The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 1

by R. V. Russell

At first, however, the exogamous clan was not constituted by descent through males, but through females. The hypothesis that female everywhere preceded male descent is strongly supported by natural probability. In the first instance, the parentage of children was no more observed and remembered than that of animals. When first observed, it was necessarily through the mother, the identity of the father being wholly uncertain. The mother would also be the first parent to remember her children, her affection for them being based on one of the strongest natural instincts, whereas the father neither knew nor cared for his children until long afterwards. Sir J.G. Frazer has further shown that even now some of the Australian aborigines are ignorant of the physical fact of paternity and its relation to sexual intercourse. That such ignorance could have survived so long is the strongest evidence in favour of the universal priority of female to male descent. It is doubtful, however, whether even the mother could remember her children after they had become adult, prior to the introduction of personal names. Mr. M’Lennan states: “The tie between mother and child, which exists as a matter of necessity during infancy, is not infrequently found to be lost sight of among savages on the age of independence being reached.”[161] Personal names were probably long subsequent to clan-names, and when they were first introduced the name usually had some reference to the clan. The Red Indians and other races have totem-names which are frequently some variant of the name of the totem.[162] When personal names came to be generally introduced, the genesis of the individual family might soon follow, but the family could scarcely have come into existence in the absence of personal names. As a rule, in the exogamous clan with female descent no regard was paid to the chastity of women, and they could select their partners as they pleased. Mr. Hartland has shown in Primitive Paternity that in a large number of primitive communities the chastity of women was neither enforced nor desired by the men, this state of things being probably a relic of the period of female descent. Thus exogamy first arose through the women of the clan resorting to men outside it. When we consider the extreme rigour of life and the frequent danger of starvation to which the small clans in the hunting stage must have been exposed, it does not seem impossible that the evil effects of marriage within the clan may have been noticed. At that time probably only a minority even of healthy children survived, and the slight congenital weakness produced by in-breeding might apparently be fatal to a child’s chance of life. Possibly some dim perception may have been obtained of the different fates of the children of women who restricted their sexual relations to men within the clan and those who resorted to strangers, even though the nature of paternity may not have been understood. The strength of the feeling and custom of exogamy seems to demand some such recognition for its satisfactory explanation, though, on the other hand, the lateness of the recognition of the father’s share in the production of children militates against this view. The suggestion may be made also that the belief that the new life of a child must be produced by a spirit entering the woman, or other extraneous source, does not necessarily involve an ignorance of the physical fact of paternity; the view that the spirits of ancestors are reborn in children is still firmly held by tribes who have long been wholly familiar with the results of the commerce of the sexes. The practice of exogamy was no doubt, as shown by Dr. Westermarck, favoured and supported by the influence of novelty in sexual attraction, since according to common observation and experience sexual love or desire is more easily excited between strangers or slight acquaintances than between those who have long lived together in the same household or in familiar intercourse. In the latter case the attraction is dulled by custom and familiarity.

69. Exogamy with female descent.

The exogamous clan, with female descent, was, however, an unstable social institution, in that it had no regular provision for marriage nor for the incorporation of married couples. The men who associated with the women of the clan were not necessarily, nor as a rule, admitted to it, but remained in their own clans. How this association took place is not altogether clear. At a comparatively late period in Arabia, according to Professor Robertson Smith,[163] the woman would have a tent, and could entertain outside men for a shorter or longer period according to her inclination. The practice of serving for a wife also perhaps dates from the period of female descent. The arrangement would have been that a man went and lived with a woman’s family and gave his services in return for her conjugal society. Whether the residence with the wife’s family was permanent or not is perhaps uncertain. When Jacob served for Leah and Rachel, society seems to have been in the early patriarchal stage, as Laban was their father and he was Laban’s sister’s son. But it seems doubtful whether his right was then recognised to take his wives away with him, for even after he had served fourteen years Laban pursued him, and would have taken them back if he had not been warned against doing so in a vision. The episode of Rachel’s theft of the images also seems to indicate that she intended to take her own household gods with her and not to adopt those of her husband’s house. And Laban’s chief anxiety was for the recovery of the images. A relic of the husband’s residence with his wife’s family during the period of female descent may perhaps be found in the Banjāra caste, who oblige a man to go and live with his wife’s father for a month without seeing her face. Under the patriarchal system this rule of the Banjāras is meaningless, though the general practice of serving for a wife survives as a method of purchase.

The god Rāma, an incarnation of Vishnu, with attendant deities

Among the Australian aborigines apparently the clans, or sections of them, wander about in search of food and game, and meet each other for more or less promiscuous intercourse. This may perhaps be supposed to have been the general primitive condition of society after the introduction of exogamy combined with female descent. And its memory is possibly preserved in the tradition of the Golden Age, golden only in the sense that man was not troubled either by memory or anticipation, and lived only for the day. The entire insecurity of life and its frequent end by starvation or a violent death did not therefore trouble him any more than is the case with animals. He took no thought for the morrow, nor did the ills of yesterday oppress his mind. As when one of a herd of deer is shot by a hunter and the others stand by it pityingly as it lies dying on the ground, uncertain of its mishap, though they would help it if they could; yet when they perceive the hunter they make quickly off and in a few minutes are again grazing happily a mile or two away: little or no more than this can primitive man be supposed to have been affected by the deaths of his fellows. But possibly, since he was carnivorous, the sick and old may have been killed for food, as is still the practice among some tribes of savages. In the natural course, however, more or less permanent unions, though perhaps not regular marriages, must have developed in the female exogamous clan, which would thus usually have men of other clans living with it. And since identification of individuals would be extremely difficult before the introduction of personal names, there would be danger that when two clans met, men and women belonging to the same totem-clan would have sexual intercourse. This offence, owing to the strength of the feeling for exogamy, was frequently held to entail terrible evils for the community, and was consequently sometimes punished with death as treason. Moreover, if we suppose a number of small clans, A, B, C, D and E, to meet each other again and again, and the men and women to unite promiscuously, it is clear that the result would be a mixture of relationships of a very incestuous character. The incest of brothers and sisters by the same father would be possible and of almost all other relations, though that of brothers and sisters by the same mother would not be caused. This may have been the reason for the introduction of the class system among the Australians and Red Indians, by which all the clans of a certain area were divided into two classes, and the men of any clan of one class could only marry or have intercourse with the women of a clan of the other class. By such a division the evil results of the mixture of totems in exogamous clans with female descent would be avoided. The class system was sometimes further strengthened by the rule, in Australia, that different classes should, when they met, encamp on opposite sides of a creek or other natural division[164]; whilst among the Red Indians, the classes camp on opposite sides of the road, or live on different sides of the same house or street.[165] In Australia, and very occasionally elsewhere, the class system has been developed into four and eight sub-classes. A man of one sub-class can only marry a woman of one other, and their children belong to one of those different from either the father’s or mother’s. This highly elaborate and artificial system was no doubt, as stated by Sir J. G. Frazer, devised for the purpose of preventing the intermarriage of parents and children belonging to different clans where there are four sub-classes, and of first cousins where there are eight sub-classes.[166] The class system, however, would not appear to have been the earliest form of exogamy among the Australian tribes. Its very complicated character, and the fact that the two principal classes sometimes do not even have names, seem to preclude the idea of its having been the first form of exogamy, which is a strong natural feeling, so much so that it may almost be described as an instinct, though of course not a primitive animal instinct. And just as the totem clan, which establishes a sentiment of kinship between people who are not related by blood, was prior to the individual family, so exogamy, which forbids the marriage of people who are not related by blood, must apparently have been prior to the feeling simply against connections of persons related by blood or what we call incest. If the two-class system was introduced in Australia to prohibit the marriage of brothers and sisters at a time when they could not recognise each other in adult life, then on the introduction of personal names which would enable brothers and sisters to recognise and remember each other, the two-class system should have been succeeded by a modern table of prohibited degrees, and not by clan exogamy at all. It is suggested that the two-class system was a common and natural form of evolution of a society divided into exogamous totem clans with female descent, when a man was not taken into the clan of the woman with whom he lived. The further subdivision into four and eight sub-classes is almost peculiar to the Australian tribes; its development may perhaps be attributed to the fact that these tribes have retained the system of female descent and the migratory hunting method of life for an abnormally long period, and have evolved this special institution to prevent the unions of near relatives which are likely to occur under such conditions. The remains of a two-class system appear to be traceable among the Gonds of the Central Provinces. In one part of Bastar all the Gond clans are divided into two classes without names, and a man cannot marry a woman belonging to any clan of his own class, but must take one from a clan of the other class. Elsewhere the Gonds are divided into two groups of six-god and seven-god worshippers among whom the same rule obtains. Formerly the Gonds appear in some places to have had seven groups, worshipping different numbers of gods from one to seven, and each of these groups was exogamous. But after the complete substitution of male for female kinship in the clan, and the settlement of clans in different villages, the classes cease to fulfil any useful purpose. They are now disappearing, and it is very difficult to obtain any reliable information about their rules. The system of counting kinship through the mother, or female descent, has long been extinct in the Central Provinces and over most of India. Some survival of it, or at least the custom of polyandry, is found among the Nairs of southern India and in Thibet. Elsewhere scarcely a trace remains, and this was also the condition of things with the classical races of antiquity; so much so, indeed, that even great thinkers like Sir Henry Maine and M. Fustel de Coulanges, with the examples only of India, Greece and Rome before them, did not recognise the system of female descent, and thought that the exogamous clan with male descent was an extension of the patriarchal family, this latter having been the original unit of society. The wide distribution of exogamy and the probable priority of the system of female to that of male descent were first brought prominently to notice by Mr. M’Lennan. Still a distinct trace of the prior form survives here in the special relationship sometimes found to exist between a man and his sister’s children. This is a survival of the period when a woman’s children, under the rule of female descent, belonged to her own family and her husband or partner in sexual relations had no proprietary right or authority over them, the place and authority of a father belonging in such a condition of society to the mother’s brother or brothers. Among the Halbas a marriage is commonly arranged when practicable between a brother’s daughter and a sister’s son. And a man always shows a special regard and respect for his sister’s son, touching the latter’s feet as to a superior, while whenever he desires to make a gift as an offering of thanks and atonement, or as a meritorious action, the sister’s son is the recipient. At his death he usually leaves a substantial legacy, such as one or two buffaloes, to his sister’s son, the remainder of the property going to his own family. Similarly among the Kamārs the marriage of a man’s children with his sister’s children is considered the most suitable union. If a man’s sister is poor, he will arrange for the weddings of her children. He will never beat his sister’s children however much they may deserve it, and he will not permit his sister’s son or daughter to eat from the dish from which he eats. The last rule, it is said, also applies to the maternal aunt. The Kunbis, and other Marātha castes, have a saying: ‘At the sister’s house the brother’s daughter is a daughter-in-law.’ The Gonds call the wedding of a brother’s daughter to a sister’s son Dūdh lautāna, or ‘bringing back the milk.’ The reason why a brother was formerly anxious to marry his daughter to his sister’s son was that the latter would be his heir under the matriarchal system; but now that inheritance is through males, and girls are at a premium for marriage, a brother is usually more anxious to get his sister’s daughter for his son, and on the analogy of the opposite union it is sometimes supposed, as among the Gonds, that he also has a right to her. Many other instances of the special relation between a brother and his sister’s children are given by Sir J.G. Frazer in Totemism and Exogamy. In some localities also the Korkus build their villages in two long lines of houses on each side of the road, and it may be the case that this is a relic of the period when two or more clans with female descent lived in the same village, and those belonging to each class who could not marry or have sexual relations among themselves occupied one side of the road.

70. Marriage.

The transfer of the reckoning of kinship and descent from the mother’s to the father’s side may perhaps be associated with the full recognition of the physical fact of paternity. Though they may not have been contemporaneous in all or even the majority of societies, it would seem that the former was in most cases the logical outcome of the latter, regard being had also to the man’s natural function as protector of the family and provider of its sustenance. But this transition from female to male kinship was a social revolution of the first importance. Under the system of female descent there had been generally no transfer of clanship; both the woman and her partner or husband retained their own clans, and the children belonged to their mother’s clan. In the totemic stage of society the totem-clan was the vital organism, and the individual scarcely realised his own separate existence, but regarded himself as a member of his totem-clan, being a piece or fraction of a common life which extended through all the members of the clan and all the totem animals of the species. They may have thought also that each species of animals and plants had a different kind of life, and consequently also each clan whose life was derived from, and linked to, that of its totem-species. For the name, and life, and qualities, and flesh and blood were not separate conceptions, but only one conception; and since the name and qualities were part of the life, the life of one species could not be the same as that of another, and every species which had a separate name must have been thought to have a different kind of life. Nor would man have been regarded as a distinct species in the early totem-stage, and there would be no word for man; but each totem-clan would regard itself as having the same life as its totem-species. With the introduction of the system of male kinship came also the practice of transferring a woman from her own clan to that of her husband. It may be suggested that this was the origin of the social institution of marriage. Primitive society had no provision for such a procedure, which was opposed to its one fundamental idea of its own constitution, and involved a change of the life and personality of the woman transferred.

71. Marriage by capture.

The view seems to have been long held that this transfer could only be effected by violence or capture, the manner in which presumably it was first practised. Marriage by capture is very widely prevalent among savage races, as shown by Mr. M’Lennan in Primitive Marriage, and by Dr. Westermarck in The History of Human Marriage. Where the custom has given place to more peaceable methods of procuring a wife, survivals commonly occur. In Bastar the regular capture of the girl is still sometimes carried out, though the business is usually arranged by the couple beforehand, and the same is the case among the Kolāms of Wardha. A regular part of the marriage procedure among the Gonds and other tribes is that the bride should weep formally for some hours, or a day before the wedding, and she is sometimes taught to cry in the proper note. At the wedding the bride hides somewhere and has to be found or carried off by the bridegroom or his brother. This ritualistic display of grief and coyness appears to be of considerable interest. It cannot be explained by the girl’s reluctance to marriage as involving the loss of her virginity, inasmuch as she is still frequently not a virgin at her wedding, and to judge from the analogy of other tribes, could seldom or never have been one a few generations back. Nor is affection for her family or grief at the approaching separation from them a satisfactory motive. This would not account for the hiding at all, and not properly for the weeping, since she will after all only live a few miles away and will often return home; and sometimes she does not only weep at her own house but at all the houses of the village. The suggestion may be made that the procedure really indicates the girl’s reluctance to be severed from her own clan and transferred to another; and that the sentiment is a survival of the resistance to marriage by capture which was at first imposed on the women by the men from loyalty to the clan totem and its common life, and had nothing to do with the conjugal relationship of marriage. But out of this feeling the sexual modesty of women, which had been non-existent in the matriarchal condition of society, was perhaps gradually developed. The Chamārs of Bilāspur have sham fights on the approach of the wedding party, and in most Hindu castes the bridegroom on his arrival performs some militant action, such as striking the marriage-shed or breaking one of its festoons. After the marriage the bride is nearly always sent home with the bridegroom’s party for a few days, even though she may be a child and the consummation of the marriage impossible. This may be in memory of her having formerly been carried off, and some analogous significance may attach to our honeymoon. When the custom of capture had died down it was succeeded by the milder form of elopement, or the bride was sold or exchanged against a girl from the bridegroom’s family or clan, but there is usually a relic of a formal transfer, such as the Hindu Kanyadān or gift of the virgin, the Roman Traditio in manum or her transfer from her father’s to her husband’s power, and the giving away of the bride.