Similarly, if an unmarried boy dies, the girl who is chosen to act as his widow should be his matchuni. In one case of which I have a record, the son of Tütners (58) died and Sotidz (66) was chosen to act as widow. None of the brothers of Puvizveli (65), the mother of the dead boy, had at that time a son, so the duty was undertaken by the daughter of Pangudr, of the same clan as Puvizveli, but belonging to a different family. In this case the matchuni was the daughter of a clan-brother because there was no nearer matchuni available.
Keinba, who acted as husband at the funeral of Sinerani (see p. [394]), was the matchuni of the dead girl in two ways, as the son of her mother’s brother and as the son of her father’s half-sister.
A matchuni may be either the child of a mother’s brother or of a father’s sister, and I have examined the genealogies to see if a man marries the daughter of his mother’s brother or of his father’s sister the more frequently, and find that there is no great difference, though the former marriage is somewhat the more frequent. There are among the Tartharol twenty cases in which a man has married the daughter of his mother’s brother, two of marriage with the daughter of a stepmother’s brother, and one with the daughter of a stepmother’s half-brother, making twenty-three cases in all. On the other hand, a man married the daughter of his father’s sister in fourteen cases, twice he married the daughter of his father’s [[515]]half-sister, and once the stepdaughter of his father’s sister, making seventeen cases in all.
Among the Teivaliol marriages with the daughter of a father’s sister are the more frequent, there being fifteen of these as compared with ten cases of marriage with the daughter of a mother’s brother. There is evidently no special preference for either kind of marriage.
Polyandry
The Todas have a completely organised and definite system of polyandry. When a woman marries a man, it is understood that she becomes the wife of his brothers at the same time. When a boy is married to a girl, not only are his brothers usually regarded as also the husbands of the girl, but any brother born later will similarly be regarded as sharing his older brothers’ rights.
In the vast majority of polyandrous marriages at the present time, the husbands are own brothers. A glance through the genealogies will show the great frequency of polyandry,[2] and that in nearly every case the husbands are own brothers. In a few cases in which the husbands are not own brothers, they are clan-brothers, i.e., they belong to the same clan and are of the same generation. Instances of such marriages are those of Toridz (65) with Kulpakh (52) and Kiladrvan (60), and of Sintharap (68) with Kuriolv (52) and Ònadj (57).
There is only one instance recorded in the genealogies in which a woman had at the same time husbands belonging to different clans, viz., the marriage of Kwelvtars (60) with Nidshtevan of Piedr (64) and Tütners of Kusharf (67), and in this case the men were half-brothers by the same mother, the fathers being of different clans. While I was on the hills, there was a project on foot that three unmarried youths belonging to three different clans should have a wife in common, but the project was frustrated and the marriage did not take place. [[516]]
It is possible that at one time the polyandry of the Todas was not so strictly ‘fraternal’ as it is at present, and it is perhaps in favour of this possibility that in the instance of polyandry given by Harkness[3] the husbands were obviously not own brothers. It must be remembered, however, that this case came to the notice of Captain Harkness because the polyandry had led to disputes, and, as we shall see shortly, it is in those cases of polyandry in which the husbands are not own brothers that disputes arise.