The Arunta, in their pseudo-historic legends, throw back upon the past the reflection of their actual estate, and ascribe the rule which practically limits marriage within the generation to a leader of the Thurathwerta group, living near what is called, by Europeans, Glen Helen, in the Macdonnell range. He was backed by the Emu people of four widely separated localities.[31] One is not, however, to suppose that, at some witan of the tribes, names indicative of generations, and of their respective rights, were suddenly invented and dealt out by 'the legislator,' any more than that totems were thus invented and dealt out. As Mr. Atkinson remarks (Chapter VIII.): 'Gradually each generation ... would, qua generation, come to be a distinctly defined class, with certain separate rights and obligations. In this simple classification of the connected persons, we see the origin of the classificatory system itself' (as far as generations are concerned), 'as an institution.... The classificatory system evolves itself merely as the result of a desire to define certain rights, and the division by generations was the most natural and feasible for the purpose.... Thus we find a desire for distinction, as regards rights in sexual union, to be the genetic cause of the classificatory system, both as concerns the generation and its component members.'
The marriage rules prevalent, with many variations, among the people least advanced in material culture, the Australians, are thus seen, on the whole, to be based (1) on totem rules (in which, with Dr. Durkheim, we include the 'primary classes' or 'phratries'), and (2) on the distinction of generations. It is clear, from the case of the Arunta and other tribes, that the rule of counting on the spindle side may break down, male descent being substituted, in times excessively rude; while again, as in the Pictish Royal House, it may elsewhere last into a stage relatively civilised. All manners of conditions and superstitions may affect and alter the course of social development in various places.
GROUP MARRIAGE AND MR. TYLOR's STATISTICS
In 1899, Mr. Tylor published a sketch of 'A Method of Investigating the Development of Institutions, applied to Laws of Marriage and Descent.'[32] He had catalogued the usages of 350 peoples, and examined (1) the rule of avoidance between husbands and wives' relations, and vice versa. (2) The naming of husband (or wife) after their children; as Odysseus says, 'May I no longer be called the father of Telemachus.' (3) The nature of inheritance in widows. (4) The Couvade in which the husband pretends to lie in, while his wife is really doing so. (5) The custom of capture. (6) Exogamy and the classificatory system. Mr. Tylor was led to believe that, so far as the statistical evidence goes, the husband first lived with the wife's family (A); next, after a residence with the wife's family, went back to his own home (B); last, (C) took the wife at once to his own home. (Husband to Wife. Removal. Wife to Husband.)
Now statistics are rather vague evidence without full knowledge of the social concomitants in each case. In what exact stage of culture, in each instance, does the husband go to live with the wife's relations? We have not this information. But if this be really the earliest stage, how is it compatible with group marriage? If a man is husband to 'a thousand miles of wives,' how can he go and live with the relations of all his wives? Even within his actual region of wandering, how can he do this? Nor, perhaps, can he bring all his wives to live with the relations of each of them in turn?
Either there was no group marriage, or it did not exist when, on the hypothesis, the husband, in the earliest stage, habitually resided with his wife's relations. Again, take the maternal and paternal systems, the reckoning in the female or male line, the female line, as we hold with Mr. Tylor, being the earlier. If so, on Mr. Tylor's hypothesis, it ought to arise in his first epoch, when husband goes to live with wife's people. 'The lines' (of a diagram) 'show the institutions of female descent, avuncular authority, &c. arising in the stage of residence on the female side, and extending into the stages of removal and residence on the male side.'
Now we have tried to explain the reckoning in the female line, by the differentiation, in the supposed original local totem group, of the captive women, each retaining, and handing on to her children, the name of her own totem group, this bequest of the totem name continuing into the tribal state of peaceful betrothals. But Mr. Tylor's theory of the first stage (husband goes to live with wife), implies a peaceful state, and groups not hostile. For the reasons given, early hostility and sexual jealousy, I am unable to hold that, in the beginning, husbands always joined their wives' groups. It seems, granting hostility and jealousy, to be impossible. A Malay example of polygamy plus residence with wives' relations, proves nothing for primitive man. Therefore we need to know the exact stage of culture of the peoples among whom the husbands go as subdued hangers-on, 'not recognised,' into the wife's family. Are these people all precisely primitive? The 'husband to wife' stage implies peaceful relations. These were produced, on my theory, by the arrangement of the phratries. When these are once constituted, the husband may go to live with the wife's family as much as he pleases. But I fail to see how he could have done so 'in the beginning.' Moreover I am disinclined to suppose that exogamy was instituted for the purpose of strengthening a group by matrimonial alliances.
Bella gerant alii, tu, felix Austria, nube!
Exogamy has this effect, but it was not devised purposely to produce this effect.
I may casually remark that Mr. Tylor mentions an Assineboin case in which the husband enters 'his lodge,' where his father and mother-in-law 'shirk' or avoid him. But, in the next page but one, the lodge is described, not as the husband's, but as that of the father and mother-in-law.[33] Whose lodge was it really? Was the husband staying with his wife's family, or were the old people on a visit to their married daughter?