72. Transfer of the bride to her husband’s clan.
These customs seem to mark the transfer of the woman from her father’s to her husband’s clan, which was in the first instance effected forcibly and afterwards by the free gift of her father or guardian, and the change of surname would be a relic of the change of clan. Among the Hindus a girl is never called by her proper name in her husband’s house, but always by some other name or nickname. This custom seems to be a relic of the period when the name denoted the clan, though it no longer has any reference either to the girl’s clan or family. Another rite portraying the transfer in India is the marking of the bride’s forehead with vermilion, which is no doubt a substitute for blood. The ceremony would be a relic of participation in the clan sacrifice when the bride would in the first place drink the blood of the totem animal or tribal god with the bridegroom in sign of her admission to his clan and afterwards be marked with the blood as a substitute. This smear of vermilion a married woman always continues to wear as a sign of her state, unless she wears pink powder or a spangle as a substitute.[167] Where this pink powder (kunku) or spangles are used they must always be given by the bridegroom to the bride as part of the Sohāg or trousseau. At a Bhaina wedding the bride’s father makes an image in clay of the bird or animal of the groom’s sept and places it beside the marriage-post. The bridegroom worships the image, lighting a sacrificial fire before it, or offers to it the vermilion which he afterwards smears upon the forehead of the bride. The Khadāls at their marriages worship their totem animal or tree, and offer to it flowers, sandalwood, vermilion, uncooked rice, and the new clothes and ornaments intended for the bride, which she may not wear until this ceremony has been performed. Again, the sacrament of the Meher or marriage cakes is sometimes connected with the clan totem in India. These cakes are cooked and eaten sacramentally by all the members of the family and their relatives, the bride and bridegroom commencing first. Among the Kols the relatives to whom these cakes are distributed cannot intermarry, and this indicates that the eating of them was formerly a sacrament of the exogamous clan. The association of the totem with the marriage cakes is sometimes clearly shown. Thus in the Dahāit caste members of the clans named after certain trees, go to the tree at the time of their weddings and invite it to be present at the ceremony. They offer the marriage cakes to the tree. Those of the Nāgotia or cobra clan deposit the cakes at a snake’s hole. Members of the Singh (lion) and Bāgh (tiger) clans draw images of these animals on the wall at the time of their weddings and offer the cakes to them. The Basors of the Kulatia or somersault clan do somersaults at the time of eating the cakes; those of the Karai Nor clan, who venerate a well, eat the cakes at a well and not at home. Basors of the Lurhia clan, who venerate a grinding-stone, worship this implement at the time of eating the marriage cakes. M. Fustel de Coulanges states that the Roman Confarreatio, or eating of a cake together by the bride and bridegroom in the presence of the family gods of the latter, constituted their holy union or marriage. By this act the wife was transferred to the gods and religion of her husband.[168] Here the gods referred to are clearly held to be the family gods, and in the historical period it seems doubtful whether the Roman gens was still exogamous. But if the patriarchal family developed within the exogamous clan tracing descent through males, and finally supplanted the clan as the most important social unit, then it would follow that the family gods were only a substitute for the clan gods, and the bride came to be transferred to her husband’s family instead of to his clan. The marriage ceremony in Greece consisted of a common meal of a precisely similar character,[169] and the English wedding cake seems to be a survival of such a rite. At their weddings the Bhīls make cakes of the large millet juāri, calling it Juāri Māta or Mother Juāri. These cakes are eaten at the houses of the bride and bridegroom by the members of their respective clans, and the remains are buried inside the house as sacred food. Dr. Howitt states of the Kurnai tribe: “By and by, when the bruises and perhaps wounds received in these fights (between the young men and women) had healed, a young man and a young woman might meet, and he, looking at her, would say, for instance, ‘Djiitgun![170] What does the Djiitgun eat?’ The reply would be ‘She eats kangaroo, opossum,’ or some other game. This constituted a formal offer and acceptance, and would be followed by the elopement of the couple as described in the chapter on Marriage.”[171] There is no statement that the question about eating refers to the totem, but this must apparently have been the original bearing of the question, which otherwise would be meaningless. Since this proposal of marriage followed on a fight between the boys and girls arising from the fact that one party had injured the other party’s sex-totem, the fight may perhaps really have been a preliminary to the proposal and have represented a symbolic substitute for or survival of marriage by capture. Among the Santāls, Colonel Dalton says, “the social meal that the boy and girl eat together is the most important part of the ceremony, as by the act the girl ceases to belong to her father’s tribe and becomes a member of the husband’s family.” Since the terms tribe and family are obviously used loosely in the above statement, we may perhaps substitute clan in both cases. Many other instances of the rite of eating together at a wedding are given by Dr. Westermarck.[172] If, therefore, it be supposed that the wedding ceremony consisted originally of the formal transfer of the bride to the bridegroom’s clan, and further that the original tie which united the totem-clan was the common eating of the totem animal, then the practice of the bride and bridegroom eating together as a symbol of marriage can be fully understood. When the totem animal had ceased to be the principal means of subsistence, bread, which to a people in the agricultural stage had become the staff or chief support of life, was substituted for it, as argued by Professor Robertson Smith in The Religion of the Semites. If the institution of marriage was thus originally based on the forcible transfer of a woman from her own to her husband’s clan, certain Indian customs become easily explicable in the light of this view. We can understand why a Brāhman or Rājpūt thought it essential to marry his daughter into a clan or family of higher status than his own; because the disgrace of having his daughter taken from him by what had been originally an act of force, was atoned for by the superior rank of the captor or abductor. And similarly the terms father-in-law and brother-in-law would be regarded as opprobrious because they originally implied not merely that the speaker had married the sister or daughter of the person addressed, but had married her forcibly, thereby placing him in a position of inferiority. A Rājpūt formerly felt it derogatory that any man should address him either as father-or brother-in-law. And the analogous custom of a man refusing to take food in the house of his son-in-law’s family and sometimes even refusing to drink water in their village would be explicable on precisely the same grounds. This view of marriage would also account for the wide prevalence of female infanticide. Because in the primitive condition of exogamy with male descent, girls could not be married in their own clan, as this would transgress the binding law of exogamy, and they could not be transferred from their own totem-clan and married in another except by force and rape. Hence it was thought better to kill girl children than to suffer the ignominy of their being forcibly carried off. Both kinds of female infanticide as distinguished by Sir H. Risley[173] would thus originally be due to the same belief. The Khond killed his daughter because she could not be married otherwise than by forcible abduction; not necessarily because he was unable to protect her, but because he could not conceive of her being transferred from one totem-clan to another by any other means; and he was bound to resist the transfer because by acquiescing in it, he would have been guilty of disloyalty to his own totem, whose common life was injured by the loss of the girl. The Rājpūt killed his daughter because it was a disgrace to him to get her married at all outside his clan, and she could not be married within it. Afterwards the disgrace was removed by marrying her into a higher clan than his own and by lavish expenditure on the wedding; and the practice of female infanticide was continued to avoid the ruinous outlay which this primitive view of marriage had originally entailed. The Hindu custom of the Swayamvāra or armed contest for the hand of a Rājpūt princess, and the curious recognition by the Hindu law-books of simple rape as a legitimate form of marriage would be explained on the same ground.
73. The exogamous clan with male descent and the village.
It has been seen that the exogamous clan with female descent contained no married couples, and therefore it was necessary either that outside men should live with it, or that the clans should continually meet each other, or that two or more should live in the same village. With the change to male descent and the transfer of women to their husbands’ clans, this unstable characteristic was removed. Henceforth the clan was self-contained, having its married couples, both members of it, whose children would also be born in and belong to it. Since the clan was originally a body of persons who wandered about and hunted together, its character would be maintained by living together, and there is reason to suppose that the Indian exogamous clan with male descent took its special character because its members usually lived in one or more villages. This fact would account for the large number and multiplication of clans in India as compared with other places. As already seen one of the names of a clan is khera, which also means a village, and a large number of the clan names are derived from, or the same, as those of villages. Among the Khonds all the members of one clan live in the same locality about some central village. Thus the Tupa clan are collected about the village of Teplagārh in Patna State, the Loa clan round Sindhekala, the Borga clan round Bangomunda and so on. The Nunias of Mīrzāpur, Mr. Crooke remarks,[174] have a system of local subdivisions called dīh, each subdivision being named after the village which is supposed to be its home. The word dīh itself means a site or village. Those who have the same dīh do not intermarry. In the villages first settled by the Oraons, Father Dehon states,[175] the population is divided into three khunts or branches, the founders of the three branches being held to have been sons of the first settler. Members of each branch belong to the same clan or got. Each khunt or branch has a share of the village lands. The Mochis or cobblers have forty exogamous sections or gotras, mostly named after Rājpūt clans, and they also have an equal number of kheras or groups named after villages. The limits of the two groups seem to be identical; and members of each group have an ancestral village from which they are supposed to have come. Marriage is now regulated by the Rājpūt sept-names, but the probability is that the kheras were the original divisions, and the Rājpūt gotras have been more recently adopted in support of the claims already noticed. The Parjas have totemistic exogamous clans and marriage is prohibited in theory between members of the same clan. But as the number of clans is rather small, the rule is not adhered to, and members of the same clan are permitted to marry so long as they do not come from the same village. The Mīnas of Rājputāna are divided into twelve exogamous pāls or clans; the original meaning of the word pāl was a defile or valley suitable for defence, where the members of the clan would live together as in a Scotch glen.
Thus among the cultivating castes apparently each exogamous clan consisted originally of the residents of one village, though they afterwards spread to a number of villages. The servile labouring castes may also have arranged their clans by villages as the primitive forest-tribes did. How the menial castes formed exogamous clans is not altogether clear, as the numbers in one village would be only small. But it may be supposed that as they gradually increased, clans came into existence either in one large village or a number of adjacent ones, and sometimes traced their descent from a single family or from an ancestor with a nickname. As a rule, the artisan castes do not appear to have formed villages of their own in India, as they did in Russia, though this may occasionally have happened. When among the cultivating castes the lands were divided, separate joint families would be constituted; the head only of each family would be its representative in the clan, as he would hold the share of the village land assigned to the family, which was their joint means of subsistence, and the family would live in one household. Thus perhaps the Hindu joint family came into existence as a subdivision of the exogamous clan with male descent, on which its constitution was modelled. In Chhattīsgarh families still live together in large enclosures with separate huts for the married couples. A human ancestor gradually took the place of the totem as the giver of life to the clan. The members thought themselves bound together by the tie of his blood which flowed through all their veins, and frequently, as in Athens, Rome and Scotland, every member of the clan bore his name. In this capacity, as the source of the clan’s life, the original ancestor was perhaps venerated, and on the development of the family system within the clan, the ancestors of the family were held in a similar regard, and the feeling extended to the living ancestor or father, who is treated with the greatest deference in the early patriarchal family. Even now Hindu boys, though they may be better educated and more intelligent than their father, will not as a rule address him at meals unless he speaks to them first, on account of their traditional respect for him. The regard for the father may be strengthened by his position as the stay and support of the family, but could scarcely have arisen solely from this cause.
Dr. Westermarck’s view that the origin of exogamy lay in the feeling against the marriage of persons who lived together, receives support from the fact that a feeling of kinship still subsists between Hindus living in the same village, even though they may belong to different castes and clans. It is commonly found that all the households of a village believe themselves in a manner related. A man will address all the men of the generation above his own as uncle, though they may be of different castes, and the children of the generation below his own as niece and nephew. When a girl is married, all the old men of the village call her husband ‘son-in-law.’ This extends even to the impure castes who cannot be touched. Yet owing to the fact that they live together they are considered by fiction to be related. The Gowāri caste do not employ Brāhmans for their weddings, but the ceremony is performed by the bhānja or sister’s son either of the girl’s father or the boy’s father. If he is not available, any one whom either the girl’s father or the boy’s father addresses as bhānja or nephew in the village, even though he may be no relation and may belong to another caste, may perform the ceremony as a substitute. Among the Oraons and other tribes prenuptial intercourse between boys and girls of the same village is regularly allowed. It is not considered right, however, that these unions should end in marriage, for which partners should be sought from other villages.[176] In the Marātha country the villagers have a communal feast on the occasion of the Dasahra festival, the Kunbis or cultivators eating first and the members of the menial and labouring castes afterwards.
74. The large exogamous clans of the Brāhmans and Rājpūts. The Sapindas, the gens and the γένος.
The Brāhmans and Rājpūts, however, and one or two other military castes, as the Marāthas and Lodhis, do not have the small exogamous clans (which probably, as has been seen, represented the persons who lived together in a village), but large ones. Thus the Rājpūts were divided into thirty-six royal races, and theoretically all these should have been exogamous, marrying with each other. Each great clan was afterwards, as a rule, split into a number of branches, and it is probable that these became exogamous; while in cases where a community of Rājpūts have settled on the land and become ordinary cultivators, they have developed into an endogamous subcaste containing small clans of the ordinary type. It seems likely that the Rājpūt clan originally consisted of those who followed the chief to battle and fought together, and hence considered themselves to be related. This was, as a matter of fact, the case. Colonel Tod states that the great Rāthor clan, who said that they could muster a hundred thousand swords, spoke of themselves as the sons of one father. The members of the Scotch clans considered themselves related in the same manner, and they were probably of similar character to the Rājpūt clans.[177] I do not know, however, that there is any definite evidence as to the exogamy of the Scotch clans, which would have disappeared with their conversion to Christianity. The original Rājpūt clan may perhaps have lived round the chiefs castle or headquarters and been supported by the produce of his private fief or demesne. The regular Brāhman gotras are also few in number, possibly because they were limited by the paucity of eponymous saints of the first rank. The word gotra means a stall or cow-pen, and would thus originally signify those who lived together in one place like a herd of cattle. But the gotras are now exceedingly large, the same ones being found in most or all of the Brāhman subcastes, and it is believed that they do not regulate marriage as a rule. Sometimes ordinary surnames have taken the place of clan names, and persons with the same surname consider themselves related and do not marry. But usually Brāhmans prohibit marriage between Sapindas or persons related to each other within seven degrees from a common ancestor. The word Sapinda signifies those who partake together of the pindas or funeral cakes offered to the dead. The Sapindas are also a man’s heirs in the absence of closer relations; the group of the Sapindas is thus an exact replica within the gotra of the primitive totem clan which was exogamous and constituted by the tie of living and eating together. Similarly marriage at Rome was prohibited to seven degrees of relationship through males within the gens,[178] and this exogamous group of kinsmen appear to have been the body of agnatic kinsmen within the gens who are referred to by Sir H. Maine as a man’s ultimate heirs.[179] At Athens, when a contest arose upon a question of inheritance, the proper legal evidence to establish kinship was the proof that the alleged ancestor and the alleged heir observed a common worship and shared in the same repast in honour of the dead.[180] The distant heirs were thus a group within the Athenian γένος corresponding to the Sapindas and bound by the same tie of eating together. Professor Hearn states that there is no certain evidence that the Roman gens and Greek γένος were originally exogamous, but we find that of the Roman matrons whose names are known to us none married a husband with her own Gentile name; and further, that Plutarch, in writing of the Romans, says that in former days men did not marry women of their own blood or, as in the preceding sentence he calls them, kinswomen συγγενίδας, just as in his own day they did not marry their aunts or sisters; and he adds that it was long before they consented to wed with cousins.[181] Professor Hearn’s opinion was that the Hindu gotra, the Roman gens and the Greek γένος were originally the same institution, the exogamous clan with male descent, and all the evidence available, as well as the close correspondence in other respects of early Hindu institutions with those of the Greek and Latin cities would tend to support this view.
Hindu bathing party