[158] Havelock Ellis writing on this subject ("Changing Status of Women," Nineteenth Century, Oct. 1886) says: "It seems that in the dawn of the race an elaborate social organisation permitted a more or less restricted communal marriage, every man in the tribe being at the outset the husband of every woman, first practically, then theoretically, and that the social organisation which had this point of departure was particularly favourable to women."
[159] It is a matter of dispute whether a woman may have more than one husband at a time. The older accounts state this, while later it has been denied. The probability is that this was the custom, but that it is dying out under modern influences. Hartland, op. cit., Vol. I. p. 267.
[160] In north Malabar a custom has arisen by which after a special ceremony the bridegroom is allowed to take the bride to live in his house, but in the case of his death she must at once return to her own family.
[161] J.A.I., XII. p. 292; Hartland, op. cit., p. 288. Letourneau, apparently quoting Bachofen, says that the women control property. This was probably an earlier custom, when the power was more truly in the hands of women, and had not passed to their male relatives.
[162] Wilken, Verwantschap, p. 678; Bijdragen, XXXI. p. 40.
[163] Havelock Ellis, Psychology of Sex, Vol. VI. p. 291. A second form of marriage, known as Jujur, was also practised. It was much more elaborate, and shows very instructively the rise of father-right. By it the authority of the husband over his wife is asserted by a very complicated system of payments; his right to take her to his home, and his absolute property in her depending wholly on these payments. If the final sum is paid (but this is not commonly claimed except in the case of a quarrel between the families) the woman becomes to all intents the slave of the man; but if on the other hand, as is not at all uncommon, the husband fails or has difficulty in making the main payment, he becomes the debtor of his wife's family and is practically a slave, all his labour being due to his creditor without any reduction in the debt, which must be paid in full, before he regains liberty. (See Marsden, History of Sumatra, pp. 225, 235, 257, 262, for an account of both marriages.)
[164] Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia.
[165] Havelock Ellis, op. cit., pp. 391-392, quoting Robertson Smith.
[166] Barlow, Semitic Origins, p. 45.
[167] Robertson Smith, op. cit., p. 65.