Among the Paressis the marriage is arranged by the parents on both sides, and the bride, after having received a few presents, is led by her parents without any formality to her bridegroom's hammock (von den Steinen, pp. 331, 434).
The custom of paying a price for the bride, prevalent among many races all over the world, is frequently spoken of as marriage by purchase. The price is very varied, and its value very unequal, but as a rule it is relatively small, and not infrequently it is so small as to have no economic value for the parents-in-law. Among the animistic tribes of British India, who, as a rule, pay a price for the bride, the sum may be as much as 200 rupees. Generally more is paid for a virgin than for a widow; but there are some Indian castes of manual labourers among whom the woman takes a share in the industrial work, and among whom the reverse is the case. It sometimes happens that the price is adjusted according to the age of the bride. Often brides are exchanged between two families, so that the payment of a price is dispensed with. "Marriage by service" still persists in various places, especially in Asia. Here the future son-in-law, instead of paying a price for the bride, has to work a certain number of years for the father of the bride. Among most primitive people the woman represents labour power in the house, as the men, either wholly or to a large extent, occupy themselves with social concerns (E. Hahn). Domestic prosperity depends wholly on the women's work. Thus it can easily be seen how the custom came about of demanding some service from the man who wanted a wife. Real purchase of a wife occurs only exceptionally among primitive people. It is never the rule, nor is the woman a real object of barter. If actual sale of women occurs in some cases, it is only an exception. Such cases are only frequent where the influence of Islam is most pronounced.
The bride price is wholly or partly paid back should the wife run away, or even if she meets with an early death. If there are sisters, the forsaken husband or widower may sometimes forego the restitution of the price paid and accept one of the sisters as his wife.
In India a price for the bridegroom is paid, not only among the upper castes of the civilised races, but also occasionally among the lower castes and among the primitive natives.
IV MARRIAGE
By far the greatest number of primitive peoples are monogamous. Only in relatively few cases is there polyandry. Polygyny often occurs among persons who are specially favoured, either economically or socially; but it is nowhere the form of marriage of the majority of the population. The polygyny reported among certain tribes generally refers only to chiefs, magic doctors, or some other special persons who have more than one wife. Sexual group communism at the side of monogamy or polyandry has been found in various places, but it is wrong to speak of it as "group marriage." This is evident from the previously quoted examples of the pirauru in Australia, the sex communities among the Chukchee, the Nandi, Masai, and others. It is possible, of course, that monogamy which now co-exists with certain cases of sex communism may have been a later addition, but this is not proven. It is more likely that the pairing instinct (not identical with the instinct of procreation) is characteristic of our sub-human ancestors. In fact, even in the animal world there are numerous examples of monogamy (P. Deegener).
It has been established that in Africa, Indonesia, Melanesia, and elsewhere, the small children remain with their parents, while the bigger children are lodged together in special boys' and girls' houses, and are, as it were, brought up communally. The relationship of the children to their own parents is not notably closer than that between them and other persons of the same age class. We must not look upon this child communism solely as a curiosity, but as the relic of a very ancient primitive institution. Most likely there is some connection between child communism and the interchange of children which is customary, for example, among the Dravidian races of India ("Ethnographical Survey of the Central India Agency") and on the Murray Islands, in the Torres Straits (Australia). According to W. H. R. Rivers (1907, p. 318), the interchange of children between families is very frequent here without the peoples being able to give any explanation of it. Nor do other social and religious institutions offer any indication as to the origin of this custom. Rivers surmises that it has been preserved from a social organisation in which "children were largely common to the women of the group so far as nurture was concerned." At any rate, this adoption en masse will help civilised man to understand that less civilised peoples have ideas about parenthood different from those that exist among us, and also that group motherhood is not absurd. The existence of group motherhood among primitive communities—whose members were much more dependent on each other in the struggle for existence than are the members of much more advanced societies—must often have been of considerable advantage to these communities. On the assumption of "group motherhood" it is easily explainable that children use the same mode of address for their own sisters and brothers as for all the other children of the group, and that all the women of equal ages are called "mother." Hence the classificatory system of relationship ceases to be puzzling. It becomes clear why under this system whole groups of persons designate each other as husbands and wives, and why the children of all the persons of these groups call each other brothers and sisters, etc. The assumption is justified that man in a low state of civilisation knew only group relationship; further distinctions were derived only later from these relationships, the present-day classificatory system arising ultimately from them. Among the peoples where Rivers could examine this system there were indications of a development in the direction of using it rather for the distinction of real blood and marriage relationship than for the distinction of social position, for which it was originally intended. A connection between marriage regulation and the classificatory system of relationships exists not only among the Dravidian races, but also among the North American Indians, and certainly among other branches of the human race. Rivers says: "The classificatory system in one form or another is spread so widely over the world as to make it probable that it had its origin in some universal stage of social development"; and further he says: "The kind of society which most readily accounts for its chief features is one characterised by a form of marriage in which definite groups of men are the husbands of definite groups of women." Rivers does not mean thereby institutions like the pirauru, but a permanent group marriage. It may be objected against this latter assumption that permanent (not occasional) sex communism does not necessarily need to be connected with communism of children. It is quite possible that monogamy and child communism may exist side by side, as, e.g., among the Murray Islanders.
But even if group marriage did really exist in some places, and if the existence of child communism would prove this, it still cannot be asserted that it is a phase of development through which all human races have passed. For the assumption of a parallel development of all races is untenable. It is true the basic psychic organisation is the same for all human beings, being due to the common descent of mankind. But owing to the continual adaptation to changing environmental conditions, it was not preserved, but underwent different changes. There is no ground for the assumption that, while environmental changes brought about bodily modifications, mental changes did not take place also, therewith leading at the same time to differences in social culture. On the contrary, we must rather assume that together with anthropological variations among the races there also arose variations in social development, the different civilisations resulting from differentiated mental dispositions and deviating more and more from each other. Certain elements of the original primitive civilisation have been preserved in the various later developments, but not everywhere the same elements, nor were the differentiations that did take place all of the same degree. Certain fundamental conceptions may remain unchanged for long periods, and may produce analogous phenomena in different civilisations. Since deviations from monogamy are extremely rare among primitive peoples, the assumption is justified that monogamy is one of the fundamental factors of human civilisation. How could its practically universal occurrence be explained otherwise? There can be no question of convergence, nor has a world-wide transmission of a cultural element that has arisen later been proved up to the present.