Primitive Manners and Customs

by James Anson Farrer

‘A very singular scene,’ it is said, ‘may sometimes be noticed in the markets of Singbhoom. A young man suddenly makes a pounce on a girl and carries her off bodily, his friends covering the retreat (like a group from the picture of the Rape of the Sabines). This is generally a summary method of surmounting the obstacles that cruel parents may have placed in the lovers’ path; but though it is sometimes done in anticipation of the favourable inclination of the girl herself, and in spite of her struggles and tears, no disinterested person interferes, and the girls, late companions of the abducted maiden, often applaud the exploit.’[330]

In Afghanistan the pecuniary value of women has given rise to the curious custom of assessing part of the fines in criminal cases in a certain number of young women payable in atonement as wives to the plaintiff or to his relations from the family of the defendant. Thus murder is or was expiated by the payment of twelve young women; the cutting off a hand, an ear, or a nose by that of six; the breaking of a tooth by that of three; a wound above the forehead by that of one. This was the logical result of the state of thought which produces wife-purchase; but there was also another. For in the country parts, where matches generally begin in attachment, an enterprising lover may avoid the obstacle of parental consent by a form of capture, which has a legal sanction, though it does not exempt the captor from subsequent payment. This consists in a man’s ‘seizing an opportunity of cutting off a lock of her (the woman’s) hair, snatching away her veil, or throwing a sheet over her, and claiming her as his affianced wife.’ But the most common expedient is an ordinary elopement; though this is held an outrage to a family equivalent to the murder of one of its members; and being pursued with the same rancour, is often the cause of long and bloody wars between the clans; for as the fugitive couple are never refused an asylum, ‘the seduction of a woman of one Oolooss by a man of another, or a man’s eloping with a girl of his own Oolooss,’ is the commonest cause of feuds between the clans.[331]

Love attachments, in defeat of parental plans, lead to very similar results in Bokhara. For ‘the daughter of a Turcoman has a high price; and the swain, in despair of making a legitimate purchase, seizes his sweetheart, seats her behind him on the same horse, and gallops off to the nearest camp, where the parties are united, and separation is impossible. The parents and relations pursue the lovers, and the marriage is adjusted by an intermarriage with some female relation of the bridegroom, while he himself becomes bound to pay so many camels and horses as the price of his bride.’[332]

There is, therefore, evidence to justify the theory that the form of capture may often be explained as an attempt to regulate by law the danger to a tribe arising from too frequent elopements, naturally resulting from the abuse of the parental right of selling daughters. In Sumatra the defeat of matrimonial plans by an elopement with a preferred suitor is so common as to be sanctioned and regulated by law, being known as the system of marriage by telari gadis; the father in such a case having to pay the fine to which he would have been liable for bestowing his daughter after engagement to another suitor, and only being allowed to recover her, if he catches her in immediate pursuit. ‘When the parties,’ says Mr. McLennan, ‘cannot agree about the price, nothing is more common among the Kalmucks, Kirghiz, Nogais, and Circassians than to carry the lady off by actual force of arms. The wooer having once got the lady into his yurt, she is his wife by the law, and peace is established by her relations coming to terms as to the price.’ So too in England, elopements have often preceded and promoted more definite marriage settlements, or, with some slight observances, have stood legally as a substitute for them.

Considering, then, that the affections and wishes do not count for nothing even among savages; considering that among savages, more even than in civilized life, marriage is a question of property and of means, so that, whilst the richest members of a tribe almost universally have several wives, it is often all that the poorer can do to get a wife at all, we have a set of circumstances leading naturally sometimes to voluntary elopement on the part of the girl, in defeat of her parents, sometimes to literal wife-capture by a man otherwise unable to become a husband. This condition of things leads of necessity to polyandry and wife-robbery. In some Australian tribes, owing to a disproportion between the sexes, many men have to steal a wife from a neighbouring horde. But it is not their normal recognized mode of marriage. On the contrary, their laws on this subject are somewhat elaborate; and as it appears that before that state of society in which a daughter belongs to her father there is one in which she belongs to her mother, and perhaps a still prior state in which she belongs to her tribe, so from their birth Australian girls are appropriated to certain males of the tribe, nor can the parents annul the obligation. If the male dies the mother may then bestow her daughter on whom she will, for by the death of her legal owner the girl becomes to some extent the property of her relations, who have certain claims on her services for the procurement of food. But to the surrender of a girl by her mother the full consent of the whole tribe is necessary; and if, as sometimes happens, ‘the young people, listening rather to the dictates of inclination than those of law, improvise a marriage by absconding together,’ they incur the fatal enmity of the whole tribe.[333] According to Bonwick, a Tasmanian or Australian woman was never stolen contrary to her expectations or wishes. Only if all other schemes to have her own way failed, would a girl face the penalty of having ‘the spear of the disappointed, the spear of the guardian, and the spears of the tribe’ thrown at her, for her breach of tribal law.[334]

The conception of the daughters of a clan as its property, as a source of contingent wealth to it, of additional income to it in sheep, dogs, or whatever the medium of exchange, tends to keep up in many cases that prohibition to marry in the same clan or subdivision of a tribe which is known as exogamy. Among the Hindu Kafirs it is said to be uncertain why a man may not sell his girls to his own tribe, and why a man must always buy his wife from another; but it is certain that for this reason the more girls a man has born to him the better he is pleased and the richer his tribe becomes.[335] A Khond father distributes among the heads of the families, belonging to his branch of a tribe, the sum raised on behalf of a son-in-law by subscription from the son-in-law’s branch. But, supposing a great inequality of wealth to arise between different clans, originally united by profitable intermarriages, it might become more profitable to sell within the clan than outside it, so that the same motives of interest which, under some circumstances, would tend to encourage exogamy would under others lead to the opposite principle, a rich bridegroom of the same clan being preferable to a poor one of another, whether the gain accrued to a girl’s parents or her clan. It is, perhaps, for this reason that a Hindu Kooch incurs a fine if he marries a woman of another clan, becoming a bondsman till his wife redeems him; that is, till she pays back to his clan or its chief what the bridegroom, by purchasing her, has alienated from the use of the tribe.[336] On the other hand, the reason given by the Khonds for marrying women from distant places was, that they gave much smaller sums than for women of their own tribe.[337]

Exogamy and endogamy would thus co-exist, as the customs of tribes that have attained to a more or less complete recognition of the rights of property, and are so far advanced as to be capable of preserving complex rules of social organization. Marriages, therefore, under either régime are matters generally of friendly settlement, of ordinary contract; and where such arrangements are defeated by the perversity of the principal parties—namely, the bride or the bridegroom—what more natural than the device of giving legal sanction to an elopement by settling a subsequent compensation with the parent?

The custom of exogamy is so widely spread over the world that its origin must be sought in conditions as prevalent as itself, and it is possible that it arose out of the same condition which certainly sustains it and is co-extensive with itself, namely, from the marketable position of women. That female infanticide should have led to it is improbable, not only from the comparative rarity of the practice among the rudest tribes, but from the negative instance of the Todas, a wild Indian hill-tribe, who, notwithstanding the scarcity of their women, and a scarcity actually attributed to former female infanticide, ‘never contract marriage with the other tribes, though living together on most friendly terms.’[338] Judging à priori, we should expect to find as of earlier date a prejudice in favour of tribal exclusiveness, of strict endogamy. The idea of the Abors that marriage out of the clan is a sin only to be washed out by sacrifice—a sin so great as to cause war among the elements, and even obscuration of the sun and moon—has a more archaic appearance than the contrary principle; and the confinement of marriages to a few families of known purity of descent is characteristic of some of the lowest Hindu castes.[339] The prejudice against foreign women is so strong that there is often a tendency to regard female prisoners of war as merely slaves, as not of the same rank with the real wives of their captors. Thus, ‘though the different tribes of the Aht nation are frequently at war with one another, women are not captured from other tribes for marriage, but only to be kept as slaves. The idea of slavery connected with capture is so common that a free-born Aht would hesitate to marry a woman taken in war, whatever her rank had been in her own tribe.’[340] The Caribs, too, if they kept female prisoners as wives always regarded them as slaves, as standing on a lower level than their legitimate wives.[341]

Leaving, however, the obscure problem of the origin of exogamy, there is a point of view from which both that and endogamy are one. For exogamy as regards the subdivisions of a tribe is endogamy as regards the tribe itself, tending in fact to preserve tribal unity and to check an indefinite divergency of interests and dialects. For example, where a Hindoo caste or tribe is composed of several Gotrams, no person of whom may marry an individual of the same Gotram, it is evident that the unity of the tribe is actually sustained by the exogamy of its constituent parts. Such a custom therefore, howsoever originated, would, as serviceable in maintaining tribal unity against hostile neighbouring people, tend to survive from motives of common expediency, from its adaptation to the interests of peace; a beneficial result of the system which in Mr. Bancroft’s account of the Thlinkeet and Kutchin Indians clearly appears.[342] The Thlinkeets are nationally divided into two great clans, under the totems of the Wolf and the Raven, and these two are again subdivided into numerous sub-totems. ‘In this clanship some singular social facts present themselves. People are at once thrust widely apart and yet drawn together. Tribes of the same clan may not war on each other, but at the same time members of the same clan may not marry each other. Thus the young Wolf warrior must seek his mate among the Ravens.... Obviously this singular social fancy tends greatly to keep the various tribes of the nation at peace.’ The Kutchins, again, are divided into three castes, resident in different territories, no two persons of the same caste being allowed to marry. ‘This system operates strongly against war between the tribes, as in war it is caste against caste, not tribe against tribe. As the father is never of the same caste as the son, who receives clanship from the mother, there can never be international war without ranging fathers and sons against each other.’ So among the Khonds, who punish intermarriage between persons of the same tribe with death, the intervention of the women was always essential to peace, as they were neutral between the tribe of their fathers and that of their husbands.[343] But it is difficult to think that, if hostile relations between exogamous clans became permanent, the several clans would still insist on exogamous marriages as the only marriages legally valid, and consequently regard the use of force or fraud as the only legitimate title to a wife.