The Californian Nishinam believe that, for the prevention of incest, at the beginning of the world, not one but two pairs were created from whom sprang all the Nishinam.[1692] When the missionary Jellinghaus once asked some Munda Kols whether animals knew what is right and wrong, the answer was, “No, because they do not know mother, sister, and daughter.”[1693] Yet, as we have seen, there are exceptions to the rule; and certain peoples who consider intercourse between parents and children incestuous, allow unions between brothers and sisters. Among the Kamchadales, says Krasheninnikoff, “marriage is forbidden only between father and daughter, mother and son.”[1694] Not long ago, the wild Veddahs of Ceylon regarded the marriage of a man with his younger sister as not only proper and natural, but, in fact, as the proper marriage, though marriage with an elder sister or aunt would have been as incestuous and revolting to them as to us.[1695] Among the Annamese, according to a missionary who has lived among them for forty years, no girl who is twelve years old and has a brother is a virgin.[1696] Liebich tells us that the Gypsies allow a brother to marry his sister, though such marriages are generally avoided by them.[1697] Among the Wa-taïta, says Mr. Thomson, “very few of the young men are able to marry for want of the proper number of cows—a state of affairs which not unfrequently leads to marriage with sisters, though this practice is highly reprobated.”[1698] Among the aborigines of Brazil, union with a sister, or a brother’s daughter, is almost universally held to be infamous. Such practices are not uncommon in small isolated hordes; “but the ancient Tupinambases (ancestors of the Tupis) allowed nothing of the kind openly.”[1699] In a song of the ‘Rig-Veda,’ Yamí appears in support of the marriage of brother and sister, while the opposition is personified in Yama.[1700] Buddhist legends mention various cases of such unions;[1701] and it is stated in the ‘Ynglinga Saga’ that “while Niord was with the Vans he had taken his own sister in marriage, for that he was allowed by their law.”[1702] But we have no evidence whatever that such unions were commonly allowed by the ancient Scandinavians. “Among the Asas,” the ‘Ynglinga Saga’ adds, “it was forbidden for such near relatives to come together.”[1703] In Scandinavia, according to Nordström, as also among the ancient Germans, according to Grimm, marriages between parents and children, brothers and sisters, were prohibited.[1704]
Unions with sisters, or probably, in most cases, half-sisters, occur in the royal families of Baghirmi,[1705] Siam,[1706] Burma,[1707] Ceylon,[1708] and Polynesia.[1709] In the Sandwich Islands, brothers and sisters of the reigning family intermarried, but this incestuous intercourse was in other cases contrary to the customs, habits, and feelings of the people.[1710] And, in Iboína of Madagascar, where the kings were occasionally united with their sisters, such marriages were preceded by a ceremony in which the woman was sprinkled with consecrated water, and prayers were recited asking for her happiness and fecundity, as if there was a fear that the union might call down divine anger upon the parties.[1711] Cambyses and other Persian kings married their sisters,[1712] and so did the Ptolemies of Egypt.[1713] According to Sir Gardner Wilkinson, it is not only noticed by Diodorus, but is fully authenticated by the inscriptions both of Upper and Lower Egypt, that the same custom was in force among the Egyptians, from the earliest times;[1714] but, except in the case of the Ptolemies, I have seen no clear evidence that marriage took place between brothers and sisters who had both the same father and the same mother. Garcilasso de la Vega states that the Incas of Peru, from the first, established it as a very stringent law that the heir to the kingdom should marry his eldest sister, legitimate both on the side of the father and on that of the mother;[1715] whereas, according to Acosta and Ondegardo, it had always been held unlawful by the Peruvians to contract marriage in the first degree, until Tupac Inca Yupanqui, at the close of the fifteenth century, married his sister on the fathers side, and decreed “that the Incas might marry with their sisters by the father’s side, and no other.”[1716]
It has been asserted that, where the system of exogamy prevails, a man is allowed to marry his sister either on the father’s or on the mother’s side, according as descent is reckoned in the female or in the male line.[1717] But it will be shown directly that, besides the rules relating to exogamy, there are commonly others prohibiting intermarriage of near relations belonging to different tribes or clans. Yet the marriage of half-brother and half-sister is not rare. Among the Ostyaks, for instance, union with a half-sister bearing another family name is in great repute;[1718] and the South Slavonian Mohammedans allow marriages between half-brothers and half-sisters who have different mothers, though seducing a sister is regarded in their songs as a crime punishable with death, or rather as something which cannot occur.[1719] From the Book of Genesis we know that Abraham married his half-sister, and looked upon the union as lawful, because she had not the same mother.[1720] Among the Phœnicians at Tyre, down to the time of Achilles Tatius, a man might marry his father’s daughter: and the same thing appears at Mecca.[1721] Marriage with half-sisters on the father’s side, not on the mother’s, was also allowed among the Assyrians[1722] and the Athenians.[1723] In Guatemala and Yucatan, on the other hand, no relationship on the mother’s side was a bar to marriage: hence a man could marry his sister, provided she was by another father.[1724]
Among certain peoples the relationships of uncle and niece, and of aunt and nephew, are the remotest degrees of consanguinity which are a hindrance to intermarriage. This is the case, for instance, with some of the Dyak tribes;[1725] and among the Copper Indians, according to Franklin, there is no prohibition of the intermarriage of cousins, but a man is forbidden to marry his niece.[1726] On the whole, we may say that marriage within these degrees of relationship is even more commonly prohibited than intermarriage of cousins, and that, probably in most cases, the prohibitions refer to persons so related either on the father’s or mother’s side.[1727] Yet there are many instances to the contrary.[1728] The Ossetes consider a marriage with a mother’s sister quite a proper thing, though a marriage with a father’s sister would be punished as highly incestuous.[1729] Among the Reddies of the South of India, a man marries his sister’s daughter, but a nephew must not marry his aunt;[1730] and, among the Brazilian Tupis, an uncle had even a right to his niece’s hand.[1731] By the Prussian law, marriage between uncle and niece is permitted; whilst, in France, such marriages may be sanctioned by the Government, in Italy by the King.[1732]
In Europe, first cousins are not restricted from intermarriage, except in Spain, where the old canonical prohibitions are still in force; and in Russia, where third cousins are allowed to marry, but no parties more nearly related.[1733] Among the Mohammedans[1734] and several uncivilized peoples, marriages between cousins, both on the paternal and maternal side, are permitted. So, apparently, among the Aleuts,[1735] Eskimo at Igloolik,[1736] Apalachites,[1737] Maoris, Bushmans[1738] and Ainos,[1739]—besides the people just referred to. More commonly, however, the permission is one-sided, referring either to the kinsfolk on the father’s, or to those on the mother’s side. Among the Arabs, a man has even a right to the hand of his paternal cousin, who cannot without his consent, become the wife of any other person.[1740] Concerning the Moors of Ceylon, Mr. Ahamadu Bawa states that in all cases where eligible sons of mothers’ brothers or fathers’ sisters were available for the girls, preference was accorded to them, “almost as a matter of right.”[1741] Among the savage Miao of China, the girls are obliged to marry the mother’s brothers’ sons.[1742] The Gonds consider it correct for the brother’s daughter to marry the sister’s son, whilst not so much stress is laid on the marriage of the cousins, if the sister’s child happens to be a girl and the brother’s a boy.[1743] Among the Yerkalas of Southern India, “the first two daughters of a family may be claimed by the maternal uncle as wives for his sons.”[1744]
As a rule, among peoples unaffected by modern civilization the prohibited degrees are more numerous than in advanced communities, the prohibitions in a great many cases referring even to all the members of the tribe or clan.
The Greenlanders, according to Egede, refrained from marrying their nearest kin, even in the third degree, considering such matches to be “unwarrantable and quite unnatural;”[1745] whilst Dr. Rink asserts that “the Eskimo disapproves of marriages between cousins.”[1746] The same is the case with the Ingaliks,[1747] the Chippewas,[1748] and, as a rule, the Indians of Oregon.[1749] The Californian Gualala account it “poison,” as they say, for a person to marry a cousin or an avuncular relation, and strictly observe in marriage the Mosaic table of prohibited affinities.[1750] “By the old custom of the Aht tribes,” Mr. Sproat remarks, “no marriage was permitted within the degree of second cousin;”[1751] and among the Mahlemuts, “cousins, however remote, do not marry.”[1752] Commonly a man and woman belonging to the same clan are prohibited from intermarrying. The Algonquins tell of cases where men, for breaking this rule, have been put to death by their nearest kinsfolk;[1753] and, among the Loucheux Indians, if a man marries within the clan, he is said to have married his sister, though there be not the slightest connection by blood between the two.[1754] In some tribes, as Mr. Frazer points out, the marriage prohibition only extends to a man’s own clan: he may marry a woman of any clan but his own. But oftener the prohibition includes several clans, in none of which is a man allowed to marry.[1755] Thus, for instance, the Seneca tribe of the Iroquois was divided into two “phratries,” or divisions intermediate between the tribe and the clan, each including four clans; the Bear, Wolf, Beaver, and Turtle clans forming one phratry, and the Deer, Snipe, Heron, and Hawk clans forming the other. Originally marriage was prohibited within the phratry, but was permitted with any of the clans of the other phratry; but the prohibition was long since removed, and a Seneca may marry a woman of any clan but his own.[1756] A like exogamous division existed among the other four tribes of the Iroquois,[1757] as also among the Creeks, Moquis, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Thlinkets, &c.[1758]
Among the Pipiles of Salvador, an ancestral tree, with seven main branches, denoting degrees of kindred, was painted upon cloth, and within these seven branches or degrees, no one was allowed to marry, except as a recompense for some great public or warlike service rendered. But within four degrees of consanguinity none, under any pretext, might marry.[1759] In Yucatan, there was a strong prejudice against a man wedding a woman who bore the same name as his own, and so far was this fancy carried, that he who broke the rule was looked upon as a renegade and an outcast. Nor could a man marry his mother’s sister.[1760] Among the Azteks, too, marriages between blood-relations or those descended from a common ancestor were not allowed.[1761]
Among the tribes of Guiana, according to Mr. Im Thurn, marriage is now almost always, as formerly it was always, contracted between members of different families, and, descent being traced through females, no intermarriage with relations on the mother’s side is permitted.[1762] The Mundrucûs are divided into clans, the members of which are strictly prohibited from forming alliances with others of the same clan. “A Mundrucû Indian,” says Professor Agassiz, “treats a woman of the same order (clan) with himself as a sister, any nearer relation between them is impossible.”[1763] The Indians of Peru are restricted from marriage within the first four degrees.[1764] The Guaranies and Abipones abhor alliances with even the remotest relations.[1765] And as to the Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego, Mr. Bridges writes to me that “no marriage, no intercourse ever takes place among blood-relations even to second cousins.” Such intercourse is held in utter abomination and is never heard of. Also between half-brothers and half-sisters marriages do not occur.
Nowhere is marriage bound by more severe laws than among the Australian aborigines. Their tribes are, as a rule—and probably as a rule without exceptions[1766]—grouped in exogamous subdivisions, the number of which varies considerably. There are tribes in which members of any clan are free to marry members of any clan but their own; but such tribes are exceptional.[1767] “Often,” says Mr. Frazer, “an Australian tribe is divided into two (exogamous) phratries, each of which includes under it a number of totem clans; and oftener still there are sub-phratries interposed between the phratry and the clans, each phratry including two sub-phratries, and the sub-phratries including totem clans.”[1768] Most of Mr. Curr’s very numerous correspondents who have touched on this question have, however, given the number of subdivisions in their neighbourhood as four only.[1769] Before the occupation of the country by the whites, which quickly breaks down aboriginal customs, any departure from the marriage system founded on this division was looked on with absolute horror, and even spoken of with reluctance. Indeed, when marriage or sexual intercourse with a person of a forbidden clan did occur, the regular penalty inflicted on the parties implicated was death.[1770] And it is a noteworthy fact, generally overlooked by anthropologists, that besides these prohibitions arising from the clan-system and, naturally, applying only to the father’s or, more generally, only to the mother’s relations, there is, as it seems everywhere, a law which forbids the marriage of persons near of kin.[1771] “A man,” says Mr. Curr, “may not marry his mother, sister, half-sister, daughter, granddaughter, aunt, niece, first or second cousin.”[1772] Among the Kurnai of Gippsland, according to Mr. Bulmer, even third cousins are within the prohibited degrees of relationship.[1773] Moreover, certain tribes, besides having the clan-system, are entirely exogamous;[1774] and, among the tribes of Western Victoria described by Mr. Dawson, the laws also forbid a man to marry into his mother’s tribe, or his grandmother’s tribe or into an adjoining tribe, or one that speaks his own dialect.[1775]