It will not be supposed that a system so elaborate as the Turanian could be maintained in different nations and families of mankind in absolute identicalness. Divergence in minor particulars is found, but the radical features are, in the main, constant. The system of consanguinity of the Tamil people, of South India, and that of the Seneca-Iroquois, of New York, are still identical through two hundred relationships; an application of natural logic to the facts of the social condition without a parallel in the history of the human mind. There is also a modified form of the system, which stands alone and tells its own story. It is that of the Hindi, Bengali, Marâthi and other people of North India, formed by a combination of the Aryan and Turanian systems. A civilized people, the Brahmins, coalesced with a barbarous stock, and lost their language in the new vernaculars named, which retain the grammatical structure of the aboriginal speech, to which the Sanskrit gave ninety per cent. of its vocables. It brought their two systems of consanguinity into collision, one founded upon monogamy or syndyasmy, and the other upon plural marriages in the group, resulting in a mixed system. The aborigines, who preponderated in number, impressed upon it a Turanian character, while the Sanskrit element introduced such modifications as saved the monogamian family from reproach. The Slavonic stock seems to have been derived from this intermixture of races. A system of consanguinity which exhibits but two phases through the periods of savagery and of barbarism and projects a third but modified form far into the period of civilization, manifests an element of permanence calculated to arrest attention.
It will not be necessary to consider the patriarchal family founded upon polygamy. From its limited prevalence it made but little impression upon human affairs.
The house life of savages and barbarians has not been studied with the attention the subject deserves. Among the Indian tribes of North America the family was syndyasmian; but they lived generally in joint-tenement houses and practiced communism within the household. As we descend the scale in the direction of the punaluan and consanguine families, the household group becomes larger, with more persons crowded together in the same apartment. The coast tribes in Venezuela, among whom the family seems to have been punaluan, are represented by the discoverers as living in bell-shaped houses, each containing a hundred and sixty persons.[449] Husbands and wives lived together in a group in the same house, and generally in the same apartment. The inference is reasonable that this mode of house life was very general in savagery.
An explanation of the origin of these systems of consanguinity and affinity will be offered in succeeding chapters. They will be grounded upon the forms of marriage and of the family which produced them, the existence of these forms being assumed. If a satisfactory explanation of each system is thus obtained, the antecedent existence of each form of marriage and of the family may be deduced from the system it explains. In a final chapter an attempt will be made to articulate in a sequence the principal institutions which have contributed to the growth of the family through successive forms. Our knowledge of the early condition of mankind is still so limited that we must take the best indications attainable. The sequence to be presented is, in part, hypothetical; but it is sustained by a sufficient body of evidence to commend it to consideration. Its complete establishment must be left to the results of future ethnological investigations.
CHAPTER II. - THE CONSANGUINE FAMILY.
Former Existence of this Family.—Proved by Malayan System of Consanguinity.—Hawaiian System used as Typical.—Five Grades of Relations.—Details of System.—Explained by the Intermarriage of Brothers and Sisters in a Group.—Early State of Society in the Sandwich Islands.—Nine Grades of Relations of the Chinese.—Identical in Principle with the Hawaiian.—Five Grades of Relations in Ideal Republic of Plato.—Table of Malayan System of Consanguinity and Affinity.
The existence of the Consanguine family must be proved by other evidence than the production of the family itself. As the first and most ancient form of the institution, it has ceased to exist even among the lowest tribes of savages. It belongs to a condition of society out of which the least advanced portion of the human race have emerged. Single instances of the marriage of a brother and sister in barbarous and even in civilized nations have occurred within the historical period; but this is very different from the intermarriage of a number of them in a group, in a state of society in which such marriages predominated and formed the basis of a social system. There are tribes of savages in the Polynesian and Papuan Islands, and in Australia, seemingly not far removed from the primitive state; but they have advanced beyond the condition the consanguine family implies. Where, then, it may be asked, is the evidence that such a family ever existed among mankind? Whatever proof is adduced must be conclusive, otherwise the proposition is not established. It is found in a system of consanguinity and affinity which has outlived for unnumbered centuries the marriage customs in which it originated, and which remains to attest the fact that such a family existed when the system was formed.
That system is the Malayan. It defines the relationships that would exist in a consanguine family; and it demands the existence of such a family to account for its own existence. Moreover, it proves with moral certainty the existence of a consanguine family when the system was formed.