It is therefore a fair hypothesis that unawa (noa) and similar terms express status and not relationship. From the example of mother and son we see that the Australian does not select for distinction by a special term that bond which is most obvious both to him and us. It is therefore by no means surprising that by unawa he should mean, not the existence of marital relations, but their possibility, from a 'legal' point of view. Just as he is struck, not by the genetic relation between mother and son, but by the fact that they belong to different generations, so in the case of husband and wife the existence of marital relations between them is neglected, and the point selected for emphasis is the legality of such marital relations, whether existent or not.
It is singular that anyone should regard this savage view of life as anything but natural. For the Australian the due observance of the marriage regulations is a tribal matter; their breach, whether the connection be by marriage or free love, is a matter of more than private concern. The relations of a man with his legal wife however concern other members of the tribe but little. Public opinion among the Dieri, it is true, condemns the unfaithful wife, but her punishment is left to the husband; among the Kamilaroi the tribe indeed takes the matter up but only on the complaint of the husband; and generally speaking it is the husband who, possibly with his totemic brethren, pursues the abductor. We have therefore in this insistence on the legal status of the couple and the comparative indifference to the husband's rights a sufficiently exact parallel to the insistence on status and not marital relations in the use of the term unawa.
The course of evolution has been, not, as group-marriagers contend, from group to individual terms of relationship but from terms descriptive of status to terms descriptive of relationship.
It is, in fact, on any hypothesis, impossible to deny this. Whatever terms of relationship may have meant in the past, no believer in group marriage contends that they represent anything actually existing. But this is equivalent to admitting that they express status and not relationship, and no proof has ever been given that they were ever anything else.
[151] p. 163.
CHAPTER XIII.
PIRRAURU.
Theories of group marriage. Meaning of group. Dieri customs. Tippa-malku marriage. Obscure points. Pirrauru. Obscure points. Relation of pirrauru to tippa-malkuunions. Kurnandaburi. Wakelbura customs. Kurnai organisation. Position of widow. Piraungaru of Urabunna. Pirrauru and group marriage. Pirrauru not a survival. Result of scarcity of women. Duties of Pirrauru spouses. Piraungaru: obscure points.