The Truth About Woman

by C. Gasquoine Hartley

Similarly among a fine tribe of Hindu mountaineers at the source of the Djemmah fraternal polyandry has been proved to have existed. A woman of this tribe, when asked how many husbands she had, answered, "Only four!" "And all living?" "Why not?" This tribe had a high standard of social conduct; they held lying in horror, and to deviate from the truth even quite innocently was almost a sacrilege.[152] To-day the Kammalaus (artisans) of Malabar practise fraternal polyandry. The wives are said to greatly appreciate the custom; the more husbands they have the greater will be their happiness.[153]

At another extremity of India, in Ceylon, the polyandric rule is still common,[154] but it is particularly in lamaic Thibet that fraternal polyandry is in full vigour, for in this country religion sanctions the custom, and it is practised by the ruling classes.[155] Its customs are too well known to need description. "The tyranny of man is hardly known among the happy women of Thibet; the boot is perhaps upon the other leg," writes Hartland.[156]

Polyandry is a survival of the group-marriage of the mother-age.[157] It is not really dependent on, though in many cases it occurs in connection with, the economic causes of poverty and a scarcity of women, due to the practice of female infanticide. This form of sexual association has evident advantages for women when compared with polygamy. That freedom in love carried with it domestic and social rights and privileges to women I have no longer to prove.[158]

The case of the Nâyars of Malabar, where polyandry exists with the early system of maternal filiation, is specially instructive. It is impossible to give the details of their curious customs. The young girls are married when children by a rite known as tying the tali; but this marriage serves only the purpose of initiation, and is often performed by a stranger. On the fourth day the fictitious husband is required to divorce the girl. Afterwards any number of marriages may be entered upon[159] without any other restrictions than the prohibitions relative to cast and tribe. These later unions, unlike the solemn initial rite, have no ceremony connected with them, and are entered into freely at the will of the women and their families. As a husband the man of the Nâyars cannot be said to exist; he does not as a rule live with his wife.[160] It is said that he has not the right to sit down by her side or that of her children, he is merely a passing guest, almost a stranger. He is, in fact, reduced to the primitive rôle of the male, and is simply progenitor. "No Nâyar knows his father, and every man looks upon his sister's children as his heirs. A man's mother manages his family; and after her death his eldest sister assumes the direction." The property belongs to the family and is enjoyed by all in common (though personal division is coming into practice under modern influences). It is directed and administered by the maternal uncle or the eldest brother.[161]

The Malays of the Pedang Highlands of Sumatra have institutions bearing many points of similarity with the Nâyars. On marriage neither husband nor wife changes abode, the husband merely visits the wife, coming at first by day to help her work in the rice-fields. Later the visits are paid by night to the wife's house. The husband has no rights over his children, who belong wholly to the wife's suku, or clan. Her eldest brother is the head of the family and exercises the rights and duties of a father to her children.[162] The marriage, based on the ambel-anak, in which the husband lives with the wife, paying nothing, and occupying a subordinate position, may be taken as typical of the former conditions.[163]

But among other tribes who have come in contact with outside influences this custom of the husband visiting the wife, or residing in her house, is modified.

From a private correspondent, a resident in the Malay States, I have received some interesting notes about the present condition of the native tribes and the position of the women. In most of the Malay States exogamous matriarchy has in comparatively modern times been superseded by feudalism (i.e. father-right). But where the old custom survives 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 woman's power. In other tribes where the old custom has changed 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.

Male kinship prevails among the Arabs, but the late Professor Robertson Smith discovered abundant evidence that mother-right was practised in ancient Arabia.[164] We find a decisive example of its favourable influence on the position of women in the custom of beena[165] marriage. Under such a system the wife was not only freed from any subjection involved by the payment of a bride-price (which always places her more or less under the authority of her husband), but she was the owner of the tent and 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.[166] Ibn Batua 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 child of the marriage. The women in the Jâhilîya[167] 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 that he was dismissed and did not enter." The tent belonged to the woman; the husband was received there and at her good pleasure.[168]

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."[169]