The German tribes, for the purpose of military levies, had the mark (markgenossenschaft), which also existed among the English Saxons, and a larger group, the gau, to which Cæsar and Tacitus gave the name of pagus.[409] It is doubtful whether the mark and the gau were then strictly geographical districts, standing to each other in the relations of township and county, each circumscribed by bounds, with the people in each politically organized. It seems more probable that the gau was a group of settlements associated with reference to military levies. As such, the mark and the gau were the germs of the future township and county, precisely as the Athenian naucrary and trittys were the rudiments of the Cleisthenean deme and local tribe. These organizations seemed transitional stages between a gentile and a political system, the grouping of the people still resting on consanguinity.[410]
We naturally turn to the Asiatic continent, where the types of mankind are the most numerous, and where, consequently, the period of human occupation has been longest, to find the earliest traces of the gentile organization. But here the transformations of society have been the most extended, and the influence of tribes and nations upon each other the most constant. The early development of Chinese and Indian civilization and the overmastering influence of modern civilization have wrought such changes in the condition of Asiatic stocks that their ancient institutions are not easily ascertainable. Nevertheless, the whole experience of mankind from savagery to civilization was worked out upon the Asiatic continent, and among its fragmentary tribes the remains of their ancient institutions must now be sought.
Descent in the female line is still very common in the ruder Asiatic tribes; but there are numerous tribes among whom it is traced in the male line. It is the limitation of descent to one line or the other, followed by the organization of the body of consanguinei, thus separated under a common name which indicates a gens.
In the Magar tribe of Nepaul, Latham remarks, “there are twelve thums. All individuals belonging to the same thum are supposed to be descended from the same male ancestor; descent from the same mother being by no means necessary. So husband and wife must belong to different thums. Within one and the same there is no marriage. Do you wish for a wife? If so, look to the thum of your neighbor; at any rate look beyond your own. This is the first time I have found occasion to mention this practice. It will not be the last; on the contrary, the principle it suggests is so common as to be almost universal. We shall find it in Australia; we shall find it in North and South America; we shall find it in Africa; we shall find it in Europe; we shall suspect and infer it in many places where the actual evidence of its existence is incomplete.”[411] In this case we have in the thum clear evidence of the existence of a gens, with descent in the male line.
“The Munnieporees, and the following tribes inhabiting the hills round Munniepore—the Koupooes, the Mows, the Murams, and the Murring—are each and all divided into four families—Koomul, Looang, Angom, and Ningthajà. A member of any of these families may marry a member of any other, but the intermarriage of members of the same family is strictly prohibited.”[412] In these families may be recognized four gentes in each of these tribes. Bell, speaking of the Telûsh of the Circassians, remarks that “the tradition in regard to them is, that the members of each and all sprang from the same stock or ancestry; and thus they may be considered as so many septs or clans.... These cousins german, or members of the same fraternity, are not only themselves interdicted from intermarrying, but their serfs, too, must wed with serfs of another fraternity.”[413] It is probable that the telûsh is a gens.
Among the Bengalese “the four castes are subdivided into many different sects or classes, and each of these is again subdivided; for instance, I am of Nundy tribe [gens?], and if I were a heathen I could not marry a woman of the same tribe, although the caste must be the same. The children are of the tribe of their father. Property descends to the sons. In case the person has no sons, to his daughters; and if he leaves neither, to his nearest relatives. Castes are subdivided, such as Shuro, which is one of the first divisions; but it is again subdivided, such as Khayrl, Tilly, Tamally, Tanty, Chomor, Kari, etc. A man belonging to one of these last-named subdivisions cannot marry a woman of the same.”[414] These smallest groups number usually about a hundred persons, and still retain several of the characteristics of a gens.
Mr. Tyler remarks, that “in India it is unlawful for a Brahman to marry a wife whose clan-name or ghotra (literally ‘cow-stall’) is the same as his own, a prohibition which bars marriage among relatives in the male line indefinitely. This law appears in the code of Manu as applying to the first three castes, and connexions on the female side are also forbidden to marry within certain wide limits.”[415] And again: “Among the Kols of Chota-Nagpur, we find many of the Oraon and Munda clans named after animals, as eel, hawk, crow, heron, and they must not kill or eat what they are named after.”[416]
The Mongolians approach the American aborigines quite nearly in physical characteristics. They are divided into numerous tribes. “The connection,” says Latham, “between the members of a tribe is that of blood, pedigree, or descent; the tribe being, in some cases, named after a real or supposed patriarch. The tribe, by which we translate the native name aimauk, or aimâk, is a large division falling into so many kokhums, or banners.”[417] The statement is not full enough to show the existence of gentes. Their neighbors, the Tungusians, are composed of subdivisions named after animals, as the horse, the dog, the reindeer, which imply the gentile organizations, but it cannot be asserted without further particulars.
Sir John Lubbock remarks of the Kalmucks that according to De Hell, they “are divided into hordes, and no man can marry a woman of the same horde;” and of the Ostiaks, that they “regard it as a crime to marry a woman of the same family or even of the same name;” and that “when a Jakut (Siberia) wishes to marry, he must choose a girl from another clan.”[418] We have in each of these cases evidence of the existence of a gens, one of the rules of which, as has been shown, is the prohibition of intermarriage among its members. The Yurak Samoyeds are organized in gentes. Klaproth, quoted by Latham, remarks that “this division of the kinsmanship is so rigidly observed that no Samoyed takes a wife from the kinsmanship to which he himself belongs. On the contrary, he seeks her in one of the other two.”[419]
A peculiar family system prevails among the Chinese which seems to embody the remains of an ancient gentile organization. Mr. Robert Hart, of Canton, in a letter to the author remarks, “that the Chinese expression for the people is Pih-sing, which means the Hundred Family Names; but whether this is mere word-painting, or had its origin at a time when the Chinese general family consisted of one hundred subfamilies or tribes [gentes?] I am unable to determine. At the present day there are about four hundred family names in this country, among which I find some that have reference to animals, fruits, metals, natural objects, etc., and which may be translated as Horse, Sheep, Ox, Fish, Bird, Phœnix, Plum, Flower, Leaf, Rice, Forest, River, Hill, Water, Cloud, Gold, Hide, Bristles, etc., etc. In some parts of the country large villages are met with, in each of which there exists but one family name; thus in one district will be found, say, three villages, each containing two or three thousand people, the one of the Horse, the second of the Sheep, and the third of the Ox family name.... Just as among the North American Indians husbands and wives are of different tribes [gentes], so in China husband and wife are always of different families, i.e., of different surnames. Custom and law alike prohibit intermarriage on the part of people having the same family surname. The children are of the father’s family, that is, they take his family surname.... Where the father dies intestate the property generally remains undivided, but under the control of the oldest son during the life of the widow. On her death he divides the property between himself and his brothers, the shares of the juniors depending entirely upon the will of the elder brother.”