At the other extremity of India, in Ceylon, the polyandric régime is still very flourishing, especially in the interior of the island, and among the leisured classes. The number of husbands, generally brothers or relatives, is variable; it varies from three to eight. According to Emerson Tennent, polyandry was formerly general in the island, and it is owing to the efforts of the Dutch and Portuguese that it has disappeared from the coast.[184]
It is particularly in lamaic Thibet that the polyandric régime is in full vigour; and in this country religion strengthens it, for the most distinguished men, the ruling classes, the chiefs or officers of the State, a fortiori the lamas, have the same disdain for marriage so loudly professed by the saints of Catholicism. The greater number exempt themselves from it, and leave to the common people the gross care of producing children. Now, the latter, by reason of their poverty, associate together to lighten the burden of the family. It is, again, fraternal polyandry which is the rule in Thibet. It is in this country that sociologists have sought the classic type of this kind of polyandry.
In Thibet the right of primogeniture is combined with the right of marriage, and the younger brothers follow the fate of their chief. It is this last who marries for all of them, and chooses the common wife.[185] However, if we may believe other accounts, a certain liberty is allowed to younger brothers. The pressure on them is chiefly economic. When the eldest son marries, the property is transmitted to him in advance of his inheritance, with the charge of maintaining his parents, who, however, can live in a separate house. The youngest brother takes orders, and becomes a lama. The others, if they choose, become inferior husbands of the wife, who with us would be their sister-in-law, and they are almost forced to do this, since their eldest brother is sole inheritor. Once within the polyandric régime, the younger brothers have a subordinate position. The eldest, the husband-in-chief, considers them as his servants, and has even the right to send them away without any resource, if he pleases. If the principal husband dies, then his widow, his property, and his authority pass to the younger brother next in age. In the case of the brother not being one of the co-husbands, he cannot inherit the property without the wife, nor the wife without the property. We have here, then, a sort of polyandrian levirate.[186]
The children springing from these unions give the name of father sometimes to the eldest of the husbands, and sometimes to all.[187] Travellers tell us that these polyandrous households are not more troubled than our monogamous ones. Some Thibetans, living thus in conjugal association, could not understand V. Jacquemont when he asked them if the preference of their single wife for one or other of them did not cause quarrels between the husbands. But if jealousy is unknown to the husbands, it is, on the contrary, frequent with the wife. “A Thibetan woman,” says Turner, “united to several husbands, is as jealous of her conjugal rights as an Indian despot could be of the beauties who people his zenana or harem.”[188]
As to the manner in which the intimate relations between husbands and wife are regulated in the polyandric households of Thibet, we have scarcely any information. Among the Todas the wife never had conjugal commerce with more than one husband at a time, but she changed every month; sometimes also the associated husbands add to their number temporarily some young man belonging to the tribe, but not yet engaged in the bonds of wedlock.[189]
There is another form of polyandry besides the fraternal, but quite as curious, and which has been made to play a great rôle in various sociological theories. It is the polyandry of the Naïrs, an indigenous high caste of Malabar.
However extraordinary the fraternal polyandry called Thibetan may seem in our eyes, that of the Naïrs of Malabar is far more so. Here the reality exceeds all that we could have imagined in the way of conjugal customs. The Naïr parents married their daughters early. The bride was rarely more than twelve years old. The proceedings began with an ephemeral union, a sort of fictitious marriage, but celebrated nevertheless with great rejoicings in presence of parents and friends. The initiative and provisional husband passed round the neck of the bride the conjugal collar, the tali, and henceforth the marriage was concluded and had to be consummated; only at the end of four or five days the new husband was obliged to quit the house of the wife for ever. On the contrary, the young bride remained in the family, and from this period contracted a series of partial but durable marriages. The first marriage of the young Naïr girl had evidently no other object than defloration; it was a service demanded of a fictitious husband, and for which he was often paid. A traveller relates that for this preliminary marriage a porter or a workman was employed and paid. If his pretensions were too high, recourse was had to an Arab or a stranger; and, says the narrator, the gratuitous services of these last were always preferred if, when the ceremony was over, they withdrew in time and with good grace. When once well and duly prepared for marriage, the young Naïr girl might take for husband whomsoever she liked, except the provisional husband of the first few days.[190] The number of her husbands varied from four to twelve.[191] Each one of them was at first presented to her either by her mother or by her maternal uncle, an important personage in the family. Each co-partner was in his turn husband in reality during a very short time, varying from one day to ten, and he was free, on his side, to participate in divers polyandric conjugal societies. We are assured that in these curious ménages all the associated husbands lived in very good understanding with each other.[192]
Generally the Naïr husbands were neither brothers nor relatives, for these polyandrous people seemed to have ideas about incest analogous to our own. But the unions outside the caste were the only ones reputed culpable; they constituted a sort of social adultery. The conjugal prerogatives of the husbands were not unaccompanied by certain duties. They had to maintain the common wife, and they agreed together to share the expense. One took on himself to furnish the clothes, another to give the rice.[193] On these conditions each one could in his turn enjoy the common property, and, in order not to be troubled in the use of his rights, it sufficed the husband on duty to hang on the door of the house and on the wife’s door his shield and his sword or knife.
The Brahmins were obliged to tolerate these polyandric marriages, so contrary, however, to their laws; they finished by even deriving a profit from them. In the Brahmanic families in contact with the Naïrs the eldest son alone married, so as not to scatter the patrimony; the others entered the matrimonial combinations of the Naïrs, and thus their children did not inherit.[194]
On their side, the Naïrs were naturally only acquainted with matriarchal heredity. No Naïr, says Buchanan, knows his father, and every man has for heirs the children of his sister. He loves them as if they were his own, and unless he is reputed a monster, he must show much more grief at their death than he would for his own possible children—namely, those of his own wife.[195]