and his nephew was a more sacred bond than the relation of father and son.[78]
ORIGIN OF CONCUBITANCY
2. It is also possible that concubitant marriage is a relaxation of the stricter prohibition in force amongst the Polynesians. The origin of these prohibitions may, perhaps, be found in some such occurrence as that described in the "Murdu" legend of Australia, quoted by Messrs. Fison and Howitt in Kamilaroi and Kurnai—
"After the Creation brothers and sisters and others of the closest kin intermarried promiscuously, until, the evil effects becoming manifest, a council of the chiefs was assembled to consider in what way they might be averted."
Some such crisis must have been reached in every group of islands that was peopled by the immigration of a single family, and the natural solution in every case would have been to prohibit the marriage of both classes of cousins-german. But, little by little, the desire for alliances among chief families, for the restoration of the claims of vasu, and for the restoration of an equivalent of the tillage rights given in dowry, may have chafed against the prohibitions until these were so far relaxed as to allow the marriage of cousins in the degree most effective for promoting an interchange of property. For a similar reason Moses ordered the daughters of Zelophehad to marry men of their father's tribe, in order that their property should not pass out of the tribe, and "their inheritance remained in the tribe of the family of their father" (Numbers xxxvi. 12).
3. A third solution may be found in the transition from uterine to agnatic descent, a change that came about gradually as social development prompted the sons to seize on the inheritance of their father to the exclusion of the nephew (vasu). With the admission of the father's relationship to his son grew the idea that he was the life-giver and the mother the mere vehicle for the gestation of the child, and the child came to be regarded as related to his father instead of to his mother.
[79] Thus Orestes,[80] arraigned for the murder of his mother, Clytemnestra, asks the Erinyes why they did not punish Clytemnestra for slaying her husband Agamemnon; and, upon their answer that she was not kin to the man she slew, he founds the plea that by the same rule they cannot touch him, for he is not kin to his mother. The plea is admitted by the gods. By this rule, a man is not kin to his father's sister's daughter, she being kin to her father only; but her affinity to him would render their marriage convenient as regards the family possessions. From long usage a sense of obligation would be evolved, and such cousins come to be regarded as concubitant. The children of sisters would still be within the forbidden degrees, for, although not kin through their mothers, their fathers, being presumably the concubitant cousins of their mothers, would be near kin.
I incline to accept the first explanation—that the custom of concubitancy has been evolved from an earlier system of group-marriage and uterine descent. I think that it dates from the remote period when there was indiscriminate intercourse between the members of two exogamous marrying classes, when it was impossible to say who was the actual father of the children born. Under such a system the reputed offspring of two brothers might in reality be the children of only one of them, and the children of two sisters might have a common father, and their union be incestuous. But the children of a brother and sister respectively could not possibly have a common parent, and their intercourse was therefore innocuous. For the same reason the children of concubitants who were not known to have cohabited were still held to be tabu to each other, for the male concubitant had a right of cohabitation with the female of which he might at any time have availed himself, and their offspring reputed to be by their other partners might in reality be half brother and sister without their knowledge.
CENSUS OF CONSANGUINEOUS MARRIAGES