69. Exogamy with female descent.
The exogamous clan, with female descent, was, however, an unstable social institution, in that it had no regular provision for marriage nor for the incorporation of married couples. The men who associated with the women of the clan were not necessarily, nor as a rule, admitted to it, but remained in their own clans. How this association took place is not altogether clear. At a comparatively late period in Arabia, according to Professor Robertson Smith,[163] the woman would have a tent, and could entertain outside men for a shorter or longer period according to her inclination. The practice of serving for a wife also perhaps dates from the period of female descent. The arrangement would have been that a man went and lived with a woman’s family and gave his services in return for her conjugal society. Whether the residence with the wife’s family was permanent or not is perhaps uncertain. When Jacob served for Leah and Rachel, society seems to have been in the early patriarchal stage, as Laban was their father and he was Laban’s sister’s son. But it seems doubtful whether his right was then recognised to take his wives away with him, for even after he had served fourteen years Laban pursued him, and would have taken them back if he had not been warned against doing so in a vision. The episode of Rachel’s theft of the images also seems to indicate that she intended to take her own household gods with her and not to adopt those of her husband’s house. And Laban’s chief anxiety was for the recovery of the images. A relic of the husband’s residence with his wife’s family during the period of female descent may perhaps be found in the Banjāra caste, who oblige a man to go and live with his wife’s father for a month without seeing her face. Under the patriarchal system this rule of the Banjāras is meaningless, though the general practice of serving for a wife survives as a method of purchase.
The god Rāma, an incarnation of Vishnu, with attendant deities
Among the Australian aborigines apparently the clans, or sections of them, wander about in search of food and game, and meet each other for more or less promiscuous intercourse. This may perhaps be supposed to have been the general primitive condition of society after the introduction of exogamy combined with female descent. And its memory is possibly preserved in the tradition of the Golden Age, golden only in the sense that man was not troubled either by memory or anticipation, and lived only for the day. The entire insecurity of life and its frequent end by starvation or a violent death did not therefore trouble him any more than is the case with animals. He took no thought for the morrow, nor did the ills of yesterday oppress his mind. As when one of a herd of deer is shot by a hunter and the others stand by it pityingly as it lies dying on the ground, uncertain of its mishap, though they would help it if they could; yet when they perceive the hunter they make quickly off and in a few minutes are again grazing happily a mile or two away: little or no more than this can primitive man be supposed to have been affected by the deaths of his fellows. But possibly, since he was carnivorous, the sick and old may have been killed for food, as is still the practice among some tribes of savages. In the natural course, however, more or less permanent unions, though perhaps not regular marriages, must have developed in the female exogamous clan, which would thus usually have men of other clans living with it. And since identification of individuals would be extremely difficult before the introduction of personal names, there would be danger that when two clans met, men and women belonging to the same totem-clan would have sexual intercourse. This offence, owing to the strength of the feeling for exogamy, was frequently held to entail terrible evils for the community, and was consequently sometimes punished with death as treason. Moreover, if we suppose a number of small clans, A, B, C, D and E, to meet each other again and again, and the men and women to unite promiscuously, it is clear that the result would be a mixture of relationships of a very incestuous character. The incest of brothers and sisters by the same father would be possible and of almost all other relations, though that of brothers and sisters by the same mother would not be caused. This may have been the reason for the introduction of the class system among the Australians and Red Indians, by which all the clans of a certain area were divided into two classes, and the men of any clan of one class could only marry or have intercourse with the women of a clan of the other class. By such a division the evil results of the mixture of totems in exogamous clans with female descent would be avoided. The class system was sometimes further strengthened by the rule, in Australia, that different classes should, when they met, encamp on opposite sides of a creek or other natural division[164]; whilst among the Red Indians, the classes camp on opposite sides of the road, or live on different sides of the same house or street.[165] In Australia, and very occasionally elsewhere, the class system has been developed into four and eight sub-classes. A man of one sub-class can only marry a woman of one other, and their children belong to one of those different from either the father’s or mother’s. This highly elaborate and artificial system was no doubt, as stated by Sir J. G. Frazer, devised for the purpose of preventing the intermarriage of parents and children belonging to different clans where there are four sub-classes, and of first cousins where there are eight sub-classes.[166] The class system, however, would not appear to have been the earliest form of exogamy among the Australian tribes. Its very complicated character, and the fact that the two principal classes sometimes do not even have names, seem to preclude the idea of its having been the first form of exogamy, which is a strong natural feeling, so much so that it may almost be described as an instinct, though of course not a primitive animal instinct. And just as the totem clan, which establishes a sentiment of kinship between people who are not related by blood, was prior to the individual family, so exogamy, which forbids the marriage of people who are not related by blood, must apparently have been prior to the feeling simply against connections of persons related by blood or what we call incest. If the two-class system was introduced in Australia to prohibit the marriage of brothers and sisters at a time when they could not recognise each other in adult life, then on the introduction of personal names which would enable brothers and sisters to recognise and remember each other, the two-class system should have been succeeded by a modern table of prohibited degrees, and not by clan exogamy at all. It is suggested that the two-class system was a common and natural form of evolution of a society divided into exogamous totem clans with female descent, when a man was not taken into the clan of the woman with whom he lived. The further subdivision into four and eight sub-classes is almost peculiar to the Australian tribes; its development may perhaps be attributed to the fact that these tribes have retained the system of female descent and the migratory hunting method of life for an abnormally long period, and have evolved this special institution to prevent the unions of near relatives which are likely to occur under such conditions. The remains of a two-class system appear to be traceable among the Gonds of the Central Provinces. In one part of Bastar all the Gond clans are divided into two classes without names, and a man cannot marry a woman belonging to any clan of his own class, but must take one from a clan of the other class. Elsewhere the Gonds are divided into two groups of six-god and seven-god worshippers among whom the same rule obtains. Formerly the Gonds appear in some places to have had seven groups, worshipping different numbers of gods from one to seven, and each of these groups was exogamous. But after the complete substitution of male for female kinship in the clan, and the settlement of clans in different villages, the classes cease to fulfil any useful purpose. They are now disappearing, and it is very difficult to obtain any reliable information about their rules. The system of counting kinship through the mother, or female descent, has long been extinct in the Central Provinces and over most of India. Some survival of it, or at least the custom of polyandry, is found among the Nairs of southern India and in Thibet. Elsewhere scarcely a trace remains, and this was also the condition of things with the classical races of antiquity; so much so, indeed, that even great thinkers like Sir Henry Maine and M. Fustel de Coulanges, with the examples only of India, Greece and Rome before them, did not recognise the system of female descent, and thought that the exogamous clan with male descent was an extension of the patriarchal family, this latter having been the original unit of society. The wide distribution of exogamy and the probable priority of the system of female to that of male descent were first brought prominently to notice by Mr. M’Lennan. Still a distinct trace of the prior form survives here in the special relationship sometimes found to exist between a man and his sister’s children. This is a survival of the period when a woman’s children, under the rule of female descent, belonged to her own family and her husband or partner in sexual relations had no proprietary right or authority over them, the place and authority of a father belonging in such a condition of society to the mother’s brother or brothers. Among the Halbas a marriage is commonly arranged when practicable between a brother’s daughter and a sister’s son. And a man always shows a special regard and respect for his sister’s son, touching the latter’s feet as to a superior, while whenever he desires to make a gift as an offering of thanks and atonement, or as a meritorious action, the sister’s son is the recipient. At his death he usually leaves a substantial legacy, such as one or two buffaloes, to his sister’s son, the remainder of the property going to his own family. Similarly among the Kamārs the marriage of a man’s children with his sister’s children is considered the most suitable union. If a man’s sister is poor, he will arrange for the weddings of her children. He will never beat his sister’s children however much they may deserve it, and he will not permit his sister’s son or daughter to eat from the dish from which he eats. The last rule, it is said, also applies to the maternal aunt. The Kunbis, and other Marātha castes, have a saying: ‘At the sister’s house the brother’s daughter is a daughter-in-law.’ The Gonds call the wedding of a brother’s daughter to a sister’s son Dūdh lautāna, or ‘bringing back the milk.’ The reason why a brother was formerly anxious to marry his daughter to his sister’s son was that the latter would be his heir under the matriarchal system; but now that inheritance is through males, and girls are at a premium for marriage, a brother is usually more anxious to get his sister’s daughter for his son, and on the analogy of the opposite union it is sometimes supposed, as among the Gonds, that he also has a right to her. Many other instances of the special relation between a brother and his sister’s children are given by Sir J.G. Frazer in Totemism and Exogamy. In some localities also the Korkus build their villages in two long lines of houses on each side of the road, and it may be the case that this is a relic of the period when two or more clans with female descent lived in the same village, and those belonging to each class who could not marry or have sexual relations among themselves occupied one side of the road.