CHAPTER XIV

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MARRIAGE RITES.

{334}

Marriage, or sexual union of a more or less permanent character, from the intimate connection which it creates, has obvious analogies to the admission of a new member into a clan. In early stages of culture it was not, however, deemed to constitute admission into the clan; and to the present day, in English law, husband and wife, though united by the closest of all ties, are not reckoned among the next of kin to one another. Still it inaugurates a new relationship, not only as between the immediate parties, but also as between their respective kindred. As doing so, it is an occasion on which the consent and concurrence of the kindred are required, and it is appropriately solemnised by rites bearing a close resemblance to the blood-covenant. An examination of some of these rites will be useful in strengthening our apprehension of the sacramental ideas of savages, and will help to complete our view of the savage conception of life.

Among several of the aboriginal tribes of Bengal a curious ceremony is practised. It is known as _sindúr_ (or _sindra_) _dán_, and consists in the bridegroom’s marking his bride with red lead. This ceremony is the essential part {335} of the entire performance, which renders the union indissoluble, in the same way as the putting on of the ring in the marriage service of this country. The _sindúr_, or red lead, is generally smeared on the bride’s forehead and the parting of her hair, but sometimes on her neck. It is usually done either with the little finger or with a knife.[335.1] In either case this detail is significant, because it points to the origin of the custom. There can be no doubt that vermilion is a well-recognised symbol of blood. I have already mentioned the primitive usage of daubing the stone which was both god and altar with the blood of the sacrificed victim. Everywhere in India the idol, whether a finished simulacrum or a rude unchiselled stone, is dashed with vermilion. Sometimes the object of worship is a tree; and its stem in the same way is streaked with red lead. Sir William Hunter lays it down that the worship of the Great Mountain, the national god of the Santals, “is essentially a worship of blood.” Human sacrifices were common, until put down by the British. At the present day, “if the sacrificer cannot afford an animal, it is with a red flower or a red fruit that he approaches the divinity.”[335.2] Nor is red as a symbol of blood confined to India. We do not need to go further afield than the Roman Catholic Church, or even certain sections of the English Church, to find red worn in ecclesiastical ceremonies on the day of a martyr’s commemoration, expressly as an allusion to the outpouring of that martyr’s blood. The use of the colour in the wedding ceremony has reference also to blood. {336} Among the Dom, the Muchi, the Sánkhári and other Bengali tribes red is the bridal colour;[336.1] as it is likewise in China, at least where the bride is a maiden.[336.2] In Ukrainia at a certain stage of the proceedings a red flag is hoisted and red ribbons adorn the dresses of the bride and other members of the party. The meaning attached to them in this case does not admit of doubt;[336.3] and it may be legitimately inferred in the others.

But the proof of the significance of the _sindra dán_ rests not on the antecedent probability afforded by the use of red in rites of worship and marriage. Among the Bírhors the wedding ceremony is very simple. It consists entirely in drawing blood from the little fingers of the bride and bridegroom, and smearing it on one another.[336.4] The ritual, on the other hand, of the Káyasth, or writer caste of Behar, is as complex as that of the Bírhors is simple; and it bears at every stage the marks of antiquity. After the bridegroom arrives with his procession at the bride’s house, but before he is allowed to see her, her nails are solemnly cut. The opportunity is taken to draw from her little finger a drop of blood, which is received upon a piece of cotton soaked in red dye. Later on, after the bridegroom has formally rubbed her forehead with the _sindúr_, his neck is touched with this piece of cotton; and the bride’s neck is also touched with a similar piece brought by the bridegroom, but not containing any of his blood.[336.5] Here we seem to {337} have the ceremony in a double, if not a triple form. The dye on the cotton would represent blood. Nor is it unimportant that the bridegroom having previously plastered the _sindúr_, which stands for his blood, on the bride, does not need to bring his blood into contact with her. Among the Kewat, another caste of Behar, the ceremony is also duplicated. After the _sindúr dán_ a tiny scratch is made on the little finger of the bridegroom’s right hand and of the bride’s left. Blood is drawn from each and mingled with a dish of boiled rice and milk; and either party then eats the food containing the other’s blood.[337.1] Similarly in the Rájput ritual the family priest of the bride’s household fills the bridegroom’s hand with _sindúr_ and marks the bride’s forehead with it. This is done on the first day. The next morning they are brought together, and each of them is made to chew betel with which a drop of blood from the other’s little finger has been mixed. The bride is then conducted to the bridegroom’s house, and the marriage is consummated.[337.2] Among the Kharwár blood mixed with _sindúr_ is exchanged, although what is now the final and binding act of smearing the _sindúr_ is performed by the bridegroom alone.[337.3] The Kurmi bridegroom also touches the bride between the breasts with a drop of his own blood, drawn from his little finger and mixed with lac-dye, prior to the performance of the _sindra dán_.[337.4] Among the Rautiá, as among the Birhors, the _sindra dán_ is effected with one another’s blood taken from the little fingers.[337.5]

The meaning of the ceremony therefore cannot be mistaken. It is precisely parallel to the blood-covenant: it {338} constitutes a permanent bodily union between the parties. Oriental scholars regard it as in origin Dravidian. It is, however, now practised also by the Aryan Hindus, and its survival among many aboriginal tribes in a double form is ingeniously attributed by Mr. Risley to its readoption by them from the Hindus in the later form of smearing with vermilion, after the connection between the red lead and the blood had been lost sight of.[338.1] It is certain that many customs have been taken in recent times by the Dravidian populations from the Hindus; and the theory of readoption is confirmed by the fact that the red lead is usually smeared only by the bridegroom on the bride, as if it were an act of ownership, whereas the blood-smearing is done by both parties.

Beyond the limits of Bengal, blood is not often a prominent feature in marriage rites. Yet some significant instances may be cited. We cannot reckon that of the ancient Aztecs among these. When, after the marriage feast, the Aztec bridal pair retired to their chamber, it was only to fast and pray during four days, and to draw blood from various parts of their bodies. The object of this bleeding, however, is said to have been the propitiation of their cruel gods. In fact, the idea of propitiation seems to have entered into the rite, and to have ousted what probably was the original intention--that, namely, of sacramental communion with the divinities. Such communion with the divinities may, of course, have been indirect communion with one another; though there is not sufficient evidence to warrant our asserting that this was meant, and still less that direct communion of the same kind was effected. But we are not left without {339} examples elsewhere. The ceremonies of the Wukas, a tribe inhabiting the mountains of New Guinea, are exactly in point. Their weddings begin with an elopement, followed by pursuit and capture of both fugitives. The next step is to bargain for the price of the bride. When this is settled the marriage is performed by mutual cuts made by husband and wife in one another’s foreheads, so that the blood flows. The other members of both families then do likewise--a proceeding, we are told, “which binds together all the relations on both sides in the closest fraternal alliance.”[339.1] The writer I am quoting does not, indeed, mention any daubing or exchange of blood; but it is clear that this must be understood. On the island of Banguey, off the northernmost point of Borneo, is a tribe of Dusuns. Mr. Creagh, the governor of British North Borneo, visiting them a year or two ago, found that their marriage-rite consisted in transferring a drop of blood from a small incision made with a wooden knife in the calf of the man’s leg to a similar cut in the woman’s leg.[339.2] An Annamite story points to a ceremony in which the blood was drunk. A husband and wife swore that when one of them died the other would preserve the body until it came to life again, and would not marry a second time. The wife died, and the husband kept her corpse for seven months. At length the village elders remonstrated, fearing that the dead woman would become a demon and haunt {340} the village. Rather than bury his wife, the husband arranged that they should help him to make a raft, and he would put the body upon it and float with it whithersoever the winds and the waves would take him. The raft was borne to the eastern paradise; and there Buddha, touched by the man’s story, raised his wife from the dead, and asked her if she loved her husband truly and constantly. She vowed she did. Whereupon Buddha directed him to draw a cupful of blood from his finger, and give it to her to drink: which was done. It is sad to relate that after all this she proved unfaithful, and, when she died, was changed by Buddha into a mosquito, which is always sucking blood, but never can get enough to restore to her husband, in accordance with Buddha’s command, the entire cupful of blood she had taken from him.[340.1] A tale from Mota, one of the Banks’ Islands, relates that certain women, who desire to become the hero’s wives, make him give them some of his liver to eat.[340.2]

On these two stories it would be easy to lay a stress greater than they will bear. But if they have any meaning it is in the direction we are seeking. Coming to Europe, however, we find a tale where we are on firmer ground. A Norwegian youth was curious to see if it were really true that the Huldren, or wood-women (a kind of supernatural beings), occupied the mountain-dwelling in the autumn, after it was deserted by the family for the lowlands. The story runs that he crept under a large upturned tub, and there waited until it began to grow dark. Then he heard a noise of coming and going; and it was not long before the house was filled with Huldre-folk. They immediately {341} smelt Christian flesh, but could not find the lad, until at length a maiden discovered him beneath the tub, and pointed at him with her finger. He drew his knife and scratched her finger, so that the blood flowed. Scarcely had he done it, when the whole party surrounded him; and the girl’s mother, supported by the rest, demanded that he must now marry her daughter, _because he had marked her with blood_. There were several objections to marrying a Huldre-woman: among others, that she had a tail. But there was nothing else for it; and happily, when she had been instructed in the Word of God and baptized, she lost the undesirable appendage, and made the youth a faithful and loving spouse.[341.1] Now it may very well be that the reason for compelling this marriage is incomprehensible to the modern teller of the story, at least as a serious one. Yet the story can hardly have arisen and been propagated, with the incident in question as its catastrophe, unless a custom of marking with blood in connection with a wedding ceremony had been known to the original tellers. The barbarous nature of the custom is indicative of a much lower grade of civilisation than the Norwegian people have now, and long since, attained. And its ascription to the Huldre-folk suggests that it was practised by a non-Aryan race rather than by the Norsemen. It was certainly practised by the Finns; for a Finnish poem, entitled _The Sun’s Son_, describes its hero’s wedding ceremony in the following terms:--The bride’s father “leads and places them on the whale’s, the sea-king’s, hide. He scratches them both on their little fingers, mixes the blood together, lays hand in hand, unites breast to breast, knits the kisses together, bans the knots that jealousy has conjured, {342} separates the hands, and looses the knots of the espousal.”[342.1] The correspondence of this rite with that of the aborigines of Bengal extends to the fingers whence the blood is drawn; and it cannot be doubted that we have here in full the ceremony referred to in the Norwegian tale. It will be remembered that the Icelandic saga of the farmer who appropriated a fairy cow stops short in its description of the act with the drawing of blood. The story now before us has suffered a similar curtailment.[342.2]

In other parts of the world we find red paint of some kind used apparently as a substitute for blood. An Australian bridegroom in the neighbourhood where Sydney now stands used to spit on his bride, and then with his right thumb and forefinger he took red powder and streaked her all over the face and body down to the navel.[342.3] The Caribs are reported to have had no specific rites of marriage. But a full-grown man would sometimes betroth himself to an unborn child, conditionally on its proving a girl. When this was done the custom was for him to mark the mother’s body with a {343} red cross.[343.1] This is an act hardly susceptible of more than one interpretation. The red mark over the mother’s womb was no doubt originally made with the man’s blood, and, since the child itself could not be reached, was the expedient for effecting the union between him and the unborn infant.

The blood of a fowl often takes the place of that of the parties, in the East Indies. Among the aborigines of Southern India a fowl is sacrificed at the threshold of the bride’s room, and the foreheads of bride and bridegroom are marked with its blood; while among the Káháyáns of Borneo a cock and a hen are slaughtered, their blood received in a cup, and the happy pair are marked from head to foot with it.[343.2]

Out of many other ceremonies expressive of union I select for illustration that familiar to us in the Roman law under the name of _Confarreatio_. This solemn form of marriage took its name from the central rite, in which the man and woman seem to have eaten together of the round sacrificial cake, called the _panis farreus_. At all events, in the corresponding Greek ceremony they partook together of a sesamum-cake. In one shape or other this rite is found in many lands, perhaps over the greater portion of the globe. It has been too often described to need an extended notice here; but a few of its various forms may be mentioned, before we pass on to consider some of the analogies between the effects of marriage and of the blood-covenant.

We may as well begin with the Santals, one of the tribes of Bengal of which I have already spoken. Among them the {344} couple to be married fast on the wedding-day until after the _sindra dán_, when they sit down together and eat. Colonel Dalton, in describing the custom, reminds us that it is the more remarkable because the Hindu husband and wife never eat together, and tells us that this meal is the first time the maiden is supposed to have sat with a man at his food, and that it “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 her husband’s family.”[344.1] Among the Santals, in fact, marriage is admission into the kin. None but members of a kin have, we know, commensal rights; and admission frequently takes the form of a ceremonial common meal, which probably is a modification of the blood-covenant. Among the Khyoungtha, one of the Chittagong Hill-tribes, the bride and bridegroom are tied together with a new-spun cotton thread, and the _poongyee_, or priest, muttering prayers, takes a handful of cooked rice in each hand, and crossing and re-crossing his arms he gives seven alternate mouthfuls to each. Then he hooks the little finger of the bridegroom’s left hand into the little finger of the bride’s right, and with some further mutterings the ceremony is concluded. The Chukma, a neighbouring tribe, bind the couple together with a muslin scarf; and in that position they have to feed one another. Their hands are guided by the bridesmaid and best man to one another’s mouths amid general hilarity.[344.2] Father Bourien was present at several marriages of Mantras or wild tribes of the Malay peninsula. According to his report, “a plate containing small packages of rice wrapped up in banana-leaves having been presented, the husband offered one to his future wife, who showed herself eager to {345} accept it, and ate it; she then in her turn gave some to her husband, and they afterwards both assisted in distributing them to the other members of the assemblage.” In the feast which followed the remaining ceremonies husband and wife ate from one dish.[345.1] Eating from one dish, or one leaf--a more archaic form of dish--is in fact the usual rite all over south-eastern Asia and the East Indian islands; and although the Hindu husband and wife now never eat together, the ancient ritual prescribed that they should do so at the marriage ceremony.[345.2] Boiled rice appears to have been the food, as it is in Dardistan at the present day, where a dish of rice boiled in milk is brought in, and the boy and girl take a spoonful each.[345.3] Married couples of Kafa, in the north-eastern corner of Africa, are only allowed to eat out of the same dish and drink out of the same horn or glass. And the etiquette is more rigorous than that of Sairey Gamp and Betsy Prig; for they are expected to eat as well as to “drink fair.”[345.4] The custom of eating together as a marriage rite is recorded as in use by the aborigines of the greater part of America. The simple ceremony is thus related in a Pawnee legend: “He entered his tent. She made a very good bed for him. She was sitting with him. She married him. She had food with him. And the young men said as follows: ‘Why friends, the chief’s daughter has married the Orphan.’”[345.5] It is the same among the Polynesians. On the island of Mangaia, in the Hervey Group, the pair sit to eat together in the presence of their friends on a single piece of the finest native cloth, just as in the {346} Finnish lay they sat on the whale’s hide, and at Rome they sat, during one portion of the proceedings, on the fell of a sheep which had been slain in sacrifice.[346.1] Among the tribes of New Guinea, when the bride is brought to her husband’s dwelling a dish of food is presented to them, out of which they both eat. In some cases a roasted banana is eaten half by the bride, the other half by the bridegroom.[346.2] So, after getting into bed the South Slavonic bride from her bosom takes an apple which has been given to her by the bridegroom in the course of the day, eats one half of it and hands the other to him.[346.3] One of the Epirote ceremonies is the eating of a cake made of flour, butter and cheese. It is cut into slices; and the husband taking one dips it in honey and eats, afterwards giving to his wife. This is repeated thrice. Then, after eating some fruit, a round loaf with a hole in the middle is brought to them. Putting their fingers into the hole, they pull against one another until the loaf is torn in two; after which they and their nearest relatives eat it.[346.4] Bread and honey are eaten together in alternate bites by a Greek, or an Albanian, pair.[346.5] In the Obererzgebirge before setting out for church the bride and bridegroom eat from the same dish; and in some districts of Thuringia they partake of soup from one plate.[346.6] In Provence, as also in Esthonia, this is done after the return; and in Esthonia a piece of bread and butter, or a little bread with salt, is also eaten.[346.7] At the same point {347} in the province of Berry, France, and in the Jura, a piece of bread and wine are offered to the young couple. The husband takes the first bite out of the bread; and his example is followed by his wife.[347.1] The Wallon practice is for the bride to eat half a tart and give her husband the rest: this ensures his affection.[347.2] In the old Parisian marriage rite the betrothal took place at the church-door. The priest then led the newly wedded into the church, and said mass. After mass he blessed a loaf and wine. The loaf was bitten and a little of the wine drunk by each of the spouses, one after the other; and the officiating priest then taking them by the hands led them home.[347.3] In the celebration of a Yezidi wedding a loaf of consecrated bread is handed to the husband; and he and his wife eat it between them. The Nestorians, their near neighbours, require the pair to take the communion.[347.4] Nor is this requirement by any means confined to the Nestorians among Christian sects; and even until the last revision of the Book of Common Prayer the Church of England herself commanded, in the final rubric of the solemnisation of matrimony, that “the new married persons _the same day of their marriage_ must receive the holy communion”:--a practice which continues to be recommended and is occasionally followed.

Many of the foregoing ceremonies include a drink out of the same vessel. Either alone or accompanied by eating, it is usual from Italy to Norway, from Brittany to {348} Russia; and traces of it have been found even in Scotland.[348.1] According to the old Lombardic laws no further ceremony was necessary to constitute a valid marriage than a kiss and a drink together. The Church long struggled against this rule, but was in the end obliged to sanction it, subject to the condition that a priest should be present to impart the benediction and a “spousal sermon.” It has been adopted into the rites of the Greek Church in Russia, where the priest in the course of the ceremony solemnly blesses a small silver ladle, called the Common Cup, filled with wine and water, and holds it to the lips of the pair, who sip it alternately each three times. In the West of England there is evidence which a careful examination of ecclesiastical records would probably extend to other parts of the country that at the time of the Reformation formal betrothals were usually performed by any respectable friend of both parties. He joined their hands; they gave their faith and troth in his presence; and after the betrothal gift, or token, had been handed over, or else promised, or acknowledged as already received, they kissed and drank together. This seems to have been considered as a binding union, though the banns and religious ceremony generally followed shortly after. To this day in Hesse the custom is preserved in the _Weinkauf_ (literally, wine-purchase), or assembly of relatives on both sides. At this assembly the conditions are fixed on which the bride is to be discharged from her native kin to enter the kindred and protection of the bridegroom. When these are arranged {349} she drinks to her bridegroom in token of her consent, and both then drink out of the same glass. From that moment they are regarded as practically husband and wife; and it only remains to obtain ecclesiastical sanction for the union. This usually follows shortly after; and between the _Weinkauf_ and the wedding it was formerly not thought proper for a virtuous maiden to go out of doors.[349.1]

Going eastward we may note a few out of many other instances. The loving cup is part of the Jewish and Armenian ceremonies.[349.2] Among the Mohammedan Yusufzais of Afghanistan it is the bride’s father and the bridegroom that drink out of the same vessel;[349.3] obviously a change of the earlier practice to suit the faith of Islam. In Singbhúm, among the Hos and other tribes, the young couple are given beer, which they proceed to mix, the bridegroom pouring some of his into the bride’s cup, and she in turn pouring from her cup into his. They then drink, “and thus become of the same _kili_, or clan.”[349.4] Rice is sprinkled over the heads of a Lepcha pair; they eat {350} together and drink _maruá_ beer out of the same cup.[350.1] Among the Tipperahs of the Chittagong Hill districts, “the girl’s mother pours out a glass of liquor and gives it to her daughter, who goes and sits on her lover’s knee, drinks half and gives him the other half; they afterwards crook together their little fingers.”[350.2] The Annamite youth and maiden being placed on either side of the ancestors’ altar, they help one another to drink, exchanging cups and then putting them back one on the other. This is said to be the relic of a very ancient rite which consisted in fitting together the two halves of a calabash, used no doubt for the drink.[350.3] It was the ancient custom in China for bride and bridegroom to eat together of the same sacrificed animal, and to drink out of cups made of the two halves of the same melon, the bride drinking from the bridegroom’s half and he from hers: thus showing, as we are expressly told in the _Lî_ K_î_, “that they now formed one body, were of equal rank and pledged to mutual affection.”[350.4] At present, about Foochow, and possibly in other parts of the empire, the ceremonial drink is sometimes taken by bride and bridegroom out of the same goblet; where two are used they are often tied together with red cord.[350.5] In Korea the lady hands a gourd-bottle of rice-wine, adorned with red and blue thread to her spouse, and they drink together out of one little cup several times filled by the bridesmaids who stand beside them.[350.6] And in general we {351} may say that, as the eating from one vessel, so the drinking together, is found all over the East Indies, on the islands as well as on the continent, and as far to the south as Fiji, save where in the East Indian islands it is replaced by the parallel custom of chewing a quid of betel together.[351.1] Whatever shapes the practice takes, they all resolve themselves into the thought presented on another side to us by the tale, said to be of Oriental origin, that on the first day Allah took an apple and cut it in two, giving one half to Adam and the other to Eve, and directing each at the same time to seek for the missing half. That is why one half of humanity has ever since been seeking its corresponding half.[351.2]

But here we must go a step further. The remains of the cake, which, in the Roman ceremony of _Confarreatio_, seems to have been broken and eaten by the bride and bridegroom, were distributed among the guests; just as our own bride-cake, after being cut by the bride and bridegroom, is shared with the entire wedding party. The ritual distribution of cakes or drink is common in Europe from one end to the other. The Esthonian bride gives to each guest of the bread and salt whereof she and her husband have just partaken.[351.3] At a marriage in the Ukrainian provinces a cake called the _korovaï_ is made with a number of formalities. Immediately before the bride is conducted to her husband’s house this cake is solemnly cut. The moon which crowns it is divided between the happy pair; and the rest is distributed among the relatives in order of age, great care being manifested that every one {352} shall have his due portion. The cutting and distribution are performed with ceremonies showing the importance attached to the act; and we learn from an ancient song that it was formerly the custom to light a candle and search diligently every corner to make sure that no one had been overlooked.[352.1] A bridal pair of La Creuse, in the south of France, on arriving at their home from the church, find at the door a soup-tureen filled with a certain broth or porridge, of which they are required to taste with the same spoon. The soup-tureen is then passed round to all the guests; after which a glass of wine is taken in the same manner, and the soup-tureen and wine-glass are broken to ward off witchcraft.[352.2] In Caltanisetta, Italy, the ritual food consists of toasted almonds and honey. An eye-witness at a wedding some five-and-thirty years ago describes a boy, with a towel hung round his neck like a sacerdotal stole, who mounted the table, took a silver spoon, and after blessing the basin in dumb show, tasted the sweet compound within it. The table was then removed; and the boy carried round the basin, while the bride’s mother put a spoonful of the almonds and honey in the mouth of every one present, beginning with the happy couple, and wiped their lips with the towel.[352.3] As with other rites already referred to, this is one regarded not only among comparatively civilised peoples. Backward races, as convivial in their instincts as the most enlightened, join indeed in feasting on these occasions; but they also join in ceremonially partaking with the newly-made spouses of a special article of food or drink. Such is the Mantra rite already mentioned; {353} such also is the striking ceremony of the Saráogi Baniyás, referred to in a previous chapter, at which a Brahman is slain in effigy and the contents of the figure shared among the kinsmen present. It will be enough to recall two others. Among the Garos of North-eastern India the married couple complete their wedding festivities by each drinking a bowl of rice-beer and presenting a cup to every guest.[353.1] On the Kingsmill Islands bride and bridegroom are led to their hut by an old woman who spreads for them a new mat of cocoa-palm leaves, and makes around them a circle of cooked pandanus-fruits. Of these she takes two and hands them to the pair, having first called on the goddess Eibong to take them under her protection, and bless their union richly with children. When these two fruits have been eaten the others are divided among the relatives and friends, who are waiting outside to receive them.[353.2]

The meaning of this extension of the rite must be interpreted by its meaning when limited to husband and wife, and both by reference to the rites of kinship. It is not merely assent to the marriage on the part of the guests. It is indeed that; but assent, though, as we shall see, very necessary, may be obtained and given in other ways. To understand its full force we must turn back to some of the examples I have cited. By sitting and eating with her husband, the Santal maiden “ceases to belong to her father’s tribe, and becomes a member of her husband’s family.” The Ho and the Múnda bride and bridegroom, drinking the blended liquor from their two cups, become of one _kili_. But the woman who enters her husband’s _kili_, or clan, {354} becomes related to all its members. Becoming of one flesh with him, she becomes of one flesh with all of his kindred. This is implicitly recognised among the Amils of Sindh, where the bridegroom and all his female friends are marked with vermilion by the officiating Brahman.[354.1] Among the Bodos and the Kochh of Bengal it would seem to be the rule for two women to accompany the bridegroom and his friends in their procession to the bride’s house. These women it is who, penetrating to her apartment, anoint her head with oil mixed with red lead, prior to her being presented to her husband.[354.2] Conversely, the Santal bridegroom in some districts, after reaching the bride’s village, is stripped by her clanswomen, and by them bathed and dressed in new garments properly stained with vermilion.[354.3] When, among the Mál Paháriás, the bridegroom has daubed the bride with _sindur_, the compliment is returned not by her but by her maidens, who adorn his forehead with seven red spots.[354.4] The analogy to the blood-covenant is in these cases carried to the point of identity. The same may be conjectured with some probability to be the effect of marriage on the island of Bonabe in Micronesia, where the wife is tattooed with the marks representing her husband’s ancestors.[354.5] Ellis describes the female relatives of a bride and bridegroom in the Society Islands as cutting their faces, receiving the flowing blood on a piece of native cloth, {355} and depositing the cloth, “sprinkled with the mingled blood of the mothers of the married pair, at the feet of the bride.” And he tells us in so many words that the rite removed any inequality of rank that might have existed between them, and that “the two families to which they respectively belonged were ever afterwards regarded as one.”[355.1]

But even when marriage does not amount to reception into the kin, it constitutes a quasi-relationship with the entire kindred; and the ceremony initiates, or at least expresses, this. A crude instance is afforded by the Wukas of New Guinea, already cited. A hideous rite susceptible of no other interpretation is performed by the Kingsmill Islanders immediately upon the consummation of a marriage; and a similar one is mentioned by a Chinese traveller at the end of the thirteenth century as taking place in Cambodia.[355.2] On Teressa, one of the Nicobar Islands, a pig is killed and the faces of the guests are smeared with its blood.[355.3] Here the pig’s blood is doubtless a substitute for that of the bridal pair. In the south of India the Wadders use for the wedding feast the rice which has been poured over the new husband and wife: a practice to which a similar intention must probably be ascribed.[355.4]

For the effect of marriage is to give the kindred of the husband or the wife new rights over the person of the spouse. There are in Europe some very general usages pointing to the rights which must once have been exercised by the husband’s kin over the wife. Among the Esthonians, {356} when the bride has at length been brought into the bridegroom’s house a repast is served, and the day is concluded with a dance, wherein all the guests in turn dance with her, for which she is entitled to a piece of money from each of them.[356.1] The custom of the Polish inhabitants of the Prussian province of Posen is the same.[356.2] Du Chaillu witnessed a similar wedding dance in Dalecarlia, Sweden. It appears to have taken place in the bridegroom’s father’s house.[356.3] In the Tirol, and among the Masurs, the bride has to dance the Bride-dance with every one of the guests. In Transylvania she begins with the _beistand_, or best man; and after every dance she must drink a glass of wine with her partner, who throws a piece of money into a plate ready for the purpose.[356.4] Among the Wends, every male guest is expected to dance with the bride, formal permission being first obtained from the _brautführer_. The bridegroom, and this is an important point, is sent away the while; and the dances are continued until midnight, when he is brought back. They take place, unlike the Dalecarlian ceremony, in the bride’s house.[356.5] In the Lowlands of Scotland, after the wedding ceremony, which was usually performed at the bride’s residence, she was expected to go round the room with her bridesmaids and kiss every male in the company. “A dish was then handed round, in which every one placed a sum of money, to help the young couple to commence housekeeping.”[356.6] Dr. Gregor describes a similar dance as {357} performed in the north-east of Scotland. It was opened by the bride and her best maid dancing with the two _sens_, officials sent by the bridegroom on the wedding morning formally to demand the bride. The dance began and ended with a kiss, and when it was over the bride fixed a favour on her partner’s right arm, and the bridesmaid one on her partner’s left arm. “The two _sens_ then paid the fiddler. Frequently the bride and her maid asked if there were other young men who wished to win favours. Two jumped to the floor, danced with the bride and her maid, and earned the honour on the left arm. Dancing was carried on far into the morning with the utmost vigour, each dance being begun and ended by the partners saluting each other.”[357.1] At Bourges it was the custom for brides on coming out of church to embrace indifferently all whom they met in the street; and still in country places of the province of the Marche the practice is said to be followed, with the variation that it is done before the marriage service. Generally in the province of Berri the guests after the feast approach in turn and deposit an offering (formerly gifts in kind proper for setting up housekeeping), receiving in return a kiss from the bride.[357.2] In the valley of Pragelato, near Pinerolo, the festivities are held in a large outhouse, the rooms in the house being usually too small. The bride is the first to enter. She stands on the threshold, holding a platter covered with a small cloth. Every one entering, without distinction of age, embraces {358} and kisses her, and drops a piece of money clinking under the cloth.[358.1] Similar customs obtain in other parts of Italy, sometimes repeated more than once during the festivities.[358.2] The bride-dance is also practised in Provence. And at the village of Fours, near Barcelonnette, on leaving the church the bride is conducted to a rock (possibly, an erratic boulder) called the Bride-stone, whereon she is made to sit with one foot in a certain hollow of the rock. While in this position each of the relatives and guests comes in turn, kisses her and gives her a ring.[358.3]

We must look back to savage customs to discover the origin and meaning of the European rites I have here set forth; and I think we must connect them with those of the Nasamonians mentioned by Herodotus, the Auziles, an Ethiopian tribe mentioned by Pomponius Mela, and the Balearic Islanders, among all of whom in ancient times the bride was, on the wedding-night, considered as common property.[358.4] The information we have about these peoples is meagre and fragmentary. About the Kurnai of Australia, however, we have full and precise statements, extending, far beyond the act of marriage, to all their connubial relations. Their only recognised form of marriage was by a species of elopement or capture, performed with the aid of the other unmarried youths of the tribe. With all these youths the unfortunate bride had to observe the Nasamonian rite. She then went off with her new husband. This process {359} had to be repeated once, if not twice again, before her relatives could be got to sanction the match; and meantime both bride and bridegroom incurred their wrath, which was much more than a mere form. But when once the elopement had been condoned, if the bride had an unmarried sister, it is said that she also would be handed over to the husband; and in any case on his wife’s death he had a right to her. Moreover, on his death, his widow, if he left but one, went by right to his brother; if more than one, they went to his brothers in order of seniority. If the wife ran away from her husband with another man, “all the neighbouring men might turn out and seek for her, and in the event of her being discovered, she became common property to them until released by her husband or her male relatives.” Further, the husband was obliged to supply his wife’s parents with the best of the food he killed; but on the other hand he was free to hunt over their country as well as the country of his own ancestors.[359.1]

In considering these particulars we must remember that the constitution of society among the Australian aborigines is in process of transformation. They had a system of group-marriage, whereby every tribe consisted of certain classes, all exogamous. Their table of prohibited affinities is highly complex, and need not be here discussed. It is enough to say that the members of each class were looked upon among themselves as brothers and sisters; but {360} towards the class into which they could marry they were husbands and wives; and they were entitled to act accordingly whenever they met any members of the latter class. No sexual relations were permitted with any other class. The system has been in a state of decadence--greater in some tribes, like the Kurnai, less in others--from a time probably anterior to the English settlement. A custom had arisen, it matters not from what causes, of appropriating one woman, or more, to one man. This custom, if not interfered with, would have issued in the evolution of a different idea of kinship, and ultimately of the true family. In group-marriage the wives were not regarded as akin to the husbands. Marriage was the status into which husbands and wives alike were born. The union required no ceremonies to its consummation, because no relationships were changed by it. But with the rise of monopoly by individuals of one another, the unappropriated women would be kept at a greater distance from the men, and the act of appropriation would gradually assume a ceremonial form. The kindred would be called upon to take part in it, both as assistants and as witnesses. From Mr. Howitt’s account it seems likely that the evolution would be in the direction of patriarchal clans. If so, the woman would be introduced by marriage into a special relation with her husband’s kin. The exogamous classes would ultimately be effaced; a new idea of the clan would supersede them; and the act of marriage would at length operate as admission into the clan.

Now it is clear from Mr. Howitt’s statement that, by the marriage, rights were acquired on the part of the husband’s kin in the wife and on the part of the wife’s kin in the husband. The decaying system would doubtless at that {361} stage operate to permit only members of the husband’s class to take part in the capture of a bride, or of a runaway wife; and they would as yet be all reckoned of his kin. The rights they then exercised would afterwards be held in abeyance; but, subject to the husband’s monopoly, those rights would survive, to reappear upon his death, if not upon any other occasion in his lifetime. The gradual circumscription of the kindred, by the recognition of closer ties than those of the exogamous class, is indicated by the duty laid upon the husband to supply his wife’s parents with food, as well as by the limitation to his brothers of the right to his widows. The peoples referred to by the classical writers I have cited were probably in the stage in which group-marriage had died, or was dying, out in favour of individual unions. The bride was hardly yet conceived of as taken into the kindred. The Nasamonian habits in particular, as recorded by Herodotus, appear little, if at all, advanced beyond those of the Kurnai. Both among the Nasamonians, however, and the Auziles it was the practice for each of the guests who had taken part in the rite to reward the bride with a gift, just as among European peoples the bride is rewarded for her dance or her kiss: an indication that her compliance was becoming something more than the guests could demand,--something they had, therefore, to purchase. This does not appear to have been the case with the Balearic Islanders: at least Diodorus Siculus, who mentions the custom, says nothing about any gift. A similar usage is reported by Garcilasso of some of the aborigines of Peru at the time of the Spanish conquest. Here we are expressly told what we may probably assume to have been the case among the Nasamonians, namely, that it was only the relatives and friends of the bridegroom {362} who shared in the rite; and from the historian’s expressions we may infer that no payment was made.[362.1] Nor is it found in an account of the marriages of the Wa-taveta given by a lady who has recently travelled in Eastern Africa. In other respects the Wa-taveta would appear to be somewhat higher in the scale of civilisation than the Kurnai or the Baleares. The bridegroom’s friends are limited to four in number. The capture of the bride, in which they aid him, is a mere ceremony followed by a five days’ feast, during which they participate in the Nasamonian rite.[362.2] More remarkable than any of these, however, as attesting the rights of the bridegroom’s kindred, is a custom of the Eesa and Gadabursi, two of the western Somali tribes. When the bride enters the hut which is to be her new home, she is followed by the bridegroom and some of his nearest male relatives. He takes a leathern horsewhip and with it inflicts three severe blows upon his wife; and his example is followed by his {363} companions, “who by this act obtain ever afterwards peculiar rights and power over the bride, which her husband dare not dispute.”[363.1]

I might rest on these examples the case for the real meaning of the bride-dance and the kiss which the European bride bestows upon the guests (or rather, of course, on the masculine guests) at the wedding. But it is not necessary to do so; for we find even in Europe a practice of which the significance is unmistakable. The most important official at a marriage among the Southern Slavs is the _djever_ (in German, _brautführer_) bride-leader, or bride-carrier. One only appears to be necessary, but commonly the bridegroom appoints two. They are chosen from his own brothers, or adoptive brothers, or his most intimate and trusty friends; or the chief _brautführer_ may be his godfather. Adoptive brotherhood and godfatherhood are very sacred ties, at least as close as natural relationships; and the duties they impose are rarely violated. It is for this reason that such persons are selected for the office of _djever_. For the _djever_ is allowed to relieve the tedious festivities of the wedding (and Slav weddings are tedious indeed) as often as he likes by kissing the bride and taking other liberties with her. And in the Bocca and Herzegovina, when the night at length arrives, he sleeps beside her “as a brother with a sister”; or if there be two, they both occupy the room with her. The latter custom is now falling into disuse; and the _djever’s_ place is taken by the bridegroom’s mother and sister, the happy man himself not being permitted to obtain possession of his bride for two, or sometimes three, nights.[363.2] It needs {364} no words of mine to drive home the conclusion that here we have a survival of a rite identical with that of the Kurnai. The _djeveri_ are the representatives of the entire band of the bridegroom’s brethren and assistants, whose rights are concentrated in their hands. The connection between this usage and those in other parts of Europe comes to the surface in the Wendish requirement that permission for the bride-dance be obtained from the _brautführer_.

If this conclusion be correct, the ancestors of the European nations must have passed through a stage of society wherein group-marriage was the rule, the groups on either side probably consisting of husbands reckoned, according to the standard of savage kinship, as brothers, and wives reckoned as sisters, among themselves. The limited promiscuity thus established would be entirely in harmony with--nay, it would be a consequence of--the conception of gentile solidarity which I have endeavoured to summarise in a previous chapter. This is what the late Mr. Lewis Morgan called the Punaluan Family. Starting from the kindred-names and customs of Hawaii, he traced it over a large part of the Old and New Worlds, and successfully vindicated its existence against the criticisms of Mr. MacLennan. The most striking piece of evidence in favour of Mr. Morgan’s theory that has come to light since he wrote is perhaps to be found among the inhabitants of the island of Tanna in the New Hebrides. Their rules of marriage and terms of relationship may be studied in detail in a paper by the Rev. William Gray, read at a meeting of the Australasian Association, held at Hobart in January 1892, and published in the report of the meeting. It will suffice here to say that in the laws and language of the {365} Tannese no distinctions are drawn between a wife and a wife’s sister, between a husband and a husband’s brother; all a man’s brother’s children are his own; all his wife’s children and his wife’s sisters’ children are alike his; the relation of uncle or aunt and nephew or niece does not exist, for the person whom we should call uncle or aunt is recognised by a Tannese as his father or mother, or else the term is indistinguishable from those for wife’s or husband’s father or mother; in like manner the terms for nephew and niece are the same as those for son-in-law and daughter-in-law; and the children of a man’s father’s brothers, or of his mother’s sisters, are regarded as his brothers and sisters equally with the children of his own parents.[365.1] For such a condition of society any explanation is impossible, unless it be that an entire band of brethren is--or was down to a recent period, yesterday if not to-day--actually or potentially married to an entire band of sisters. The Punaluan Family is thus Australian group-marriage surviving into a somewhat higher stage of culture, but surviving, of course, in a more restricted form. The sense of solidarity has become stronger, but more circumscribed.

When in the progress of culture group-marriage began to give way to individual appropriation, and inroads were made upon the totemistic clan, the clan-brethren would not immediately cease to be specially interested in the marriage of one of their number. Their rights would not be extinguished all at once; they would only become dormant. They might never be exercised during the continuance of the marriage. Probably they never would be, at all events without the individual husband’s assent. {366} But, whether exercised or not, there the rights would be, ready to arise upon a favourable opportunity. Rights thus in abeyance would be likely to be exercised at the entrance upon marriage, prior to the husband’s sole ownership, if the assistance of the clan-brethren were required to obtain the bride. They might be exercised also during the marriage, if the wife ran away and the clan-brethren helped to recover her. The opportunity for asserting the rights would come with the call for assistance.

In the most archaic period, such as may be represented for us by the Kurnai, the assistance would take the form of physical force. But after a while purchase began to supersede violence as the method of bride-winning, and capture dwindled to a form. The help of the clansmen would be equally required in purchase as in capture. I select a few examples from different parts of the world. Among the Nestorians, relatives and friends are called on to contribute to the dowry and wedding-dress given by the bridegroom to the bride, and the presents he has to make to her parents, as well as the expenses of the feast.[366.1] The tribes of the Caucasus are divided into exogamous clans; and when a member of a clan marries, all the brethren contribute to the ransom paid for the bride. Every member of a Kurdish commune pays a share of the purchase-money. A similar collection is made among the comrades of the Lithuanian bridegroom. In Ukrainia, before the bridegroom and his suite set out for the bride’s dwelling, each of the suite is called upon by the best man to make a contribution towards the sum which is afterwards paid to the brothers of the bride.[366.2] Among the Khonds of Orissa a {367} large price in cattle and money is paid for a wife; and this is chiefly subscribed, as among others of the aboriginal tribes, by the bridegroom’s “near relatives and his branch of the tribe.”[367.1] The inhabitants of Sumatra buy their wives; but the debt is often allowed to remain for many years undischarged. “Sometimes it remains unadjusted,” says Marsden, “to the second and third generation, and it is not uncommon to see a man suing for the _jujur_ (or price) of the sister of his grandfather.” And he adds that “in Passummah, if the race of a man is extinct, the _dusun_ or village to which the family belonged must make it good to the creditor.”[367.2] This implies that the _dusun_ was originally collectively liable for the payment. The Melanesian custom seems to be for the youth’s kindred and friends to contribute to the sum he is called on to pay.[367.3] Among the Basutos a marriage is an affair of much concern to the relatives of the young people on both sides. The bridegroom’s relatives furnish the cattle he gives for her, and go in a body to make the bargain and present the beasts.[367.4] On the western continent the Araucanian aspirant for matrimony takes counsel with his friends and relatives, who inform him what contributions they are prepared to make towards the amount of the purchase-money. Among the Peguenches the relatives negotiate the marriage and collect the articles of value to be paid for the damsel.[367.5] In Guatemala the price was furnished by the bridegroom’s clansmen.[367.6] In what is now Los Angeles County, California, {368} the male relatives “proceeded in a body to the girl’s dwelling, and distributed small sums in shell-money among her female kinsfolk, who were collected there for the occasion,” and who afterwards returned the visit and gave baskets of meal to the bridegroom’s kindred.[368.1]

From these examples, and many more might be cited, it is obvious that the purchase was made by the clan, just as the capture was probably made by the clan. And we might well expect to find that the clan, and not merely the individual, acquired by the act rights over the bride, such as would be expressed in the rude Nasamonian custom, and in the Bride-dance and other survivals of modern Europe. I have only space for a few examples indicating community of wives or of husbands. But the subject has been so exhaustively treated by anthropologists of distinction that little more than a passing notice is needful. An observation or two must, however, be made first of all, in reference alike to the examples that follow, and to those I have cited in previous pages. When we read, whether in classical writers or in the works of modern travellers, of community of women, we must always beware of giving the words the meaning of absolute promiscuity. Very strong evidence, and not merely that of writers imperfectly acquainted with the language and customs of a savage people, is called for to establish absolute promiscuity. But limited promiscuity among the members of a clan is a different matter. As a savage practice it is beyond doubt; and I have already pointed out that it owes its origin to the solidarity of the kindred in the lower culture. We must fully grasp the meaning of this solidarity if we would avoid the twofold chance of error in descriptions of savage life {369} and the inferences to be drawn from them. The chance of error too, it may be parenthetically observed, is not confined to marriage ceremonies, nor to the abiding customs of the conjugal relation; but we must guard against it on many other occasions, as for instance those described in the last chapter. Travellers having but a superficial knowledge of the peoples they describe--especially in the days before savage kinship had become the subject of scientific investigation--are not careful to define, because they do not understand, the relationship of members of a tribe to one another. Their vague expressions “relatives” and “friends” are therefore subject to interpretation by what has been ascertained of clan-organisation, if we would avoid one source of error. But there is a further consideration which ought not to be overlooked. The clan system has rarely been found complete and unimpaired. The evolution of civilisation is always modifying it, sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another. Consequently ceremonies limited in theory to the clan-brethren display a constant tendency on the one side to limitation to the smaller circle of the family, as the family is evolved from the clan; and on the other side to extension among the intimate friends and relatives of the person chiefly concerned, as blood-relationship begins to be recognised outside the clan, and as the ties of friendship are knit between man and man regardless of kinship. Herein lies our other difficulty. The criticism that the privileges we are discussing are not recorded as belonging to the members of one group only, though it applies with greater force to the instances mentioned by classical writers, who understood the gentile system, than to modern writers who do not understand it, is by no means enough to dispose of the evidence where {370} such record is wanting. Unfortunately we cannot cross-examine the writers. We can, however, and we must, read their accounts by the light of more accurate investigations. We shall then be inclined to admit that most of the cases alleged are not referable to phallic worship, nor to an outbreak of indiscriminate licence occurring in the midst of long-established monogamy, to which they are sometimes ascribed.[370.1]

Turning now to the privileges themselves, it must be remembered that we have not to deal with cases in which polyandry is still open and avowed, but to customs which indicate its former existence. Group-marriage, like that of the Australians, the more limited polyandry of the Tibetan peoples, and the ruder polyandry like that of the Nairs, whether it be the remains of a more savage and unorganised society before the rise of the clan, or a sporadic degradation of clan-marriage, may be studied in the writings of MacLennan, Morgan, and Robertson Smith. Group-marriage and Tibetan polyandry, indeed, we must assume as the precursors of the state of barbarous culture where the marriage is primarily between individuals, but in which the kin still have certain rights over the spouse. And in dealing with the rights of the husband’s kin we are not required to take into account whether his marriage be polygynous or no.

Bearing these things in mind then, let us consider a few examples. Among the Santals, it is said, “a man’s younger brother may share his wife with impunity; only they must {371} not go about it very openly.”[371.1] In dealing with women taken in adultery the main point considered by the Dhobás of Orissa is whether the paramour be a member of the caste.[371.2] For, while a slight penance is deemed sufficient penalty for such a lapse of virtue, and the husband by no means invariably insists on divorce, the offence committed with an outsider is incapable of atonement, and the offending woman is turned out of the caste. Here, although the limits of the _gotra_ are not coextensive with those of the more venial sin, it is to be observed that the Dhobás all claim descent from a common ancestor, and they eat and drink together indiscriminately. It is not considered any offence among the Bhuiyars of South Mirzapur for a married woman to grant her favours to her husband’s brothers. More distant relatives must give a tribal feast; or, if the kindred be very remote, the paramour must repay to the husband the cost of her marriage.[371.3] Similarly, in Southern India a Cunian woman who has been guilty of an intrigue with a lover of her own tribe is not disgraced thereby; and if her husband desire to get rid of her she will have no difficulty in finding another.[371.4] Among the Thlinkits of North America a wife has the privilege of selecting as her lover a brother or near kinsman of her husband; and such a man is required to contribute towards her maintenance. On the other hand, a seducer who is no relation may be slain by the outraged husband, or compelled {372} to submit to a heavy fine.[372.1] The right loosely described by Herodotus as exercised by the Massagetai over other men’s wives must probably be understood as limited to kinsmen.[372.2] In the island of Timor a brother made by the blood-covenant coming to the house of one of the brothers of the same covenant or clan “is in every respect regarded as free and as much at home as its owner. Nothing is withheld from him”: not even the wife. “And a child born of such a union would be regarded by the husband as _his_.” For, as Dr. Trumbull appositely comments, “are not--as they reason--these brother-friends of one blood--of one and the same life?”[372.3]

The common meal, as we have seen, implies brotherhood. The rites of hospitality among many nations constitute a temporary brotherhood, and confer on the guest many of the privileges of a kinsman. This, it seems reasonable to think, may have been the ground of that widely extended custom of offering the host’s wife to his guest. The custom is too well known to require more than a passing reference. Nor do I propose to give more to another custom, that, namely of the exchange, temporary or permanent, of wives. Where it is not dictated by mere occasional wantonness, but is a regular institution, it is usually limited to brethren of the blood. These cases may not go very far: to understand the true value of their evidence they must be placed side by side with cases where the husband’s prior right is determined either by his death or divorce. Among the Arabs, if a man divorced his wife, his heirs had a right to take her. “That implies,” as Professor Robertson Smith points out with unanswerable force, “that the kin had an interest in {373} the woman’s marriage even while her husband lived, and that their interest became active as soon as he divested himself of his special claims on his wife. In short, the right of the heir is a modification of the older right of kinsmen to share each other’s marriages; and as soon as the exclusive right conferred on the husband by more modern law ceases and determines, whether by marriage [? death] or divorce, the older right of the kin revives.”[373.1] Although it does not appear that a similar privilege is exercised by the kindred among the Bengali tribes, their rights over a woman are usually guarded by the requirement that divorce can only take place with the consent of a council of relatives or a _panchayat_ of the village or caste.[373.2] It is generally admitted now that the institution of the Levirate is traceable to polyandry wherein the husbands were united among themselves by the ties of blood. The Levirate was an institution deeply rooted in Hebrew polity, consecrated, if we may believe the traditions preserved in the most ancient Hebrew book now extant, by divine sanction under the tremendous penalty of death, and even in historic times enforceable by the public disgrace of a man who refused compliance.[373.3] It has only become obsolete among the Jews in Europe during the last three centuries, while those of Palestine still hold to it.[373.4] When a man died married but childless, leaving brothers, it was the duty of the eldest of the survivors to take the widow {374} and beget issue for the deceased; nor was any form of marriage necessary between him and her. The same rule was prescribed in the _Laws of Manu_ to the Hindu Aryans. There a brother or some other kinsman, not merely of a dead man, but also of a man who, in consequence of disease or mutilation, was incapable of himself begetting issue, might be appointed for the purpose; and the reason is expressly declared in the _Apastamba_ to be that the bride is given to the husband’s family, and not to the husband alone. Moreover, logically following out the idea of solidarity, Manu declares that if only one among brothers have a son, all have male offspring through that son; and conversely, if only one of all the wives of one husband bear a son, all are mothers of male children through that son.[374.1] If a Malagasy die childless, his next younger brother “must marry the widow to keep his brother in remembrance; the children of such marriages being considered as the elder brother’s heirs and descendants.”[374.2] The Basuto custom is the same.[374.3] But the Levirate is only a specialised form of a more general rule. It was developed when society had passed into the patriarchal phase, in order to preserve due succession. It shows how strong the feeling of solidarity of the kindred was. And that the wife was not regarded as no more than heritable property is brought into clear relief in the Hebrew and Hindu laws, where cohabitation ceased on the birth of a boy. Though this limitation be not observed by the Malagasy and Basutos, at least we cannot forget that the children begotten by the levir (that is, the man who took the widow) rank as his brother’s, and are entitled to his brother’s property. If the wife were {375} simply inherited, both she and the children she afterwards bore would become the property of the man to whom she passed.

Omitting as equivocal the numberless and widespread instances where the heir takes possession of his predecessor’s wives with the rest of his property, we may take note of some whose interpretation is less open to question. Usually among the aboriginal people of Bengal the younger brother, or cousin, of the deceased husband has the first claim on the widow, a claim which must be released before she is at liberty to wed any other person. The cases are few where, as among the Santals, the consent of the younger brother’s first wife must be procured; and they only exist where such consent would be necessary in any case to his second marriage.[375.1] Several tribes of the North-west Provinces practise the custom. Indeed, it seems usual among the aborigines over the greater part of India; and frequently no ceremony of any kind is necessary. Where, as among the Játs of the Panjáb, a ceremony is performed, it is of the simplest kind. The husband’s brother simply throws his scarf or cloak over the widow’s head.[375.2] If a Ját youth die betrothed, but before consummating the marriage, his father can claim the girl for another son, or, in default of a son, for any male relation in that degree.[375.3] A virgin widow among the Baiswars of South Mirzapur can be married, but it is usual to give some remuneration to the family of the deceased husband.[375.4] When a Habura is sentenced to a long term of imprisonment, or is transported for life, his {376} wives are taken by his brothers.[376.1] In the Hindu Koosh, while a man’s property passes to his children, his brother takes the widows. It is disgraceful to refuse them; and they can marry nobody else without the consent of their husband’s brothers.[376.2] An Afghan ought to marry his brother’s childless widow. If any other man offer first it is a grave insult to him.[376.3] Among the Ostiaks and other Turanian tribes, a younger brother is bound to marry his elder brother’s widow.[376.4] On the island of Sumatra, while the inheritance descends to the sons, the brothers in order of age have a right to the widow married by _jujur_, or purchase. In the event of their declining her successively they may give her in marriage to any relation on the father’s side, the person who takes her replacing the deceased. If she marry a stranger, the new husband may be adopted into the family to replace the deceased, or she may be married by purchase, as the relatives please.[376.5] On the adjacent island of Nias one of the sons may marry all the widows save his own mother; and if no son exercise this right, they pass to a brother. If they do not marry they must be maintained by the family of their dead consort.[376.6] On Engano a man in marrying pays the value of two hundred cocoa-nuts to the bride’s family. Yet he does not thereby acquire her for himself. On the contrary, he becomes part of her family; and if she die and he marry again, an indemnity must be paid to her relatives. If he die, however, {377} the widow must offer herself to his brothers; nor can she wed any one else until they have refused her.[377.1] The widow of a Gilbert Islander is taken by his surviving brother into his own hut, and she can then marry no one else.[377.2] A bachelor or widower among the Andaman Islanders is expected to marry his brother’s widow; and the term _brother_, as in most savage lands, includes what we call a cousin. Of the property of the deceased the widow retains as much as she requires for her personal use, dividing the rest between his male relatives.[377.3] Among the Sihanaka, one of the aboriginal tribes of Madagascar, a widow is stripped and in various ways ill-treated for several months, and only allowed to return home to her own kindred after having obtained a formal divorce from her husband’s family.[377.4] In Africa, individual property is hardly recognised by the Krumen of the Grain Coast: almost everything is possessed by the family community. When a Kruman dies his wife passes over to his brother or some other near relation. An Oromó widow can only marry with the consent of her husband’s brother. A Zulu is obliged to cohabit with all the widows of an elder brother. Among the Tedas in Sahara, if an affianced bridegroom die before completion of the marriage, his place is taken by his brother or nearest kinsman.[377.5] On the Slave Coast a younger brother was formerly compelled to marry the headwife of his elder brother deceased, while the subordinate wives devolved with the rest of the inheritance on the sons. {378} Compulsion has now become obsolete; but the headwife still resides with her husband’s relatives; and if she marry any other man than her first husband’s brother, the second husband repays to the relatives (apparently not to the heirs as such) of the first the amount originally paid for her.[378.1] In Natal, when a Kafir dies, “those wives who have not left the kraal remain with the eldest son. If they wish to marry again, they must go to one of their late husband’s brothers.” Children born of such a marriage, however, belong to the son.[378.2] On the western continent the Thlinkit, among whom we have already found traces of clan-marriage, require the eldest brother or nephew to marry the widow.[378.3] In Guatemala, where, as we know, the kindred of the husband bought the wife, she passed over into her husband’s clan, and was taken on his death by his brother or her stepson.[378.4] Among the Hidatsas it is a common practice for a man to marry his brother’s widow; but apparently this is subject to her consent.[378.5] When one of the Blackfeet, or one of the Omahas, died, his wives became the potential wives of his eldest brother, while his property passed to his sons, though a few horses were generally given to his brothers.[378.6] An Ojibway widow may be taken by her husband’s brother, or apparently by any one of the clan; and this is sometimes done at the grave by the ceremony of walking her over it, in which event she {379} is not required to undergo the terrible ordeal of mourning. Or she has a right to go to him, and he is bound to support her.[379.1] The Miwok of California destroy the property of the dead; but the eldest brother is entitled to the widow.[379.2] The Aztecs regarded it as a duty to marry a brother’s widow; and the reason given is that her children, if she had any, might not remain fatherless--a reason, however, which would not apply where she had none.[379.3] In Samoa, where property belonged to the kin, one of the brothers, or some other relative, took the wife; and her children were taught to regard him as their father. The reason here alleged was the desire to preserve the woman and her children to the family, whose number and influence were thus maintained.[379.4] In New Caledonia, where the property seems to descend to the eldest son, the husband’s brother is bound to marry the widow.[379.5] In the Loyalty Islands she could not marry again without the consent of her first husband’s family.[379.6] A Tasmanian woman became common property; but she might be given in marriage again.[379.7] In some at least of the islands of New Britain also, a widow became common property;[379.8] and a similar custom seems to have been followed by the Eskimo.[379.9] The natives of the west of Victoria divided the property of a departed tribesman equally among his widow and his children; but it was his brother’s duty to marry the widow if she had offspring, because he was bound to protect her {380} and rear the children. He seems to have been at liberty to marry her also if she were childless.[380.1] The duty or the right of a deceased husband’s brother to take the widow seems, in fact, to be general among the aborigines of Australia, and to be wholly disconnected with the right of succession to property. And the evidence that it is a survival of group-marriage is confirmed by the custom of the Gippsland tribes, which, there is reason to believe, sanctioned the occasional cohabitation of a single man with his living brother’s wife, and of a married man with his wife’s sister. “A man spoke of his sister-in-law as _puppar-worcat_, which means _another wife_; and when a wife died her sister not infrequently took her place.” In Europe, among the Moslem Albanians the sons succeed to the property, but the brother has a right to the widow with or without her consent. Nor can she marry any one else in the same village save with his consent. If, however, she marry into another family, her husband’s heirs are entitled to half the dowry. The brother of an affianced husband who dies is entitled to the bride on paying additional dowry.[380.2] A trace of the right of a surviving brother to the widow is perhaps found among the Scandinavians; and the conjecture derives some support from the conduct imputed to Frigg, the wife of Odin, who is accused by Loki of laying her husband’s two brothers in her bosom.[380.3]

{381}

I have mentioned some cases in which payment for the widow who marries out of her husband’s kin, is made to the kin. A few others may be added. This is the custom of the Toaripi, Dori, and Koiari tribes of New Guinea. If she belong to the first-named tribe she remains with her husband’s relatives until her second marriage, only when she has children; if she belong to either of the latter she remains, whether with or without children.[381.1] In Kulu, Ladák, the widow could be sold by her husband’s relatives into a second marriage; but so long as she did not quit her husband’s house she was at liberty to keep a paramour.[381.2] Among the Smoos of Central America we are told that widows are the property of the husband’s relatives, to whom “widow-money” must be paid before they are allowed to marry.[381.3] In the western provinces of China, Mr. Cooper tells us, when a widow signifies her intention of marrying again, her deceased husband’s relations generally dispose of her to the highest bidder; but she cannot be forced to marry against her will: by which I understand that it rests with her to say whether she will marry or not; but if she decide to marry, her deceased husband’s relations have the right to determine whom she shall marry, and to receive the bride-price.[381.4]

The foregoing examples all show the wife as bound to the husband’s kin. The right of a man to his wife’s sister, either in his wife’s lifetime, or after her death, or, as it is found among some races, the right of a woman to share her sister’s husband even in her lifetime, is equally widespread. I have incidentally alluded to it as practised by the {382} Gippsland tribes of Australia. Among the North American Indians, who preserve many traces of mother-right, the usage was common. The Blackfeet regarded all the younger sisters of a man’s wife as his potential wives. If he did not care to marry them they could not be married to any other man without his consent.[382.1] Among the Root-Diggers of California to a whole family of sisters the happy husband often added their mother; and the Seminole and Carib customs were the same. The Pawnee who had married an elder sister might demand all the younger ones as they arrived at maturity. An Osage was obliged to wait two years after his first marriage before demanding another of the same family; and after complying with this demand the parents might refuse him any more. Among the Hidatsas, as probably among other tribes, the wife’s sisters included her cousins according to our reckoning. A Mutsun wife would often press her husband to wed her sister or even her mother.[382.2] An Omaha can marry three wives, who are generally related. Sometimes a wife invites her husband to wed her sister, her aunt or her niece, because “she and I are one flesh.”[382.3] Among the Sioux and some other tribes the lover would attach to another man’s tent as many horses as corresponded in value to the daughters he desired to marry; and if the proposition were accepted they were all married at once.[382.4] In other cases it seems that marriage with one daughter only gave a right of preemption over the others.[382.5] Among some of {383} the tribes of Guiana the husband has to wait until his first wife is dead before marrying her sisters.[383.1] Similar regulations are found among the aborigines of Bengal. In many of their tribes a man may marry two sisters; but, in accordance with the rule as to marriage of a widow with a deceased husband’s brother, the second wife must be a younger sister of the first, not an elder. A second sister, however, cannot always be married during the lifetime of the first.[383.2] Among the Todas a woman became wife to several brothers, and her younger sisters, on attaining maturity, became successively her fellow-wives.[383.3] An Ostiak is allowed to take several sisters.[383.4] In the _Laws of Manu_ it is provided that, “if, after one damsel has been shown, another be given to the bridegroom, he may marry them both for the same price.”[383.5] This refers, of course, to two damsels in the same family. Among the Somali of Eastern Africa a widower commonly marries his deceased wife’s sister.[383.6] On the other side of the continent a folktale from Angola represents the eldest of four sisters as replying to an offer of marriage: “Very well. Thou shalt marry me, if thou marriest us all, the four of us. If thou thinkest that thou wilt have me alone, the eldest, thou canst not marry me. It must be that we marry our one man, the four of us in the fourhood of one mother.” And the gallant had no choice but to fall in with her terms.[383.7] In historical times the Israelites were forbidden to take a {384} woman to her sister to be a rival to her in her lifetime;[384.1] but the more ancient practice, if we may judge by the legend of their eponymous hero as well as by analogies in other parts of the world, permitted it. Under supernatural guidance the Church has bettered the prohibition, so as to prevent the posthumous vexation of a wife by the succession of her sister to her husband’s affections, and has been at pains to give it the logical extension to marriage with a deceased husband’s brother, in the very teeth of the divine institution of the Levirate. It would be profane to call a bargain the provision whereby the English bishops once compounded for the sin of assenting to a nobleman’s union with his deceased wife’s sister, by condemning all such unions for the future. Among the heathen Hovas of Madagascar the first wife might at any time be divorced, unless she allowed her husband to marry her younger sisters and younger cousins. A Gilbert Islander had a right to dispose of his wife’s younger sisters.[384.2] In Samoa a younger sister often accompanied the bride and became an inferior wife to the bridegroom.[384.3] On the island of Mangaia, “if a man of position married the eldest girl of a slave family, the younger sisters became his as a matter of course, being only too glad to have a protector. Even amongst those of equal rank a man often had two or three sisters to wife at the same time. Even now, in Christian times, a woman feels herself to be deeply injured if her brother-in-law does not, on the death of his wife, ask her to become a mother to his children.”[384.4] How greatly it is to be regretted that they who have professed to christianise these poor, {385} benighted Polynesians have disregarded the Church’s canon against such marriages, and permitted so-called Christian homes to be contaminated by the presence of a deceased wife’s sister in the capacity of wife!

Until group-marriage had practically passed away, and society had organised itself into true clans, there could be no actual reception of the wife into the kin. We must therefore not look to so archaic a condition as group-marriage for rites of reception, or for the resulting status of the wife. Where the clan has been most completely organised, we may expect to find its results most logically carried out; and some of the most logical results will often remain even when society has passed into a still higher development. So it was in Rome, where the wife entered into the _familia_ of her husband, or, if her husband had a father living and were still in his power, into that of her husband’s father. Her offering, on the day following her marriage, to her husband’s Penates seems to have been a solemn initiation, in so far at least as that had not been effected by the ceremonies of the _confarreatio_. This is also the meaning of somewhat similar rites performed by a bride in Ukrainia on entering her new home, where she is first welcomed by all the female neighbours of her bridegroom’s family,[385.1]--and of many ceremonies of the same kind elsewhere, notably the Brahman rites in India. A Chinese married woman is taught to regard her husband’s parents and his remoter ancestors in every respect as if they were her own; while she ceases, on the other hand, to have any but a secondary interest in her own relatives. According to Confucius the very object of marriage was to furnish those who should preside at the sacrifices, among {386} which a prominent place is given to the ancestral offerings. This was indeed expressed in the formula of demand for the hand of a maiden in ancient times. And just as at Rome the bride offered sacrifices to her husband’s Penates, so in China, on the day after the wedding, she prepared and presented a sucking-pig to her husband’s parents, and when they had done eating she finished what was left.[386.1] In this way among the polite Chinese the union of the bride with her husband’s parents is signified and completed. I have already mentioned the Santali and other customs of Bengal, as well as that of the more barbarous islanders of Bonabe, who tattoo the wife with marks representing her husband’s ancestors.

Sometimes a man on marrying was received into the clan of the wife. It is now generally recognised that the words “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” could have originated only at a period when it was customary for a husband to go and dwell with his wife’s kin: that is to say, before the development of the patriarchal system on which the Hebrews in later times were organised. Professor Robertson Smith suggests, ingeniously and with probability, that the expression implies “that the husband is conceived as adopted into his wife’s kin”; for, as he has previously pointed out, both in Arabic and in Hebrew (notably in the priestly legislation of the latter) the word for flesh is equivalent to _kindred_ or _clan_.[386.2] Residence is indeed one of the tests of kindred. But it is only one, and by no means a conclusive one. For this reason the stories of Isaac’s marriage and those of Jacob cannot safely be cited in support of {387} this suggestion. The curious incident of the bargain with Shechem is more to the point; for in that case a rite was to be undergone which would have the effect of making Shechemites and Israelites “one people.” If, however, we find cases of marriage where not only does the husband dwell with his wife and her family, but his property and earnings also go to them, or are shared in common with them, this will be further evidence of reception into the kin. Among the Kochh a man is taken on marriage to live with his wife and her mother, and all his property is made over to her.[387.1] The Bayaga, a tribe of dwarfs in Equatorial Africa, require the husband to live with his wife’s family, and all the produce of his hunting belongs to them. He may, however, return to his own community and take his wife, but only when he has a son, and that son has killed an elephant. And then he leaves the son behind to fill the place of the daughter taken away.[387.2] This appears to be an instance of the archaic system of mother-right in process of decay. Neither the case of the Bayaga nor that of the Kochh goes quite far enough to be decisive. The North American Indians had customs in their various tribes, which exhibited almost all gradations between the complete absorption of the husband in his wife’s clan, and the last stages of dissolution of the system of mother-right. Without discussing them we may turn to two examples in the East Indies where the matter is put beyond doubt. According to Brahman law the wife now enters the _gotra_ {388} of her husband. The ceremonies are very elaborate, and include of course a solemn procession on the bridegroom’s part to fetch the bride. He is formally welcomed first by the bride’s father, and then by her mother. Follows a rite which, if it mean anything, is a survival of reception into the wife’s kin once practised either by the Aryan invaders of India, or the aboriginal tribes with whom they intermarried. It is called “_Satusi_ or the seven lights of Hymen. Seven married ladies (including the bride’s mother or, if she be a widow, one of the bride’s aunts) in their best attire, each with a small torch made of _chita_-twig and cotton steeped in oil, go round the bridegroom in succession, led by the bride’s mother, who carries on her head a _kulá_ or flat bamboo-basket, on which are placed twenty-one small lights made of _dhatura_-fruits. As they go round, they sprinkle libations of water, one of them blows a shell-trumpet, and all vociferate the hymeneal cry of _ulu-ulu_. After going seven times round the bridegroom, the lights are thrown one by one over his head, so that they fall behind him. The _kulá_ is then picked up and placed in front of the bridegroom, and the bride’s mother takes her stand upon it, and touches the forehead of the bridegroom with water, paddy and _durba_-grass, betel and areca nut, white mustard-seed, curds, white sandal-paste, vermilion, a looking-glass, a comb, a bit of clay from the bed of the Ganges, a yak’s tail, shells, a cluster of plantains, and certain other odds and ends, while the rest of the women keep up the cry of _ulu-ulu_. The bridegroom’s height is measured with a thin thread, which the bride’s mother eats in a bit of plantain. She then places a weaver’s shuttle between his folded hands and ties them together with thread, and calls upon him, now that he has {389} been bound hand and foot, to bleat once like a sheep to signify his humility and subjection. Last of all, she touches his breast with a padlock and turns the key, whereby the door of speech is closed to the passage of hard words against the bride.”[389.1] Later accretions are obvious here, but the substance of the ceremony is ancient and can only be explained in one way. In Sumatra there was an old form of marriage, which has been prohibited for a century past, called _ambel anak_. A man thus married paid no money to the wife’s father, but entered his family on the footing of a son. He became entirely separated from his own kin, who renounced all interest in him, and he lost his right of inheritance. All his earnings belonged to his wife’s family, who became liable to any debts he might contract after marriage and responsible for his crimes, just as his own family were before. His wife’s family might divorce him, in which case he went forth naked as he came. The custom was evidently in decay long before its abolition, for the husband’s status was in some respects hardly so good as that of a natural-born son, while on the other hand there were provisions for enabling him to redeem himself, his wife and children, by paying her _jujur_ or bride-price, and an additional sum for any daughters who had been born. But this could only be accomplished with the goodwill of his wife’s family, because he was incapable of accumulating any property apart from the common stock of the family.[389.2]

The severance of the married person from the clan of which he or she has been previously a member is, as might be expected, sometimes the subject of a special symbol in {390} marriage ceremonies. Thus, among the Santals, when the clothes of a married pair have been tied together (the symbol among many peoples of their union), burning charcoal is pounded with the household pestle, and the glowing embers are extinguished with water. In this way the old household fire of the bride is, so far as she is concerned, put out for ever.[390.1] In Nepal the Sinuwár bride’s parents wash her feet when they give her to the bridegroom, and splash the water over their own heads. By doing this they believe that they wash from her, and as it were take back, the quality of membership of her original sept, and transfer her to the sept of the bridegroom. On the next morning the bride washes the bridegroom’s feet, and drinks the water, saying at the time that she does this as a sign that she has entered his sept, and is truly his wife.[390.2] Among the Wends there are traces of mother-right, though it is no longer the system on which their society is organised. The first night of marriage is always spent at the bride’s house; and sometimes, it would seem, the bridegroom takes up his permanent residence with his wife’s family. On such occasions he bids a solemn farewell, and says to his parents: “Henceforth you will see me no more, nor speak to me; for I am leaving you. Amen.”[390.3] The separation of a Chinese woman from her family on marriage is so complete, that when she returns home on a visit, no brother, nor even her father, may sit with her on the same mat, nor eat with her from the same dish.[390.4] The Marri of Manbhum do not even allow their {391} married daughters to enter the house.[391.1] Among the Rájputs a married daughter may never return to her father’s house without his special leave. He is not likely to send for her, because he must then give her a fresh dower. Conversely, neither he nor any of her near elder relations may go to the village whereinto she is married, nor even drink water from the village well; and though more distant relations taboo not the whole village, they may not eat or drink from her husband’s house.[391.2] Among the Hebrews a priest was forbidden to defile himself for the dead, except for his own kin. His married sister was not one of these, only a sister “a virgin which hath had no husband.” A stranger outside the priest’s kindred, though his guest or hired servant, was not permitted to eat of the heave-offering of the holy things. If a priest’s daughter were married to a stranger, she could not eat of it. But in this respect her separation seems not to have been absolute; for if she were divorced or became a widow, being childless, and so returned “unto her father’s house as in her youth,” she might “eat of her father’s bread.”[391.3] The change of kin was so marked among the Romans that one of their lawyers explained the word _soror_, a sister, as “_quasi scorsum nata_, because she is separated from the family wherein she was born, and passes to another.”[391.4]

When the consequences of marriage are the severance from the family or clan of one of its members, and the union of that member to another family or clan, so as to become one flesh with it, and hardly less where, though the member in question be not lost to the clan, a special relationship is about to be entered upon with the other {392} clan for the purpose of producing new members for it to the exclusion of the former clan, it is obvious that each of the two families, or clans, has a very important interest in the transaction. The marriage would affect not only the two principals; it would extend to every member of the family, or clan, diminished, and every member of the family, or clan, thus enlarged and strengthened. Such an interest as this would entitle every member of both to be consulted; and their assent would be required to its validity. Such assent would be shown, as we have already noted, by the presence and assistance of the kindred at the act of marriage; or it might be signified by gifts. But, however shown, it would in many cases have to be purchased by gifts. I have already mentioned a number of instances where the price, or dowry, of the bride is contributed by the bridegroom’s kinsmen. We are about to deal with the converse case, wherein the price, however made up, is divided between the bride’s relatives.

Bride-purchase has been, at some time or other, practised almost all over the world; and where we do not find it still in all its ancient force we frequently find the relics of it. As, in the progress of civilisation, the bonds of the family are drawn tighter, the power of the father over his children increases, and that of the more distant kinsfolk decreases. The substantial price in such cases is paid to the parent; and the other kinsmen are recognised only by a smaller, frequently a nominal, present. Lastly, the gifts on both sides are transformed into a dowry for the bride, and into wedding presents intended for the behoof of the happy couple. In various nations the application of the marriage gifts is found in all stages of transition, from the rudest bargain and sale up to the settlements so dear to {393} English lawyers, and the useless toys which the resources of the newest culture enable us to bestow upon our friends on these interesting occasions, to assist their early efforts in housekeeping. The examples following are drawn, of course, from conditions of barbarism when purchase prevails, or when survivals of its former practice have not yet been all swept away. Into the general question of the extent of the kindred whose assent is necessary in early stages of civilisation I have no space to go. But incidentally we shall find evidence that the entire clan must have had a voice in the matter. Inasmuch, however, as this chapter has already trespassed on the reader’s patience to so great a length, I shall confine myself to a few of the more indisputable and pertinent instances. To attempt more would be to travel over ground which it would be impossible to survey in a satisfactory manner, without a discussion interesting indeed to the student of institutions, but altogether disproportionate to the present work.

Among races whose customs point unimpeachably to the need of obtaining the consent of the general body of the bride’s kinsmen we may begin with the Turanians. A bridegroom of the Hill tribes of Rajmahál is required to present not only a turban and a rupee to his father-in-law, and a piece of cloth and a rupee to his mother-in-law, but also to several of the nearest relations.[393.1] Striking are the ceremonies performed by two of the northern branches of this widespread race. After the purchase-money has been agreed upon, but before it is paid, among the Kirghiz the bridegroom is allowed to visit the bride. This is done by some tribes with great formality. The young man presents himself first to the oldest member of the bride’s family, and {394} asks permission to pitch his tent at the encampment. “This request being granted, he distributes presents among the members of the family, and begs them to use their efforts in persuading the bride to pay him a visit in his tent. As success always crowns their efforts, the bride makes her appearance in the tent, where the young couple are left alone. During this interview the marriage is consummated, though the union is not yet formally consecrated. They are now bound to each other, and neither can withdraw from the mutual obligation they have contracted without being exposed to the vengeance of the injured party.” Further presents are given to the relatives on the formal celebration of the marriage after the purchase-money has been paid.[394.1] Among the tribes of Turkestan the wedding takes place after the payment of the purchase-money to the father. Each party is represented by two witnesses at the wedding ceremony, and a _mollah_ is employed to legalise the contract. All goes on smoothly until “the bride’s witnesses suddenly raise some objection, pretending that they are unwilling to deliver up the bride who is intrusted to their keeping, unless some suitable present is offered for renouncing, on their part, the great treasure placed in their custody.” Nor can the marriage proceed until they are satisfied.[394.2]

The same part is played in Central Europe by the Wendish bridesmaids. The bride awaits her bridegroom sitting at a table by herself. When his procession arrives, the _brautführer_ advances to the table and begs her politely to follow him to the wedding. The bridesmaids interfere, and refuse to give her up without being paid for it: they must have the whole table full of gold! After an {395} amount of haggling, which depends on the persuasive powers of the damsels and the wealth of the bridegroom, they are at length satisfied; and sometimes the business is not concluded until a considerable sum has been paid.[395.1] At an Ukrainian marriage, presents are made with ritual formalities to every one of the bride’s relations by name; and a formal agreement is entered into by which the number, and even the value, of these presents is declared. Among the persons present are women who are strangers to the immediate family. When the presents to the relatives have been settled, these women climb on a bench beside the family hearth, taking a sieve which they beat like a tambourine, clamouring also for their share of the ransom. And the bridegroom is compelled to throw some small pieces of money into the sieve for them. As M. Volkov, in detailing the proceedings, says, it is clear that all this represents a payment in respect of the bride for the benefit of her whole clan. Among the Bulgarians a like payment, distinguished from that to the father, is made in money for all the members of the family, or rather for the family-community. The father usually gives what he receives to his daughter by way of dowry.[395.2] The usage probably differs to some extent in various parts of Bulgaria. In Bessarabia the money paid to the father is used to defray the cost of the bride’s wardrobe, but clothing is also purchased for the bride’s relations. If I read the account correctly, the bridegroom also pays the bride’s mother a few ducats and presents articles of clothing to her sisters. Among other members of the South Slavonic stock the custom likewise varies, but all agree in requiring {396} presents to be made to all the near kindred of the bride. The minimum payment is set down by one reporter, writing of the practice in his own district, as twelve florins to the bride, ten to her father, two to her mother, six to each of her brothers, and to the other relations seven florins each.[396.1]

The final difficulties on the part of the Wendish bridesmaids may be compared with the conduct of the women of the bride’s party at a marriage of the Banks’ Islanders. When the last instalments of the purchase-money have been paid, and the bridegroom’s father and his party, after the interposition of all sorts of difficulties, are on the point of succeeding in obtaining delivery of the bride, the women step in and refuse to give her up until an extra sum has been made over to them to induce them to let her go.[396.2] In Sindh also, as the bridegroom is about to enter the nuptial chamber, his bride’s sister, or a female cousin, opposes him and demands a gift of a few rupees, which he must pay ere he is allowed to pass.[396.3]

A traveller in the earlier half of the last century relates that to a native of Cape Coast the cost of his wedding was seldom more than an ounce of gold among the bride’s relations, two suits of new clothes for the bride, and a fat goat and some palm-wine and brandy for the entertainment.[396.4] In the Zambesi basin to-day the matter is arranged by “the so-called brothers or next of kin,” who alone have the right to consent, the father having no voice in the matter. But what, if anything, is paid to them as the price of their goodwill, beyond a plentiful supply of pombe, {397} which is drunk together by the brethren on both sides after the wedding, I am not able to say.[397.1] It seems clear at all events that in many places the price may be commuted for a feast, or a feast may be added to it, and after the custom of purchase has died out the feast only may remain. So among the Arabs, for example, the stipulated sum which forms the dowry and belongs to the bride is paid to her father; but before the husband can claim his rights he has to feast the maiden and her relations and friends.[397.2]

Further illustrations are hardly needed. The custom may be summed up in the words of Professor Hickson, describing what he observed in Minahassa, Celebes, where women enjoy an exceptionally high position: “It might seem also that the _harta_ which is paid by the bridegroom for his bride is of a similar nature to the price paid for a slave, a beast of burden, or any other piece of property. The _harta_, however, should not be considered as a ‘price,’ it has rather the nature of a ‘compensation’ paid to the bride’s family for the loss of one of its working and child-producing members.”[397.3]

The subject of the ceremonies and institutions of marriage is one of profound interest. It has engrossed the attention of many anthropologists and filled many volumes. The sketch, therefore, that I have here attempted of only one aspect of the subject is obviously meagre and imperfect. Yet I venture to hope that I have succeeded in throwing some further light upon the savage conception of a kindred as an undivided entity--a conception which has survived in a more or less complete form into high planes of civilisation. Rites analogous to that of the blood-covenant are found not merely to bind together {398} the individual husband and wife, but to unite the incoming member to the whole kindred. And although in the most archaic period whose remains are accessible to us it does not appear that these rites meant actual admission into the kin, their analogy easily lent itself to that construction as the organisation of society into clans drew closer and closer together, and especially as the patriarchal clan developed; and marriage at length came in many cases to operate as an actual severance from one kin and an entrance into another. The reason for the rights and privileges acquired by the whole kindred, alike whether marriage operated as a blood-covenant or not, is founded on, and springs directly from, the conception of the kin as one body whereof all the brethren were as literally members as the hand and the foot are members of the physical body of each man. To graft a new member upon such a body, or even to introduce a stranger into a special relation with a member of such a body, is to introduce him or her to a corresponding relation with all. Their rights may for the time be overridden by the paramount claim of the member for whose special behoof the stranger is introduced--a claim enforced often by strength, more often, perhaps, by custom; yet the moment the claim paramount is withdrawn, or suspended, the rights of the remaining members of the kindred arise and are capable of enforcement. They are sometimes also asserted on special occasions even against the claim paramount.

Society has developed, among almost all the higher races, into and through the patriarchal clan. Among many of the lower races who have not, when brought into contact with European culture, already thrown off their original social constitution, a marked tendency to develop in the {399} same direction has been found. Consequently most of our illustrations have been drawn from a condition of things where the bride has been transferred to the bridegroom’s home and has entered into special relations with the bridegroom’s kin. Of the converse case many examples which might have been adduced are complicated by the developing patriarchalism. Inquiry into these complications would have necessitated a volume rather than a chapter. Hence I have been compelled to pass over many a problem not only interesting but important to solve. But wherever I have found it possible to deal within the limits at my command with the case of a bridegroom entering into special relations with the bride’s kin, the same general principles have been observed to govern it.

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