The important status assigned to women becomes clearer when we consider the laws of inheritance. Daughters inherit, not sons. The youngest daughter is heiress to the family property, but the other daughters are entitled to a share on the mother’s death. No man can possess property unless it is self-acquired. Among the Synteng, such property on the man’s death goes to his mother. This would seem to be the primitive custom. There is now a provision that, if the wife undertakes not to re-marry she has half of her husband’s property, which descends to her youngest daughter. In the Khasi states a man’s property, if acquired before his marriage, goes to his mother, but what is gained afterwards goes to the wife, for the youngest daughter. Only in the War country do the sons inherit from the father with the daughters, but something in addition is given to the youngest daughter. The family property always descends in the female line. For this reason, daughters are of more importance than sons. A family without daughters dies out, which among the Khasis is the greatest calamity, as there is no one qualified to bury the dead and perform the religious rites. Thus both the Khasis and the Syntengs have a plan of adoption. The male members of any family, if left without females, are allowed to call in a young girl from another family to perform the family religious ceremonies. She takes the place of the youngest daughter, and becomes the head of the household. She inherits the ancestral property.
In the face of these facts it can hardly be denied that mother-right and mother-power among the Khasis are still very much alive. Here at least descent through the mother does involve power to women, and confers exceptional rights, especially as regards inheritance. I have already called attention to the equality of the women with men in the code of sexual morality. This is so important that it is worth while to follow it a little further. That freedom in love carries with it domestic and social rights and privileges to women I have no longer to prove. We found the same freedom under the maternal family among the Iroquois and Zuñi Indians: there courtship was in the hands of the woman; there also divorce was free, and a couple would rather separate than live together inharmoniously. I have given proof of the happy domestic life of these peoples. Equality in the sexual relationships has always been closely associated with the status of women. Wherever divorce is difficult, there woman’s lot is hard, and her position low. It is part of the patriarchal custom which regards the man as the owner of the woman. It would be easy to prove this by the history of marriage in the races of the past, as also by an examination of the present divorce laws in civilised countries. I cannot do this, but I make the assertion without the least shadow of doubt. “Free divorce is the charter of Woman’s Freedom.” I would point back in proof to these examples of the maternal family, foremost among whose privileges is this equality of partnership in marriage. Here you have before you, solved by these primitive peoples, some of the most urgent questions that yet have to be faced by us to-day. To hear of peoples who live gladly, and without those problems that are rotting away our civilisation, brings a new courage to those of us, who sometimes grow hopeless at our own needless wastage of love and life.
I must not say more upon this question, though it is one that tempts me strongly. It is not, however, my purpose in this book to offer opinions of my own on these problems of the relations of the two sexes; I prefer to leave the facts of the mother-age to speak for themselves. Those whose eyes are not blinded will not fail to see.[81]
FOOTNOTES:
[73] In an Introduction to The Khasis, by P. R. Gurdon. This work, written by one who had a long and intimate knowledge of the Khasi tribes, gives an admirable account of the people, their institutions and domestic life. See also Sir J. Hooker, Himalayan Journal, Vol. II, pp. 273 et seq.; Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal; and a series of papers by J. R. Logan, in the Journal of the Indian Archipelago, 1850-1857. Mr. Frazer (The Golden Bough, Part IV, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, p. 387) gives a short account of the Khasis; also McGee in the article The Beginning of Marriage already quoted.
[74] The Khasis, pp. 62, 64, 82. All the facts I have given of the Khasis are taken from Mr. Gurdon’s work, unless otherwise stated.
[75] An incantation used in addressing this god begins: “O Father, Thaulang, who hast enabled me to be born, who hast given me my stature and my life.” This is very certain proof that the maternal system among the Khasis has no connection with uncertainty of paternity.
[76] This is the opinion of Sir Charles Lyell and Mr. Gurdon. We may compare the remark of Prof. Karl Pearson: “According to the evidence not only the seers but the sacrificers among the early Teutons were women.”
[77] Fischer, Tour. As. Soc., Bengal, Vol. IX, Part II, p. 834.
[78] Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, p. 57.