Theory of Promiscuity.—We often hear it said that marriage has sprung from a “state of promiscuity” in which mankind primitively lived; every man could then couple with every woman, “like the animals,” people sometimes add, forgetting that among animals the most akin to man this state of promiscuity is rather exceptional, and that the polygamous and even monogamous family exist among a great number of birds and mammals.[264]
The theory of promiscuity or “communal marriage,” so well summed up some time ago by Lubbock,[265] has few defenders at the present day. We know that actually there does not exist on the earth any population practising an “irregular promiscuity,” and the evidence of history is reduced to three or four texts of Herodotus, Strabo, and Solinus, the interpretation of which is far from easy.[266]
Group Marriage.—What has been often taken for promiscuity is only a form of marriage, different from our individual marriage, which, nevertheless, represents the first attempt to regulate sexual relations and to define ties of kinship in order to ensure the existence and bringing up of children. This form of marriage, admirably studied by Howitt and Fison[267] among the Australians, has received from them the name of “group marriage.” Its essential feature is that men and women, by the fact of belonging to such and such a group or clan are not marriageable one with another, and are obliged by the fact of their birth to contract unions with members of other groups of the tribe.
Marriage by groups is met with in its most pronounced form among the Australians and some tribes of India (Nairs, Todas). Among the Australians this custom co-exists with individual exogamous marriage (the “Noa” of the Dieri of Central Australia), and exhibits itself in its simplest form in the example of the Wotjoballuk Australians of the north-west of Victoria. This tribe is divided into two classes or clans, the Gamutch and the Krokitch. The men of the Gamutch clan are by right the husbands of all the women of the Krokitch tribe, and vice-versâ. But it is only a virtual right. In practice, during the great festivals of initiation (see p. [241]), the old men of the tribe, assembled in council, distribute among the bachelors of a clan the unappropriated girls of the other clan. This marriage, called “Pirauru” among the Dieri, and known under the name of “Paramour custom” by the colonials, gives the right to the man of the Gamutch clan, for example, to contract a marriage with the woman of the Krokitch clan thus allotted to him when the occasion shall present itself; he may also take with him one or more of these women and make her or them live with his wife of the individual marriage. However, as the same woman may be allotted in the successive festivals to several men, there are certain rules of precedence to observe in the fulfilment of the conjugal duties, if chance puts two men before their “common” wife: the elder brother takes precedence of the younger, the man up in years of the youth.[268]
Exogamy and Endogamy.—Group marriage is closely connected with what is called exogamy or exogeny, that is to say, marriage outside the clan, as opposed to endogamy or endogeny, marriage within the clan. It must be said, however, that exogamy is as often met in the individual form of marriage, and that sometimes endogamy, interdicted within the limits of a clan, is, on the contrary, practised within the limits of the tribe of which these clans are the components. There is in this case exogamy in relation to the clan and endogamy in relation to the tribe.
Matriarchate.—But how are matters of filiation and family to be decided with such a system of marriage, for it is impossible to settle the question of paternity in this case? To Bachofen and McLennan[269] we must attribute the honour of having discovered a complete system of filiation, in vogue among many uncivilised peoples, and the exact opposite to that which we are accustomed to in our societies: filiation by the mother, or matriarchate. Thus in our example of the Australians of Wotjoballuk (p. [232]), the posterity of a man of the Gamutch clan married to a woman of the Krokitch clan will belong to the Krokitch clan; if, on the contrary, the father is a Krokitch and the mother a Gamutch, the children will belong to the Gamutch clan. This filiation establishes the uterine relationship and, united to exogamy, prevents marriage between nearest relatives. In fact, the son of the first couple being of the Krokitch clan, will not be able to marry his uterine sister, since she is of the same clan as he is, but only an alien woman, or a relative, according to our conventions, of the Gamutch clan, for example, the sister of his father. Theoretically, a father of the Gamutch clan would be able to marry his daughter, since she belongs to the Krokitch clan; but in practice these cases are forbidden by custom, for example among the Australian Dieri,[270] or they are avoided by the existence not of two, but of four or a greater number of classes in the tribe, with prohibitions against the marriage of people of certain of these classes.[271]
However, peoples who practise group marriage and exogamy have not to regard incest very seriously, for degrees of relationship are not fixed with them as with us. To fix relationship, they make use of a system called by Morgan, who discovered it (among the American Indians first), and described it admirably,[272] the “classificatory system.” In its simplest form, such as it is met with, for example, among the Micronesians and the Maoris, it may be thus summed up. All persons allied by consanguinity are divided into five groups. The first is formed of myself and my brothers, sisters, and cousins; we all bear the same name, which is that of the whole group. The second group is formed of my father and mother with their brothers and sisters, as well as their cousins, all likewise bearing the same name; the third group comprises my grandparents, with their brothers, sisters, etc.; the fourth, the cousins of my children, whom I consider as my sons and daughters; lastly, the fifth group is composed of the grandchildren of my brothers and sisters, whom I consider as my grandchildren. A similar system of nomenclature is very common among certain peoples of India, and sometimes causes much embarrassment to English judges newly landed. To give an example: A witness said that his father was at home at such and such an hour; then, a few minutes after, he affirmed that his father was in the fields. The judge is perplexed until, by a series of questions, he elicits the fact that the witness means his “little” father, equivalent to our term uncle.[273] Westermarck has tried to interpret the classificatory system differently; he sees in it only an artifice of speech, a way of addressing persons of different ages; but as Fison judiciously observes, if it be held that this system has no reference to degrees of relationship we should have to deny any idea whatever of this subject to certain peoples who have no other expressions to denote degrees of relationship.[274]
Polyandry, that is to say, marriage in which the woman possesses several husbands, is considered by the majority of authors as a form derived from group marriage. With the exception of two doubtful examples (Khasias and Saporogian Cossacks), polyandry always assumes the fraternal form; that is to say, the husbands of the woman are brothers. The classic country of polyandry is Thibet. There each of the brothers cohabits in turn with their common wife, a certain period being allotted. Among the ancient Arabs, according to Strabo, matters were arranged less systematically, and the first comer on his arrival at the woman’s house asserted his marital rights, after having taken care, however, to place his staff across the door, as is still done in the case of temporary marriages in Persia and among the Todas, who leave the cloak as well as the staff. Polyandry is practised by several peoples living on the borders of Thibet (Miris, Dophlas, Abors, Khasias, Ladakhis, etc.), but appears to be but rarely met with elsewhere, and almost never outside of India. It is explained by the scarcity of women in these countries (a statement not confirmed by statistics in regard to certain of them), and by the necessities of the pastoral life of these peoples.
Levirate, or compulsory marriage with a dead brother’s widow, a very widespread custom in India (where it is called niyoga), among the Iroquois and other American Indians, the Melanesians, the Negroes, as well as the ancient Egyptians and Jews, is considered as a survival of polyandry. However, Maine, Westermarck, and others see in it only a custom established with a view to securing the protection of orphan children.[275] With polyandry is also connected, on not very good grounds it seems to me, parental marriage. In this form of union the father or uncle or some other relative really cohabits with the nominal wife of his son or nephew during the minority of the latter. This custom, according to Shortt, prevails in India among the Reddies or Naickers, and according to Haxthausen among the peasantry in Russia, where a modification of this kind of relation, strongly reprehended, however, is still known at the present day under the name “Snokhachestvo.”[276]
Polygamy and Monogamy.—Individual marriage, which may, as we have seen in Australia, co-exist with group marriage, assumes two different forms—polygamy and monogamy. The latter does not necessarily proceed from the former. Many savage tribes, like the Veddahs and the Andamanese, are monogamous, as are also a certain number of mammals and birds. Among others (Fuegians, Bushmen) polygamy is exceptional. In reality it only takes root in societies a little more advanced, in which, especially, the idea of individual property is already more or less firmly planted. Woman is then considered very much as a slave, from whom pleasure and labour may be obtained; she is treated like any other property; the more wives a man has, the richer and more esteemed is he. Polygamy is widely diffused over the world, either in its pure form (Mahomedans, Australians, American Indians, Negroes, etc.) or in its modified forms: lawful concubinage (all over the East), or unlawful (Europe), and temporary marriage (Persia, Japan).