Sexual Life of Primitive People

by Hans Fehlinger

Among the Dyats in the Punjab, the Gudyars in the United Provinces, as among all the Hindu castes in the mountain districts of Ambala, polyandry existed until lately; but it is said not to do so there any longer. In Ambala not only brothers, but also first cousins, were considered to be husbands of the oldest brother's wife.

Further, in East India the Santal caste (2,138,000 persons in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa) is the only community among which a similar custom exists. Among the Santals not only have the younger brothers access to the wife of the older brother, but the husband also may have relations with the younger sisters of his wife. This state of affairs may perhaps be looked upon as sexual communism among a small group. In Ladakh, too, and in other places of Cashmir, the wife common to several brothers may bring with her her sister into the marriage as co-partner. In the Punjab the fraternal husbands may also marry a second and third wife.

Among Indian migratory labourers it seems to have been formerly the rule that the brother remaining at home served as a conjugal substitute for the husband temporarily absent. Nowadays this custom has almost disappeared.

In Southern India polyandry is a recognised institution among the Toda and Kurumba of the Nilgiri mountains, as also among a number of the lower castes, especially on the coast of Malabar. Here polyandry and polygyny occasionally co-exist side by side.

The polyandry among the Toda has been described in detail by W. H. R. Rivers. The whole tribe is divided into two endogamous groups, which, again, are split up into a number of exogamous sub-groups. The husbands shared in common by a woman are in most cases brothers; they are rarely other members of the same exogamous group and of the same age class. When the husbands are brothers, there never ensue any quarrels about access to the wife. All the brothers are reckoned as fathers of a child. Yet it often occurs that a Toda only calls one man his father. It is exclusively external circumstances that are here decisive; often one of the fathers is more influential and more respected than his brothers, and naturally the sons prefer to speak of him as their father. If only one of the fathers is alive, the offspring always describe him as their father. If the husbands are not real brothers, they live, like these, in one household, but the children are allotted to single definite fathers. That man is considered the father of a child who in the seventh month of the mother's pregnancy has gone with her through the ceremony of the presentation of bow and arrow (which is also customary in fraternal polyandry). The husbands may take turns in the practice of this ceremony at every pregnancy; it results, therefore, frequently that the first two or three children belong to one and the same man, the other husbands acquiring formal father-right only at the later births. If the husbands separate and give up the common household, each one takes with him the children belonging to him by right of the bow-and-arrow ceremony. As everywhere else in India, polyandry has fallen into decay among the Toda. It may happen that several men have in common several wives, or that of a group of brothers each has his own wife. But polyandry has remained up to the present time the prevalent form of marriage among these hill-folk. The surplus girls used formerly to be killed without exception; and it is certain, says Rivers, that girl infanticide is still practised to some extent, although the Toda themselves deny this. It must be noted that child marriage exists among the Toda.

Matriarchal polyandry, which, in contradistinction to fraternal polyandry, goes with descent through the mother, still occurs among the Munduvars of the Travancore plateaus, the Nayars in some parts of Travancore and Cochin, the Western Kallan, and also among some other Southern Indian communities. Among numerous other races having mother descent, but not among all, relics of the former existence of matriarchal polyandry have been established. The secular authorities, and no less the European missions, are trying hard to exterminate this form of marriage.

It is difficult to trace any connection between the polyandry in the north and that in the south of India. It is most probable that this custom was carried into Southern India by the Tibetan conquerors in ancient times. Many Southern Indian polyandrous races, like the Toda and the Nayar, are distinguished from their real Dravidian neighbours by their more powerful build, lighter colouring, higher noses, etc. Furthermore, the architecture of the Malabar temples bears traces of Tibetan influence. The demon masks carved thereon show almost the same faces as the Tibetan masks. Among the Kallan the tradition of northern descent has been preserved up to the present time, and they bury their dead with their faces turned towards the north.

Exogamy is the custom which forbids the choice of partners for marriage within a certain group, and which has the effect of preventing near relations from sexual intercourse. It is found very frequently among primitive people, and is very prevalent, as Sir J. G. Frazer shows in his book "Totemism and Exogamy." This, however, does in no way justify the assumption that it was a general stage of civilisation of all mankind, and that it once existed even in those places where it is not found to-day.

Although European travellers, colonists and scientists had long been in contact with coloured races, it was the Scotsman J. F. McLennan who first discovered the existence of exogamy. He was led to this discovery by the study of that peculiar marriage custom which consists in the pretence of forcible bride capture, though the marriage of the couple concerned has been agreed to by both families beforehand. McLennan tried to find an explanation for this custom, and came to the conclusion that capture of women, which only took place in pretence, must once have been practised in reality to a large extent. In searching for facts confirmatory of this assumption, he was struck by the fact that among savage and barbarous people the men married women not of their own, but of another, tribal group. He described this as "exogamy," in contradistinction to "endogamy," by which marriage partners are restricted in their choice to their own group. In a tribe or other social group both sexual arrangements may exist side by side, in such a manner that the tribe is closely endogamous and is divided into several exogamous groups.