and the primitive habits of mankind from which it has arisen. All writers on this subject agree in considering that the most remote savages had no idea of the marriage-bond, living in a condition of complete promiscuity. Bachofen considers the primitive condition of marriage one of pure Hetairism, no marriage-tie being recognized, composing a relation which Lubbock describes as communal marriage. In several existing tribes a relation not many degrees removed from this still exists. Many tribes have no idea of the marriage obligation. We may mention the Paraguay Indians, the Hottentots, certain of the Hill tribes of India, the Yaribas of Africa, the California and Rutchin Indians, the Arawaks of South America, etc. Schoolcraft says that the personal consent of the parties was all that was required in an Indian marriage. Among the Bedouins, though there is a distinct marriage ceremony for a maiden, the marriage of a widow is not considered of sufficient importance to need any ceremony. Cook tells us the Tahitians simply agreed to live together, yet that they were generally faithful. Affection for wives seems to be an unknown feeling in these lower races, they being considered usually as convenient drudges. The Australian beats and spears his wife for the merest trifles. Few women are free from frightful scars on head and limbs. If they are at all good-looking, their case is so much the worse." The Samoyede has no affection for his wife, and, according to Pallas, daignent à peine leur dire un parole de douceur.t Bachofen's theory is that the women revolted at length against the system of communal marriage and the slavish condition in which they were kept by their brutal husbands, and established a system with female supremacy, in which property and descent became in the female line, and women held the principal political power.‡ This is exceedingly doubtful. Savage and barbarous tribes • Eyre's Discoveries, vol. ii, p. 321. Pallas' Voyages, vol. iv, p. 94. everywhere overrule and enslave their women, and we must look elsewhere for the origin of the system of kinship through females. Sir John Lubbock's idea of the evolution of the marriage system appears to us far more probable. In a tribe possessed of communal marriage, no man could claim, as his peculiar wife, any woman of the community. By so doing, he would be trespassing on the rights of every other member, and would be sure to excite resistance. But, in case the fortune of war enabled a member of the tribe to capture a woman from a hostile tribe, he could safely claim her as his own-his to kill if he wished, to marry if he wished, a right which no other member of the tribe could dispute. Thus, capture alone would give a man the sole right to a woman. As the women of savage tribes are made the useful drudges of their husbands, the man possessed of a captive wife in his own right might well become envied by his companions, who would, in their turn, seek to emulate his achievement. By this means a number of foreign women would gradually be introduced into the tribe, and a system of separate marriage instituted, in connection with the communal system. One main cause leading to this result was the system of infanticide, so common among savage tribes. Sir John Lubbock thinks that among the lowest races the male children would be destroyed as often as the female, the chief object desired being to escape the trouble given by young children, and to lessen the number of unproductive members pressing upon their often slender stores of food.* But this state of affairs could only hold good in races so low in grade as to have no thought for the future, and no development of the reasoning faculties. It would need but a slight exercise of reason to perceive that the preservation of a female child would be calculated to weaken, that of a male child to strengthen, the tribe in the future. Origin of Civilization, p. 70. Among men often sharply pressed for the means of subsistence, and constantly hostile to their neighbors, it would come to be considered desirable to endure temporary inconvenience, for the sake of increasing the number of hunters and warriors in the tribe. But the female child decreased, without any hope of increasing, the food supplies of the tribe; weakened the mother when young; and became a temptation to the neighboring tribes when old. From these causes the custom of infanticide merged into the destruction of the female, the preservation of the male children, as now found in various tribes. From this naturally resulted a diminution of the number of women native to the tribe, and an increased inducement to the capture of wives from hostile tribes. Thus the system of separate marriage would gradually be established, and with it a growing prejudice in favor of marriage from without the tribe. From this paucity of women, increased in feeble tribes by the capturing incursions of their more powerful enemies, arose also the custom of polyandry, which is displayed in numerous forms in the existing savage tribes. It prevails in its most striking form throughout Thibet and in the Himalayan regions, being found elsewhere in Ceylon, among tribes of the north of Asia, and in parts of Africa and America. In former times it seems to have prevailed still more widely. Tacitus found traces of it among the Germans, and Strabo tells us that in certain cantons of Media a woman was looked upon with contempt who had less than five husbands.* Cæsar tells us that in his time polyandry prevailed among the Britons; † and other traces of its former existence remains. It occurs in two distinct forms, the ruder that in which the husbands are not brothers, the less rude that in which they are brothers. The latter form only prevails in Thibet. In several other places, as in Ceylon, the two forms coexist. Among the Todas of the Lib. ii, p. 794. + De Bello Gallico, lib. v, chap. 14. Neilgherry Hills, the girl becomes the wife of all the brothers, as they successively reach manhood. Her sisters, also, become successively their wives.* In the Tottiyars of India, the brothers, uncles, and nephews held their wives in common.† In Thibet the choice of the wife is the privilege of the elder brother. The number of husbands does not appear to be defined or restricted within fixed limits. The same system prevails throughout the Himalayan regions, and generally in Ceylon. Humboldt found this form among the South-American savages, and Cæsar among the ancient Britons.‡ In connection with the polyandry of Ceylon are two distinct forms of marriage-the Deega and the Beena. The first occurs when the wife goes to live in the house or village of her husband; the second when the husband or husbands come to live with her. Among the Kandyans, the right of inheritance of a woman and her children depends on whether she is a deega or a beena wife.§ Among the Kocch, though their marriage is now monogamous, a like system prevails, seeming to point to former polyandry. A yet stranger system formerly prevailed in Sumatra, consisting of three kinds of marriage; the Jugur, in which the man purchased the woman; the Ambel-anak, in which the woman purchased the man; and the Semando, in which they married on terms of equality. In the second form, the husband was usually of lower social rank than the wife, and became the virtual slave of her family; giving up all connection with his own kin, and being liable to be sent home wifeless and empty-handed at their will.|| Probably, the strangest form which marriage has taken, in all its vagaries, is that in vogue with the Hassaniyeh Arabs, Trans. Ethn, Soc., vol. vii, p. 240. Dubois' Description of the People of India, p. 3. He says: "Uxores habent deni duodenique inter se communes, et maxime fratres cum fratribus, et parentes cum liberis; sed si qui sunt ex his nati, eorum habentur liberi a quibus primum virgines quæque ductæ sunt." De Bello Gallico, v, xiv. Forbes's Ceylon, vol i, p. 333. Origin of Civilization, p. 53. and known as three-quarter marriage, the woman being legally married three days out of the four, but perfectly free on the fourth day.* All of the various cases of forms of communal marriage which we have here presented, and which might be very greatly increased, tend to one special result, which must have arisen, more particularly, before the ancient communism passed into the later forms of polyandry and polygamy. This is, that no man would be certain as to who was his father. He would be raised by the mother, as a sort of tribal property, would naturally assume her name, and would only consider parentage as existing in the female line. From this arose a wide-spread system of kinship through the mother only, which has continued to exist in many cases in which its cause has long since disappeared. There is good reason to believe that this system formerly existed among the Celts, and Max Müller has traced it to the ancient Brahmins. It also appears to have been in existence in the Semitic races, and is traceable in the Grecian systems. Its effect is visible in the habits of many modern tribes, and shows itself evidently in the wide-spread habit, of which we have already given several instances, of naming the child after the clan of its mother, and considering it as belonging especially to her family. Another cause of this lack of knowledge of the paternal relation might be habits similar to that attributed by Lafitau to the North-American Indians, who, he says, visited their wives, as it were, by stealth.t Herodotus says that the Lycians named the children from the mother. On the Etruscan tombs descent is traced in the female line. Many modern instances exist besides those we have already mentioned. We may instance the Nairs, and * Idem, p. 54. "Ils n'osent aller dans les cabanes particuliers ou habitent leurs épouses, que durent l'obscurité de la nuit. extraordinaire de s'y présenter le jour."-Vol. i, p. 576. ce serait un action |