In Africa the clan system is firmly established, which explains the prevalence of mother-descent. Women, on the whole, take an important position, and here, as elsewhere, their inheritance of property enables them to maintain their equality with their husbands. Individual possession of wealth is allowed, but a married man usually cannot dispose of any property unless his wife agrees, and she acts as the representative of the children’s claims upon the father. The privilege that, according to Laing, the Soulima women have, of leaving their husbands when they please, is also proof of the maternal customs.[110] Moreover, among some tribes, the influence of the mothers as the heads of families extends to the councils of state; it is even said that the chiefs do not decide anything without their consent.[111]
Mother-right is still in force in many parts of India, though owing to the influence of Brahminism on the aboriginal tribes the examples of the maternal family are fewer than might be expected. Among the once powerful Koochs the women own all the property, which is inherited from mother to daughter. The husband lives with his wife and her mother, and, we are told, is subject to them. These women are most industrious, weaving, spinning, planting and sowing, in a word, doing all the work not above their strength.[112] The Koochs may be compared with the Khasis, already noticed, and these maternal systems among the Indian hill tribes may surely be regarded as showing conditions at one time common. Even tribes who have passed from the clan organisation to the patriarchal family preserve numerous traces of mother-right. Thus, the choice of her lover often remains with the girl; again, divorce is easy at the wish either of the woman or the man.[113] Such freedom in love is clearly inconsistent with the patriarchal authority of the husband. I must note too the practice, common among many tribes, by which the husband remains in the wife’s home for a probationary period, working for her family.[114] This is clearly a step towards purchase marriage, as is proved by the Santals, where this service is claimed when a girl is ugly or deformed and cannot be married otherwise, while other tribes offer their daughters when in want of labourers. This service-marriage must not be confused with the true maternal form, where the bridegroom visits or lives with the wife and any service claimed is a test of his fitness; it shows, however, the power of the woman’s kindred still curbing the rights of the husband.
The existence of mother-descent among the peoples of Western Asia has been ascertained with regard to some ancient tribes; but I may pass these over, as they offer no points of special interest. I must, however, refer briefly to the evidence brought forward by the late Prof. Robertson Smith[115] of mother-right in ancient Arabia. We find a decisive example of its favourable influence on the position of women in the custom of beena marriage. Under this maternal form, the wife was not only freed from any subjection involved by the payment of a bride-price in the form of compulsory service or of gifts to her kindred (which always places her more or less under authority), but she was the owner of the tent and the household property, and thus enjoyed the liberty which ownership always entails. This explains how she was able to free herself at pleasure from her husband, who was really nothing but a temporary lover. Ibn Batua, even in the fourteenth century found that the women of Zebid were perfectly ready to marry strangers. The husband might depart when he pleased, but his wife in that case could never be induced to follow him. She bade him a friendly adieu and took upon herself the whole charge of any children of the marriage. The women in Jâhilîya had the right to dismiss their husbands, and the form of dismissal was this: “If they lived in a tent they turned it round, so that if the door faced east it now faced west, and when the man saw this, he knew he was dismissed and did not enter.” The tent belonged to the woman: the husband was received there, and at her good pleasure. We find many cases of beena marriage among widely different peoples. Frazer[116] cites an interesting example among the tribes on the north frontier of Abyssinia, partially Semitic peoples, not yet under the influence of Islam, who preserve a maternal marriage closely resembling the beena form, but have as well a purchase marriage, by which a wife is acquired by the payment of a bride-price and becomes the property of her husband.
A very curious form of conjugal contract is recorded among the Hassanyeh Arabs of the White Nile, where the wife passed by contract for a portion of her time only under the authority of her husband. It illustrates in a striking way the conflict in marriage between the old rights of the woman and the rising power of the husband.
“When the parents of the man and the woman meet to settle the price of the woman, the price depends on how many days in the week the marriage tie is to be strictly observed. The woman’s mother first of all proposes that, taking everything into consideration, with due regard to the feelings of the family, she could not think of binding her daughter to a due observance of that chastity which matrimony is expected to command for more than two days in the week. After a great deal of apparently angry discussion, and the promise on the part of the relations of the man to pay more, it is arranged that the marriage shall hold good, as is customary among the first families of the tribe, for four days in the week, viz. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and in compliance with old established custom, the marriage rites during the three remaining days shall not be insisted on, during which days the bride shall be perfectly free to act as she may think proper, either by adhering to her husband and home, or by enjoying her freedom and independence from all observance of matrimonial obligations.”[117]
A further striking example of mother-right is furnished by the Mariana Islands, where the position of women was distinctly superior.
“Even when the man had contributed an equal share of property on marriage, the wife dictated everything, and the man could undertake nothing without her approval; but if the woman committed an offence, the man was held responsible and suffered the punishment. The women could speak in the assembly; they held property, and if a woman asked anything of a man, he gave it up without a murmur. If a wife was unfaithful, the husband could send her home, keep her property, and kill the adulterer; but if the man was guilty or even suspected of the same offence, the women of the neighbourhood destroyed his house and all his visible property, and the owner was fortunate if he escaped with a whole skin; and if the wife was not pleased with her husband, she withdrew, and a similar attack followed. On this account many men were not married, preferring to live with paid women.”[118]
A similar case of the rebellion of men against their position is recorded in Guinea, where religious symbolism was used by the husband as a way of obtaining control and possession of his wife. The maternal system held with respect only to the chief wife.
“It was customary, however, for a man to buy and take to wife a slave, a friendless person with whom he could deal at pleasure, who had no kindred who could interfere with her, and to consecrate her to his Bossum, or god. The Bossum wife, slave as she had been, ranked next to the chief wife, and was exceptionally treated. She alone was very jealously guarded, she alone was sacrificed at her husband’s death. She was, in fact, wife in a peculiar sense. And having by consecration been made of the kindred and worship of her husband her children could be born of his kindred and worship.”[119]
It will be readily seen that the special rights held by the husband over these captive-wives would come to be greatly desired. But the capture of women was always difficult, as it frequently led to quarrels and even warfare with the woman’s tribe, and for this reason was never widely practised. It would therefore be necessary for another way of escape from the bonds of the maternal marriage to be found. This was done by a system of buying the wife from her clan-kindred, in which case she became the property of her husband.