[79] McGee, The Beginning of Marriage.
[80] The Khasis, p. 81.
[81] Mrs. Chapman Catt has an article in the April number of Harper’s Magazine on “A Survival of Matriarchy.” It gives an account of her visit to the Malay States, and the favourable position of the women under the maternal customs. I have received a letter from the great American champion of Women’s Rights in which she states how pleased she is that I am writing this book on the Mother-age. “There are many facts,” she says, “of the early power of women which the great world does not know.”
CHAPTER VII
FURTHER EXAMPLES OF THE MATERNAL FAMILY
Pursuing our inquiry into the social organisation of mother-right, an interesting example occurs among the peoples of the Malay States, where, notwithstanding the centres of Hindu and Moslem influence, much has been retained of the maternal system, once universally prevalent. The maternal marriage, here known as the ambel-anak, in which the husband lives with the wife, paying nothing to the support of the family and occupying a subordinate position, may be taken as typical of the former condition. But among the tribes who have come in contact with outside influences the custom of the husband visiting the wife, or residing in her house, is modified, and in some cases has altogether disappeared.
From a private correspondent, a resident in the Malay States, I have received some interesting notes about the present conditions of the native tribes and the position of women. “In most of the Malay States exogamous matriarchy has in comparatively modern times been superseded by feudalism (i. e., the patriarchal rights of the father). But where the old customs survive, the women are still to a large extent in control. The husband goes to live in the wife’s village; thus the women in each group are a compact unity, while the men are strangers to each other and enter as unorganised individuals. This is the real basis of the women’s power. In other tribes, where the old customs have changed, the women occupy a distinctly inferior position, and under the influence of Islam the idea of secluding adult women has been for centuries spreading and increasing in force.” Here, again, clear proof is shown of the maternal system exercising a direct influence on the position of women. And this statement is in agreement with Robertson Smith, who, in writing of the maternal marriage, says: “And it is remarkable that when both customs—the woman receiving her husband in her own hut, and the man taking his wife to his—occur side by side among the same people, descent in the former case is traced through the mother, in the latter through the father.”[82]
In its ancient form the maternal communal family has notably persisted among the Padang Highlanders of Sumatra. These people live in village communities, with long timber houses placed in barrack-like rows, very similar to the communal dwellings of the American Indians. The houses are gay in appearance, and are adorned with carved and coloured woodwork. One dwelling will contain as many as a hundred people, who form a sa-mandei, or mother-hood. Again we find the family consisting of the house-mother and her descendants in the female line—sons and daughters, and the daughters’ children. McGee thus describes these maternal households—[83]
“If the visitor, mounting the ladder steps, looks in at one of the doors of the separate dwellings, he may see seated beyond the family hearth the mother and her children, eating the midday meal, and very likely the father, who may have been doing a turn of work in his wife’s rice-plot. If he is a kindly husband, he is there much as a friendly visitor, but his real home remains in the house in which he was born.”
The husband has no permanent residence in the woman’s house, and at dusk each evening the men may be seen walking across the village to join their wives and families. The father has no rights over his children, who belong wholly to the wife’s suku, or clan. But this in no way implies that the father is unknown, for monogamy is the rule; as is usual the question is one rather of social right than of relationship. The maternal uncle is the male head of the house, and exercises under the mother the duties of a father to the children. The brother of the eldest grandmother is the male head of the family settlement and the clan consists of a number of these families. It would seem that these male rulers act as the agents of the female members, whose authority is great. This power is dependent on the inheritance; as is the descent, so is the property, and its transmission is arranged for the benefit of the maternal lineage. For this reason daughters are preferred rather than sons.