natural and moral
worlds it is unable to explain "?
 —

APPENDIX

Note A. Additional Examples of the

Form of Capture.
It is to be remarked of the examples of
the Form of Capture in the text, as of those
which follow, that they have never before
been collated or made the subject of serious
speculation. They are just noted as matters of
curiosity where they occur, the authorities ven-
turing no explanation, except in. one or two
cases, of their meaning or origin ; and only in

some cases noticing similar customs as having

prevailed elsewhere than in the district reported
upon. They are thus presented to us in a
trustworthy shape as materials for an induction.
It may be added, as regards the additional
examples of the Form of Capture here appended,
that, like the examples in the text, they, with
two exceptions, show that the central idea in
the symbol was the carrying off of the woman,
u
294 APPENDIX.

in defiance of her kindred and of their efforts

to protect her. The first of the following
examples of the form is in some respects the
most striking of any of which we have an
account.
I. "In their marriages," says Sir Henry Piers

of the Irish, " especially in those countries where

cattle abound, the parents and friends on each
side meet on the side of an hill, or, if the weather
be cold, in some place of shelter, about midway
between both dwellings. If agreement ensue,
they drink the agreement bottle, as they call it,

which is a bottle of good usquebaugh, and this

goes merrily round. For payment of the por-
—which
tion is generally a determinate number
of cows— little care is taken. The father or
next of kin to the bride sends to his ndghbours
and friends sub mutucB vicissitudinis obtentu,
and every one gives his cow or heifer, and thus
the portion is quickly paid. Nevertheless,
caution is taken from the bridegroom on the
day of delivery for restitution of the cattle, in
case the bride die childless within a certain day,
limited by agreement ; and, in this case, every
man's own beast is restored. Thus, care is
 APPENDIX. 29s

taken that no man shall grow rich by frequent

marriages. On the day of bringing home, the
bridegroom and his friends ride out and meet
the bride and her friends at the place of meet-
ing. Being come near each other, the custom was
of old to cast short darts at the company that at-

tended the bride, but at such distance that seldom

any hurt ensued. Yet it is not out of the
memory of man that the Lord of Hoath on
such an occasion lost an eye. This custom of
casting darts is now obsolete." —Vallency's
" Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis," vol. i. p.
122, 1786, No. I, Description of Westmeath, by
Sir Henry Piers — ^written a.d. 1682.

2. We have an account from M. Hue of the

constitution of marriage among the Mongols of

the Ortous. After stating that marriage is with

the Mongols a matter of sale and purchase;
that this is clearly expressed, in their language,
in such phrases have bought for my son
as—" I

the daughter of So-and-so ;" We have sold

" our
that
daughter to such-and-such a family;" -and
sale remains
the lady for some time after the
say that
with her family, M. Hue proceeds to
"
the day having arrived, the
bridegroom sends
 —

296 APPENDIX.

early in the morning a deputation to fetch the

girl who has been betrothed to him, or rather
whom he has bought. When the envoys draw
near, the relations and friends of the bride place
themselves in a circle before the door, as if to oppose
the departure of the bride, and then begins a
feigned fight, which of course terminates in the
bride being carried off. She is placed on a horse,
and having been thrice led round her paternal
house, she is then taken at full gallop to the
tent which has been prepared for the purpose,
near the dwelling of her father-in-law. Mean-
time, all the Tartars of the neighbourhood, the
relations and friends of both families, repair to
the wedding-feast, and offer their presents to
the newly-married pair."— Hazlitt 's Translation
of Hue's "Travels," vol. i. p. 185, illustrated
library edition.

3. We find the following account of the con-

stitution of marriage among the Toorkomans :

" The most singular customs of these people

(theToorkomans) relate to marriage. The
Toorkomans do not shut up their women, and
there being no restraint on the social inter-
course between the sexes, as in most Mussul-
 APPENDIX. 297

man countries, love matches are common. A

youth becomes acquainted with a girl ; they
are mutually attached, and agree to marry ; but
the young man does not dare to breathe his
wishes to the parents of his beloved, for such is

not etiquette, and would be resented as an in-

sult. What does he do ? He elopes with the

girl and carries her to some neighbouring obah,
where, such is the custom, there is no doubt of
a kind reception ; and there the young couple
live as man and wife for some six weeks, when
the Reish-suffeeds, or elders of the protecting
obah, deem it time to talk over the matter with
the parents. Accordingly they represent the
wishes of the young couple, and, joined by the
elders of the father's obah, endeavour to recon-
cile him to the union, promising on the part of
the bridegroom, a handsome bashlogue, or price,
for his wife. In due time the consent is given,
on which the bride returns to her father's house,
for six
where, strange to say, she is retained
months or a year, and sometimes two
years,

according, as itappears, to her caprice or the

parent's will, having no communication with

her husband, unless by stealth. The meaning
 —

298 APPENDIX.

of this strange separation I never could ascer-

tain Afterwards the marriage
presents and price of the wife are interchanged,
and she goes finally to live with her husband."
— Eraser's "Journey" (1838), vol. ii. p. 372.
" Matches are also made occasionally by the
parents themselves, with or without the inter-
vention of the Reish-suffeeds, but the order and
ceremonies of the nuptials are the same. There
is a regular contract and a stipulated price ; the
young people are permitted to enjoy each other's
society for a month or six weeks and the bride
;

then returns, as in the former case, to spend a

year or more with her parents." Idem., vol. ii.

P- 375-_
This c^se illustrates a stage of transition
from the system of actual capture to a symbolism,
of which stage traces remained in Sparta in his-
toric times. In Sparta the young wife was not,
immediately after the marriage, domiciled in her
husband's house, but cohabited with him for
some time clandestinely, till he brought her,
and frequently her mother also, to his home.
(Xenophbn, Rep. Lac. 1-5). And the same
custom prevailed in Crete. (Strabo, x., p.
 APPENDIX. 299

432.) In example No. 7 we shall again see

these peculiarities in combination with the Form
of Capture.
4. Among the Soligas (India), "when a girl
consents to marry, the man runs away with
her to some neighbouring village, and they live
honeymoon is over. They then
there until the
return home, and give a feast to the people
of their village." — Buchanan's " Journey from
Madras," vol. ii. p. 178.
5. " The marriage ceremony is very simple
among the Aenezes. . . The marriage-day
being appointed (usually five or six days after
the betrothing), the bridegroom comes with a
lamb in his arms to the tent of the girl's father,
and there cuts the lamb's throat before wit-
nesses. As soon as the blood falls upon the
ground the marriage ceremony is regarded as
complete. The men and girls amuse them-
selves with feasting and singing. Soon after

sunset, the bridegroom retires to a tent pitched

for him at a distance from the camp; there

he shuts himself up, and awaits the arrival

of his bride. The bashful girl meanwhile

runs from the tent of one friend to another
300 APPENDIX.

till she is caught at last, and conducted in

triumph by a few women to the bridegroom's
tent ; he receives her at the entrance, and forces
her into it ; the women who had accompanied
her then depart." — Burckhardt's " Notes," vol.
i. p. 107.

6. Burckhardt, after noticing that, among the

Bedouins of Mount Sinai, marriage is a matter of
sale and purchase, in which the inclinations of
the bride are not consulted, proceeds :
— "Among
the Arabs of Sinai the young maid comes home
in the evening with the cattle. At a short
distance from the camp she is met by the future
spouse and a couple of his young friends, and
carried offby force to her father's tent. If she
entertainsany suspicion of their designs, she
defends herself with stones, and often inflicts
wounds on the young men, even though she
does not dislike the lover; for, according to
custom, the more she struggles, bites, kicks,
cries, and strikes, the more she is applauded
ever after by her own companions." She is then
taken to her father's tent. There follows the
throwing over her of the abba, or man's cloak,
and a formal announcement of the name of
 —

APPENDIX. 301

her future husband ; after this she is dressed

in bridal apparel, and mounted on a camel,
"although still continuing to struggle in a
most unruly manner, and held by the bride-
groom's friends on both sides." She is led in

this way to, and three times round, and finally

into, the bridegroom's tent. The resistance is

continued till the last. The marriage, of course,

ends in a feast, and presents to the bride.

Burckhardt's " Notes," vol. i. p. 263.

7. Among the
Mezeyne, marriage appears to
be a matter of sale and purchase,. and to be con-
stituted, as among the Aenezes, through capture

as a form. It is attended, however, by a

peculiar custom, which we have already met,

though not in so striking a shape. " A singular

custom," says Burckhardt (" Notes," vol. i. p.

269), " prevails among the Mezeyne tribe, within

the limits of the Sinai peninsula, but not among

the other tribes of that province. girl having A
abba at night (?. e., after
been wrapped in the

the capture as in the preceding case), is per-

the
mitted to escape from her tent and fly into
neighbouring mountains The bridegroom goes
.

in search of her next day, and remains often

302 APPENDIX.

many days before he can find her out, while her

female friends are apprised of her hiding-place,,
and furnish her with provisions. If the husband
finds her at last (which is sooner or later, accord-
ing to the impression that he has made upon
the girl's heart), he is bound
consummate to
the marriage in the open country, and to pass the
night with her in the mountains. The next morn-
ing the bride goes home to her tent, that she may

have some food ; but again runs away in the

evening, and repeats these flights several times,
till she finally returns to her tent. She does not
go to live in her husband's tent till she is far
advanced in pregnancy ; if she does not become
pregnant she may not join her husband till after
a full year from the wedding-day." Burckhardt
says thesame custom is, observed among the
Mezeyne Arabs elsewhere.

Note B. — On the Practice of Capturing

Wives.

I. An anonymous writer in " Chambers* Jour-

nal," October 22, 1864, gives the following ac-
 —

APPENDIX. 303

count of the position of women, and of the

practice of capturing wives, among the Austra-
lian Blacks. The writer would appear to have
had good opportunities of being acquainted with
the native customs :

" In nothing is the brutality of their nature

more clearly shown than in their treatment of

their females. Amongst them, women are con-

sidered as an inferior class, and are used almost

as beasts of burden ; so that it is not at all un-

common meet a huge black fellow travelling

to

merrily along with no load but his spear or war-

club, whilst his unfortunate leubra is panting

under the weight of their goods and chattels,

which she is compelled to carry from camp to
camp. Courtship, as the precursor to marriage,
is unknown amongst them. When a young
warrior desirous of procuring a wife, he gene-
is

rally obtains one by giving in

exchange for her
relative of his
a sister, or some other female
there should happen to be no
eli-
own ; but if
tribe to which
gible damsel disengaged in the
the encamp-
he belongs, then he hovers round
ment of some other blacks until he gets an op-
their leubras, whom
portunity of seizing one of
 ;

304 APPENDIX.

perhaps he has seen and admired when attend-

ing one of the grand corroborries. His mode
of paying his addresses is simple and efficacious.
With a blow of his nulla-nulla (war-club), he
stuns the object of his 'affections,' and drags
her insensible body away to some retired spot,
whence, as soon as she recovers her senses, he
brings her home to his own gunyah in triumph.
Sometimes two join in an expedition for the
same purpose, and then for several days they
watch the movements of their intended victims,
using the utmost skill in concealing their pre-

sence. When they have obtained the know-

ledge they require, they wait for a dark, windy
night ; then quite naked, and carrying only their
long 'jag-spears,' they crawl stealthily through
the bush until they reach the immediate vicinity
of the camp-fires, in front of which the girls
they are in search of are sleeping. Slowly and
silently, they creep close enough to distinguish
the figure of one of those leubras ; then one of
the intruders stretches out his spear, and inserts
its barbed point amongst her thick flowing locks
turning the spear slowly round, some of her hair
speedily becomes entangled with it ; then, with
 APPENDIX. 305

a sudden jerk, she is aroused from her slumber,

and as her eyes open, she feels the sharp point
of another weapon pressed against her throat.
She neither faints nor screams she knows well
;

that the slightest attempt at escape or alarm

will cause her instant death, so, like a sensible
woman, she makes a virtue of necessity, and
rising silently, she follows her captors. They
lead her away to a considerable distance, tie

her to a tree, and return to ensnare their other

victim in like manner. Then, when they have

accomplished their design, they hurry off to

their own camp, where they are received with

universal applause, and highly honoured for
their gallant exploit. Occasionally an alarm is

given, but even then the wife-stealers easily

escape amidst the confusion, to renew their
attempt at some future period. When a dis-
tinguished warrior carries off a bride from a
strange tribe, he will frequently volunteer to
undergo 'the trial of spears,' in order to prevent
the necessity of his people going to war
in his

defence then both the tribes meet, and

ten of
;

their smartest and strongest young men are

picked out by the aggrieved party. These are
 ;

3o6 APPENDIX.

each provided with three reed-spears, and a

wommera, or throwing-stick and the offender,
;

armed only with his heiliman (a bark-shield

eighteen inches long by six wide), is led out in
front, and placed at the distance of forty yards.
Then, at a given signal, the thirty spears are

launched at him in rapid succession ; these he

receives and parries with his shield, and so skil-

ful are the blacks in the use of their own wea-

pons, that very seldom is any wound inflicted.

Having successfully passed through this ordeal,

the warrior is considered to have fairly earned
his leubra, and to have atoned for his offence in
carrying her off; so the ceremony generally
concludes by the two tribes feasting together in
perfect harmony."
It is impossible, in reading this account of
the Australian mode of capturing women, not
to recall what Plutarch says of the ceremonies
of Roman marriage, apropos of the Rape of the
Sabines — :
" It is a custom still observed for
the bride not to go over the threshold of her
husband's house herself, but to be carried over
(compare additional example of the Form No.
5, p. 300), because the Sabine virgins did not
 APPENDIX. 307

go in voluntarily, but were carried in by vio-

lence. Some add that
the brides hair is parted
with the point of a spear, in memory
of the first
marriages being brought about in a warlike
manner."

2. Probable Origin of the Name Racshasa.

—We saw (pp. 80-81) that, in the code of
Menu, one of the eight legal forms of the mar-
riage ceremony was that by capture de facto,
and called Racshasa, and that this marriage
was permitted to the military class. It is curi-
ous that the name of this species of marriage
should be that of a race of beings —the Rak-
shasas —whom we find playing an important
part, and that connected with a legend of a
capture, in the mythic history of the Hindus.
The story of the Ramayana may be said to be
that of the carrying off of Rama's wife, Sita, by
the Rakshasa, Ravana, and of the consequent
war carried on by Rama against the Rakshasas,
ending in their defeat and the recovery of Sita.
(See Williams's " Indian Epic Poetry," pp. 74-
76.) Wilson (" India Three Thousand Years
Ago;" Bombay, 1858, p. 20) speaks of the
3o8 APPENDIX.

Rakshasas as " a people, often alluded to, from

whom, the Aryas suffered much, and who, by
their descendants, were transferred in idea to
the most distant south, and treated by them as
a race of mythical giants.*' He ranks them
with the Dasyus, Ugras, Pishachas, and Asuras,
as indigenous barbarian races or tribes, which
had to be overcome before the Aryans could
effect a settlement in part of Hindustan. Lassen
takes the same view. "The Ramayana," he
says (Lassen, vol. i. p. 535 we quote from
;

Muir's " Sanscrit Texts," vol. ii. p. 425) "contains

the narrative of the first attempt of the Aryans
to extend themselves to the south by conquest;
but it presupposes the peaceable extension of
Brahmanical missions in the same direction as
having taken place still earlier. . . . The
Rakshasas, who are represented as disturbing
the sacrifices and devouring the priests, signify
here, as often elsewhere, merely the savage
tribes which placed themselves in hostile oppo-
sition to the Brahmanical institutions. The
only other actors who appear in the legend, in

addition to these inhabitants, are the monkeys,

which ally themselves to Rama and render him
 ;

APPENDIX. 309

assistance. This can only mean that, when the

Arian Kshatriyas first made hostile incursions

into the south, they were aided by another por-

tion of the indigenous tribes." Dr. Muir can find
no authority for saying that the word Rakshasa
was originally the name of a tribe. At the same
time (" Texts," vol. ii. p. 434), he inclines to hold
the descriptions we have of them as having more
probably originated in hostile contact with the
savages of the south, than as the simple off-

spring of the poet's imagination. He notices

(" Texts," vol. 426) that, even in the Vedic

ii. p.

period, the Rakshasas " had been magnified into

demons and giants by the poetical and supersti-

tious imaginations of the early (Arian) bards."

He quotes from the Ramayana a passage which
represents them as cannibals —feeding on blood,
men-devouring, changing their shapes, etc.

which they are described as " of

and another, in

fearful swiftness and unyielding in battle;" while

Ravana, the most terrible of all the Rakshasas,

is stigmatised as a " destroyer of religious du-

of others." Dr.
ties, and rayisher of the wives

Muir adds, that the description of the Rak-

shasas in the Ramayana "corresponds in many

X
3IO APPENDIX.

respects with the epithets applied to the same

class of beings (whether we take them for men
or for demons) who are so often alluded to in
the Rigveda," and that it is quite possible that
the author of the Ramayana may have bor-
rowed therefrom many of the traits which he
ascribes to the Rakshasas.
But how came the name of a legal mode of
marriage to be that of such a race of beings ?
The only answer that we can make is a surmise
— viz., that while the system of capture had not
as yet died out among the Kshatriyas, or war-
rior caste of the Aryans, it was perfect among
the races to which the name Rakshasas was
applied ; and that what was their system gave
its designation to the exceptional, although per
mitted, marriage by capture among the Kshat-
riyas. This is the more probable, since, so far
as we can ascertain, there is nothing in the name
— Rakshasa— itself, descriptive of the mode of
marriage.
From another point of view, it may be ob-
served that the Rakshasas hold nearly the same
place in Hindu tradition that giants, ogres, and
trolls occupy in Scandinavian and Celtic legends.
 APPENDIX. 311

They are —robbers and

supernatural beings
plunderers of human habitations —men-devour-
ers and women-stealers. The giants and ogres
of the north share the characteristics of Ravana.
The cruel monsters are always carrying off

kings' daughters. As Rama's exploits culmi-

nate in the recovery of Sita, so the northern

giant-slayer is crowned with the greatest glory
when he has rescued the captive princesses and
restored them in safety to the king's—their
father's — palace. Are we to hold all such beings

— giants, ogres, trolls, etc. —wherever they occur,

as representing savage races, between whom

and the peoples in whose legends they appear,
as supernatural beings, there was chronic hos-
tility ?

3. Africa. —The following is the account

which poor Speke received from the

Queen of
:— "There are
Uganda regarding marriage there
Uganda there
no such things as marriages in :

to it. If any Mkun-

are no ceremonies attached
gu possessed of a pretty daughter committed

an offence, he might give her to the king as a

peace-offering ; if any neighbouring king had a
312 APPENDIX.

pretty daughter, and the king of Uganda wanted

her, she might be demanded as a fitting tribute.

The Wakungu in Uganda are supplied with

women by the king, according to their merits,
from seizures in battle abroad, or seizures from
refractory officers at home. The women are
not regarded as property according to the Wan-
yamii^zi practice, though many exchange their
daughters ; and some women, for misdemean-
ours, are sold into slavery; whilst others are
flogged, or are degraded to do all the menial
services of the house"— (Speke's "Journal," etc.,

1863, p. 361).
 INDEX.
-000-

Abipones, DobuzhofFer's account of the, 125

Abraham married his sister-german, 219
Achaeans, 21
Achilles Tatius, 220
Adoption, Libripens present at, 18; fiction of, 236; sup-

posed explanation of the heterogeneity of primitive

groups, 274
Aenezes, form of capture, 299
Affghanistan, practice of capturing wives, 67
Africa, form of capture, 38 ; defective information respect-
ing, 92 marriage in Equatorial, 311
;

Agathjnrsi, said to have had wives in common, 175

Agnation, system of, explained, 234 ; the growth of the .

system 240 ; effect on the structure of the primitive

of,

groups, 250
Aimaks, absence of conjugal fidelity, 176
Aleutian Islands, polyandry, 179, 183
Americari Indians, traces of the form of capture, 39 ; prac-
tice of capturing wives, 59-66 ; exogamous, 120 ; system
of kinship through females only, 124, 211; anciently
polyandrous, 211
Amram married his father's sister, 220
" Ancient law," Maine's, 115, 152, 227, 235

Ansarians, said to have wives in common, 176

Apuleius, De Asino Aureo, 26
Aquapim, kinship through females only, 214
Y
314 INDEX.

Arabs, Bedouin, form of capture, 34, 300

" Archselogia Americana," 1 20
Archer's " Upper India," 180, 196
Aristotle, Theory of the origin of the State, 271
Asiatic Researches, 181, 185, 207
Aryans, earliest account of, 7 ; anciently polyandrous, 207,
214
Ashantee, kinship through females only, 2 14
Aswini-Kumaras, 216
Australian Elacks, system of capturing women for wives, 73,
303; exogamous, 113; system of kinship through
females only, 115 ; effects of exogamy and female kin-
ship, 118 j caSte, 256
Avaroes, polyandry, 195

Banyai, system of kinship through females only, 214

Bates' " NaturaUston the Amazons," 62
Bedouin Arabs, form of capture, 34, 300 ; frequency of
divorce, 177.
Beduanda Kallung, exogamous, 103
Beena husband, 186.
Bell, James Stanislaus, " Journal of a Residence in Cir-
cassia," 101
Benjamin, tribe of, tradition respecting, 88
Bergman's " Streifereien," 33, 98
Betrothals, 74, 120, 252
Blood feud, the law of, effect on the structure of the primi-
tive groups, 1 1 4, 262
Bodo, endogamous, 147
" Book of Days," 71
Boreas and Orithya, the story, of, 83
Britons, ancient, polyandry, 182, 185
 INDEX. 315

Buchanan's " Journey from Madras," 178, 180, 185, 187,

213, 299
Bunsen " De Jure Hereditario Atheniensium," 221.
Buntar, Talava, system of kinship through females only, 213
Burckhardt, " Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabys," 34,
177, 207, 300, 302
But (Bodo), the system of kinship through females only, 213

Cachar, traces of polyandry, 179

Cagsar de Bello Gallico, 127, 182
Caindu, absence of conjugal fidelity, 176
"Cambrian Journal," 125, 211
Campbell, Col. Walter, " Indian Journal," 67
Campbell, Major-General, " Personal Narrative," 28
Capture, form of. See Form of Capture.
Capture, system or practice of capturing women for wives,

59-92-
Capture. See under following heads Affghanistan, Aus-
:

tralian Blacks, Caribbean Tribes, Coin-men, Deccan,

Feejees, Fuegians, Greeks, Hebrews, Hindus, Lith-
uania, Livonia, Manaos, Muscovy, New Zealanders,

Patagonians, Picts, Poland, Prussia, Romans, Scandi-

navians.
Capture. Instances of the system of capture in transition
towards a symbolism, 67-70, 298.
Caribbean tribes, system of capture, 63-65
Cascar, absence of conjugal fideUty, 176
Caste, 255, 257, 261
Caucasus, tribes of, have the Levirate obligation, 207
Cecrops, tradition of, 175, 220
had kinship through females only, 127,
Celts, anciently
126.
214; anciently exogamous,
Ceylon, polyandry among the Kandyans, 179.
 1

3i6 INDEX.

Cherookees, 121
Chinese, their tradition regarding the origin of marriage,
17s ; the frequency of divorceamong the, 177 ; infan-
ticide,
177 ; kinship through the mother only, 177, 214
Choctaws, 121
Chukchi, system of lending wives, 176
Caucasians, form of capture, 35; exogamous, 100; capture
de facto, 72
Clarke, Dr., « Travels," 31
Cochrane's " Journey," 176
Coemptio, Roman form of marriage, 13
Coin-men, practice of capturing women, 61
Comparative archaism of coemj)tio and confarreatio, 13;
of exogamy and endogamy, 136-150
Confarreatio, Roman form of marriage, 13
Congo, system of kinship through females only, 214, 238
Continuity of human progress, 1

Coorgs of Mysore, polyandry, 179

Creeks, 121
Crukhnians, the, 86
Cumana, absence of conjugal fidelity, 176
Cunningham's " Ladak," 180

Decay of Tibetan polyandry, 19&; of exogamy in advancing

communities, 266.
Deccan, practice of capturing women, 67
Deega wife, 186
De Hell, Xavier Hommaire, " Travels," 30
Demaratus, 25
Deuteronomy, Levirate obligation, 200, 207
Dhumal, caste or endogamous, 147
Dorians, ancient state of, 22, 267 ; form of capture, 24
Doric hordes, 85
 INDEX. 317

Druses, Levirate obligation, 207

Duan Gircanash, 86

EiMAUK, system of lending wives, 176

Elphinstone's "Caubul," 176
Egyptian tradition respecting the origin of marriage, 175
Eponomy, tendency to, 259
Erkman's "Travels in Siberia," 34, 176, 180
Erskine's "Islands of the Western Pacific," 80, 126
Endogamy defined, 48
Endogamy, the growth of, 257, 261
Exogamous peoples. See American Indians, Australian
Blacks, Beduanda Kallung, Circassians, Hindus, Kafirs,
Kalmucks, Kirghiz, Khonds, Koupooees, Magars,
Mows, Munnieporees, Muraras, Murfing, New Zea-
landers, Nogais, Sodhas, Somoyeds, Warali ; and see
267
Exogamy defined, 48, 53
Exogamy, its decay in advancing communities, 266

Exogamy and Endogamy, comparative archaism of, 136,

150

Feejees, practice of capture, 79 ; system of kinship, 126

Female infanticide, 165
Females only, system of kinship through, 154, 230
Fisher's " Memoir of Sylhet," 181
Fitzroy, " Adventure and Beagle," 40, 60
Fohi, tradition
of, 175

Forbes's "Ceylon," 186

Form of capture, definition of, 23 ; the origin of, 43i S^ j its

coincidence with exogamy, 93, 131

Form of capture, examples of See Aenezes, Africa,
Bedouin Arabs, Circassians, Doria»s, France, Friesland,
 3i8 INDEX.

Fuegians, Hebrews, Hindus, Irish, Kamchadales, Kal-

mucks, Khonds, Mezeyne Arabs, Mongols, Rome,
Toorkomans, Tunguzes, Soligas
Eraser's "Journey," 298
Friesland, form of capture, 33
Fuegians, form of capture, 40 ;
practice of capture de
facto, 60

Gaius, 18
Gaya "Marriage Ceremonies," 69, 180
Generalization respecting the early Aryans, 7
Geological record, 6
Getes of Transaxiana, 182
Goquet, "Origin of Laws," 181, 220
Gotrams, Indian, 106, 255
Grant "Origin and Descent of the Gael," 154
Greeks, tradition of the origin of marriage, 175
Grey's "Travels in North-Western Australia," 75, 113;
"Polynesian Mythology," 79, 180
Grote, " History of Greece," 281
Groups, men in earliest times found in, 162
Grooah (Kooloo) polyandry, 166
Gurwhal, traces of polyandry, 179
«

Hamilton's " New Account

of the East Indies," 180, 184
Hanthausen, "Trans-Caucasia," 207
Hebrews, form of capture among the, 88
Hebrews, traces of the system of capture, 82, 87
Hebrews, Levirate obligation, 207
Helen, capture of, 84
Hercules, traditions respecting, 83
Herodotus, 25
Heterogeneity of the primitive groups, how produced, 233
 INDEX. 319

Himalayan tribes, 147

Hindus, form of capture among, 27, 34 ; exogamous, 105 ;

traditions respecting marriage, 175, 182 ; anciently

polyandrous, 207 ; ancient Hindu kinship, 20"], et seq.

Ho, the, endogamous, 147

Homogeneity of the primitive groups, 230
Homogeneity of the primitive groups destroyed by exogamy
and female kinship, 233
Homogeneity of the groups restored by agnation, 250
Hostility, the state of, 132
Hue's "Travels," 178, 295
Humboldt, Alex. Von, " Personal Narrative," etc., 63, 180

Hurling shoes at bridegroom, the custom of, 29

Husaby, Gothland, traces of the practice of capture, 71
Hyllus, 83

" INDISCHE Studien," Dr Weber, 27

Indo-European race, 6
lole, capture of, 83
Irish, the form of capture, 294
" Irish Nennius," 85, 127, 182

Jews, 82, 87, 88, 260

Kafirs, exogamous, 103

exogamous, 99 Poli-
Kalmucks, form of capture, 30, 3i
i
5

tical system, 97 rA/r",/;

« Sketches of the History of Man, 36
Karnes's, Lord,
Kamilaroi, exogamous, 115, 256
Kamul, loose morality, 176
Kamschatka, 178 , . ,
polyandrous, 186 their ch.ets
Kandyans lend wives, 176
,
;

monogamists, 245
320 INDEX.

Karague, 38
Kashmir, polyandry, 178, 195
Kasias, polyandrous, 179, 183, 196
Keiaz system of lending wives, 176
Kinship, ancient systems of, 151, et seq.; system of through
females only, 154, et seq.; instances of the system
of kinship through females only, 209, etseq.
Kirghiz, 35, 78, 207
Kistewar, polyandry, 178, 195
Khonds, form of capture, 27
Khonds, exogamous, 94
Khonds, female infanticide, 165
Kinship through males, conditions of, 158, 161
Kleuker, " Zendavesta," 207
Kocch, peculiar family system, 189, 213
Kocch, endogamous, 147, 256
Koryaks, lend wives, 176 ; polyandrous, 176, 179
Koupooees, exogamous, 109
Krusenstern's " Voyage," 178

Ladak, polyandry, 178, 195, 198

Laing, Letter to Dr. Hodgkin, 112
Lancerota, Canary Islands, polyandry, 180
La Perouse's " Voyage," 178
Latham's "Descriptive Ethnology," 67, 176, 180, 189, 206
Legis Actio Sacramenti, 18
Lestychides, 25
Lewis'",Hebrew Republic," 203
Libripens at act of adoption^ 18
Lithuania, transitional form of capture, 67
Levir, originally co-husband with, and heir of, deceased
brother, 203
Livingstone's " Travels," 177, 207, 214
 INDEX. 321

Livonia, transitional form of capture, 67

Loanda, low state of marriage, 177
Loohoopas, peculiar custom, 198
Lycurgus, 25

Macculloch, Col., "Account of Munniepore," etc., 109, 198

Macpherson, Major, " Report on the Khonds," 27 ; " Re-
ligion of the Khonds," 95
Magar tribes exogamous, 104
Magnus Olaus, " Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus," 67
Magnus Johannes, " History of the Goths," 70
Mahabharata, tradition of polyandry, 215
Maine, " Ancient Law," 115, 235
Maine, on kinship through the mother, 115, 227
Makololo, brother must marry brother's widow, 207
Malabar polyandry. See Nairs, Maleres, and Poleres
Maleres of Malabar, polyandry, 179
"Mania, the Curse of," 125
Manaos, the, 61
Marco Polo, 176, 177
Marriage, fulness of the ideaof, 62

Martawan, tribe of Ansarians, lend wives, 176

Maypures, polyandry, 195
Massagetse, said to have practised promiscuity, 175
Maundeville, 178
Media, polyandry, 181
Meithei, the, no
Menu, Institutes of, 80, 105, 201, 207
Mezeyne, form of capture, 301
Mongols, form of capture, 295 levirate obligation, 207
:

Montesquieu, "The Spirit of Laws," 176, 221

"Monumenta Historica," 127
Moorcroft and Trebeck's " Travels," 198
 7

322 INDEX.

Morgan, Mr. L. H., Rochester, New York, circular letter

from, 123, 211
Moser, Louis, " The Caucasus and its People,'' 36
Mows, exogamous, 109
Mpongme lend wives, 176
Muir's " Sanskrit Texts," 106, 175, 216
Mailer's " Dorians," 20, 281
Muller, Max, " History of Sanscrit Ancient Literature,
182, 215
Munnieporees exogamous, 109
Murring exogamous, 109
Muscovites, transitional form of capture, 67
Mysore, polyandry, 179
Myths referable to system of capture, 83, 84

Nahor married his brother's daughter, 219

Nairs, Malabar, polyandry, 179, 184, 196
Natches, the, 121
New Zealanders exogamous, 125 ;
practice of capture, 79
Nogay Tartars, 35
Normandy, old law of succession, 238

Obligation on yoimger brother to marry widow of elder,

Levirate, 200, 207
Oens or Coin-men, practice of capture, 61
Orinoco, practice of capture, 63 ;
pol)randry, 180
Orissa, form of capture, 27
Ostiaks, brother marries brother's widow, 207.
Outline may be drawn of the course of human progress, 10

Pallas, " Voyages dans Plusieurs Provinces," etc., 32, 97

Pandava princes, wife in common, 215
Pandu, son of a levir, 2 1
 1

INDEX. S2S

Patagonians, 60, 65
Patan, wantonness of women, 176
Patxia potestas, the growth of, 246
Paulus, " Sententiae Receptse," 285
Pawning wives, 178
Pelasgi, 21
Percalus, the carrying off of, 25
Persians, obligation on brother to marry his brother's widow,

207 ; Persian incest, 223

Philo, 221
Philology, its function in history, 8-10
Phweelongmai, female infanticide, 139
Piers, Sir Henry, " Account of Westmeath," 294
list of, 127
Pictish kings, analysis of
system of capture, 85-87; exogamous,
Picts, tradition of the
126-129; polyandrous, 182
Plutarch, 25, 84, 306
Pluto and Proserpine, the story of, 83
Poetry of law, the, 17
Poland, transitional form of capture, 70
Poleres, Malabar, polyandry, 179
Polyandry, 178 ef se^.
Pothier, " Pandectse," 25
Preface of general history, the, 9, 10
Primitive groups, the, were homogeneous, 230
Primitive life, importance of the knowledge of,
1

Primitive prudery hypothesis, 22

Primitive races, 67
Progress of mankind, 158
168, et se^.
Promiscuity, the state of,

Prussia, transitional form of capture, 7°

Puharies of Gurwhal, 176
 1

324 INDEX.

Racshasas, 8o, 307

Rajputs, 213
Rape of the Sabines, 30, 85
Reade, " Savage Africa," 176, 180, 214
Ridley's account of the Kamilaroi, 117
Roman law, view of its growth, 15, 16
Rome, form of capture, 26, 306
—
Ruth, book of Levirate obligation, 200, 207

Sabine origin of confarreatio, 15

Sabinfes, rape of the, 85
Samoyeds, exogamous, 102
Saporogian Cossacks, polyandry, 179, 183
Scandinavians, traces of practice of capture, 7
Selden " Jus Naturale et Gentium,'' 82, 223
Sexes, the union of the, among savages, 167
Siam, marriages for a term, 177
Sirmor, polyandry, 178
Sivalik mountains, polyandry, 179
Skene. Note on the Pictish Kings, 127
Sodhas exogamous, 103, 147
Solinus, 127
Soligas,form of capture, 299
Sounan, marriages for a term, 177
Sources of information regarding early civil society, 5
Spartans, form of capture among, 24 ; said to have practised
promiscuity, 175, 222
Speke, "Journal of Discovery," etc., 38, 312
State, the, theories of the origin of, 269
Stocks, formation of conception of, 163
Strabo, 181, 298
Struggle for existence, 163, 164
Suidas, 220
 1

INDEX. 325

" Summer Ramble in the Himalayas," 180

Sutias of Gautama, 214
Svetaketu, tradition of, 175, 217
Sylhet, polyandry, 179
Symbolism of law, 1
System of capture, traces of, in the north, 70, 71
System of kinship through females only, 154, et seq.

Tacitus, "Germania," 181

Tamul and Telugu, 212, 218
Tanner's " Narrative," 125
Telingese polyandry, 178
Tennent's " Ceylon," 180
Theseus, traditions of, 84
Tibet, polyandry, 178, 193
Tibetan type of polyandry, prevalence of, 194
Terra del Fuego, form of capture, 39 ; practice of capture, 60
Tod's "Annals, etc. of Rajasthan," 182, 213
Tod's " Travels," 182
Transitional stages of system of capture, 67-70
Tribal systems, view of, 142-144
Tudas, Nilgherry hills, polyandry, 179
Tulava, kinship through females only, 213
Tunguses, 33
Toorkomans, form of capture, 296
Turner's " Tibet," 178, 180
TumbuU's " Voyage round the World," 75
Uganda, marriages in, 312
Usus. Roman mode of marriage, 13

Varro, 220
Vasu-ing, 126
Vigne's " Kashmir," 180
326 INDEX.

"Vivada Chintamani," io6

Volney's " Travels," 176, 207

Wales, form of capture, 36

Warali, exogamous, 104
Weber, Dr., " Indische Studien," 33
Williams' "Indian Epic Poetry," 216, 218
Wilson, " Report on the Puharies," 176, 212

Xenophon, 298
Xiphaline, 127

THE END.

Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh.