CHAPTER V

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EXOGAMY.

1. No enquiry into the social relations of the Hindus can leave out of account the thorny subject of the origin of exogamy. By exogamy is generally understood the prohibition which exists against a man marrying within the group to which he belongs: to follow Mr. D. McLennan’s definition, [32] exogamy is prohibition of marriage between all persons recognized as being of the same blood, because of their common blood—whether they form one community or parts of several communities, and accordingly it may prevent marriage between persons who (though of the same blood) are of different local tribes, while it frequently happens that it leaves persons of the same local tribe (but who are not of the same blood) free to marry one another. “Endogamy,” on the other hand, “allows marriage only between persons who are recognised as being of the same blood connection or kindred, and if, where it occurs, it confines marriage to the tribe or community, it is because the tribe regards itself as comprising a kindred.”

[Various forms of exogamy.] 2. Before discussing the possible origin of exogamy it may be well to explain some of its various forms, of which numerous details, so far as it has been possible to ascertain them, are given in the subsequent pages. We have, then, first the Brâhmanical law of exogamy. Persons are forbidden according to the Sanskrit law-books, to intermarry, who are related as sapindas, that is to say, who are within five degrees of affinity on the side of the father. The person himself is counted as one of these degrees, that is to say, two persons are sapindas to each other, if their common ancestor being a male is not further removed from either of them than six degrees, or four degrees where the common ancestor is female. [33]

[The gotra.] 3. These prohibitions form a list of prohibited degrees in addition to the ordinary formula, which prevents a Brâhman or a member of those castes which ape the Brâhmanical organization, from marrying within his gotra or exogamous section. The word gotra means “a cow-pen,” and each bears the name of some Rishi or mythical saint, from whom each member of the group is supposed to be descended. Theoretically all the Brâhmanical gotras have eight great ancestors only—Viswamitra, Jamadagni, Bhâradvaja, Gautama, Atri, Vasishtha, Kasyapa, and Agastya. These occupy with the Brâhmans pretty much the same position as the twelve sons of Jacob with the Jews; and only he whose descent from one of these mighty Rishis was beyond all doubt could become a founder of a gotra. [34] The next point to remark is that, as Mr. Ibbetson [35] has pointed out, the names of many of the founders of these gotras appear among the ancient genealogies of the earliest Râjput dynasties, the Râjas in question being not merely namesakes of, but distinctly stated to be the actual founders of the gotra; and it would be strange if enquiry were to show that the priestly classes, like the menials, owe their tribal divisions to the great families to whom their ancestors were attached.

All that we know at present about the evolution of the Brâhmanical tribal system tends to confirm this theory. At any rate, whatever may be the origin of these Brâhmanical gotras, it must be remembered that the system extends to all respectable Hindus. As soon as a caste rises in the social scale a compliant priest is always ready to discover an appropriate gotra for the aspirant, just as an English brewer, raised to the peerage, has little difficulty in procuring a coat-of-arms and a pedigree which links him with the Norman conquest. It is obvious in such cases that the idea of common descent from the eponymous founder of the gotra becomes little more than a pious fiction. But among many of the Râjputs who have been promoted at a later date, and in

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forest tribes, with a comical disregard for the theory of gotra exogamy, we find the sept enjoying only a single gotra, and this is very often that of Bhâradvaja, which is a sort of refuge for the destitute who can find no other place of rest. As has already been shown, some of the sectional titles are eponymous, like those of the gotras named after the famous Rishis; others like the Durgbans Râjputs take their name from an historical personage; others, again, are totemistic, and others purely territorial.

[Exogamy among the lower castes.] 4. Passing on to the inferior castes, such as those of the agriculturists, artisans, and menials generally, we find very considerable differences in their internal structure: some are divided into regular endogamous sub-castes, which again are provided with exogamous sections, or, where these are absent, practise a special exogamous rule which bars intermarriage by reckoning as prohibited degrees seven (sometimes more or sometimes less) generations in the descending line. But it is obvious that, as in the case of Brâhmans, this rule which prohibits intermarriage within the section, is one-sided in its application, as Mr. Risley remarks:—“In no case may a man marry into his own section, but the name of the section goes by the male side, and consequently, so far as the rule of exogamy is concerned, there is nothing to prevent him from marrying his sister’s daughter, his maternal aunt, or even his maternal grandmother.” Hence came the ordinary formula which prevails generally among the inferior castes that a man cannot marry in the line of his paternal uncle, maternal uncle, paternal aunt, maternal aunt. But even this formula is not invariably observed. What the low caste villager will say if he is asked regarding his prohibited degrees, is that he will not take a bride from a family into which one of his male relations has married, until all recollection of the relationship has disappeared. And as rural memory runs hardly more than three generations, any two families may intermarry, provided they were not connected by marriage within the last sixty or seventy years. It is only when a man becomes rich and ambitious, begins to keep an astrologer and Pandit, and to live as an orthodox Hindu, that he thinks much about his gotra. To procure one and have the proper prohibited degrees regularly worked out is only a matter of money.

5. Having thus endeavoured briefly to explain the rules of exogamy which regulate the different classes of Hindus, [36] we are now in a position to examine the various explanations which have been suggested to account for this custom.

[McLennan’s theory of exogamy.] 6. The earliest theory was that of Mr. McLennan, [37] who began by calling attention to the fact that there are numerous survivals of marriage by capture, such as the mock struggle for the bride and so on, to which more particular reference is made in another place: that these symbols show that at one time people were accustomed to procure their wives by force. He went on to argue that among primitive nomadic groups, where the struggle for existence was intense, the girls would be a source of weakness to the community: such children would be ill-protected and nourished, and female infanticide would occur. Hence, owing to the scarcity of brides, youths desirous of marrying would be obliged to resort to violence and capture women by force from the groups. This would in time produce the custom in favour of, or the prejudice against, (which in the case of marriage would soon have the force of tribal law) marrying women within the tribe. This theory has been criticized at length by Mr. Herbert Spencer and Dr. Westermarck [38] mainly on the following grounds:—“The custom cannot have originated from the lack of women, because the tribes that use it are mostly polygamous. It is, again, not proved to prevail among races which practise polyandry. The evidence of the widespread custom of female infanticide among groups in this assumed stage of social development is not conclusive. Primitive man does not readily abandon the instinct of love of the young which he possesses in common with all the lower animals, and women, so far from being useless to the savage, are most valuable as food providers. Further, there may be a scarcity of women in a tribe, and youths unable to find partners be forced to seek wives in another group, the difficulty remains why marriage with surviving tribal women should not only be unfashionable, but prohibited by the severest penalties; in some cases that of death. The position of such women would be nothing short of intolerable, because they could not marry unless an outsider chose to ravish them.”

[Spencer’s theory of exogamy.] 7. Conscious of these and other difficulties which surrounded Mr. McLennan’s explanation, Mr. Herbert Spencer suggested another theory. According to him [39] exogamy is the result of the constant inter-tribal war which prevailed in early societies. Women, like all other livestock, would be captured. A captured woman, besides her intrinsic value, has an extrinsic value: “like a native wife she serves as a slave; but, unlike a native wife, she also serves as a trophy.” Hence to marry a strange woman would be a test of valour, and non-possession of a foreign wife a sign of cowardice. The ambition, thus stimulated, would lead to the discontinuance of marriage within the tribe. This theory is, as has been shown by Mr. Starcke [40] and Dr. Westermarck, [41] open to much the same objections as that of Mr. McLennan. As before, even if it became customary to appropriate foreign women by force, we are a long way from the absolute prohibition against marrying women of the tribe. The desire of the savage for polygamy would impel him to marriage with any woman whether of the tribe or not. The women of a tribe habitually victorious in war would be condemned to enforced celibacy: a usage based on victory in war could not have extended to the vanquished: the powerful feeling against marriage with near relations could not have arisen merely from the vain desire to possess a woman as a trophy: and lastly, we have no examples of a tribe which did or does marry only captive women, or, indeed, in which such marriages are preferred.

[Lubbock’s theory of exogamy.] 8. Sir John Lubbock’s [42] theory again depends on his theory of what he calls communal marriage, by which all the women of the group were at the general disposal of all the males. This, however, he thinks, would not be the case with women seized from a different tribe. This theory, so far as it is concerned with communal marriage and polyandry, is discussed elsewhere. It is enough here to say that the evidence for the existence of either among the primitive races of this part of India appears entirely insufficient, and it is difficult to understand, even if communal marriage prevailed, how women captured, as must have been the case, by the general act of members of the group, could have been protected from that form of outrage which would naturally have been their lot.

[Starcke’s theory.] 9. Mr. Starcke [43] in his account of exogamy attempts to draw a distinction between the license which would permit intercourse between kinsfolk and prohibit marriage between them:—“The clan, like the family, is a legal group, and the groups were kept together by legal bonds long before the ties of blood had any binding power. The same ideas which impelled a man to look for a wife outside his family, also impelled him to look for her outside the clan.” This depends upon the further assumption that early marriage was not simply a sexual relation, a fact which he can hardly be considered to have fully established.

[Tylor’s theory of exogamy.] 10. All these theories, it will be observed, base exogamy more or less on the abhorrence of incest. Dr. Tylor, [44] on the other hand, represents it as a means by which “a growing tribe is enabled to keep itself compact by constant unions between its spreading clans.” That exogamy may have been a valuable means of advancing political influence is true enough, but, as Dr. Westermarck objects, it does not account for the cases in which inter-tribal cohabitation was repressed by the most stringent penalties, even by death. [45]

[Morgan’s theory of exogamy.] 11. Next comes that advocated by Mr. Morgan [46] and others, that it arises from the recognition of the observed evils of intermarriage between near relations. This theory has been with some slight modifications accepted by Dr. Westermarck [47] and Mr. Risley. [48] Briefly put, it comes to this: No theory of exogamy can be satisfactorily based on any conscious recognition by the savage of the evils of interbreeding. Of all the instincts of primitive man the erotic are the most imperious and the least under control. To suppose that a man in this stage of culture calmly discusses the question whether his offspring from a woman of his group are likely to be weaklings is preposterous. But the adoption of marriage outside the group would, in the end, by the process of natural selection, give the group practising it a decided physical advantage. As Mr. Risley puts it:—“As a result of the survival of the fittest the crossed families would tend more and more to replace the pure families, and would at the same time tend to become more and more exogamic in habits, simply as the result of the cumulative hereditary strengthening of the original instinct. It would further appear that the element of sexual selection might also be brought into play, as an exogamous family or group would have a larger range of selection than an endogamous one, and would thus get better women, who again, in the course of the primitive struggle for wives, would be appropriated by the strongest and most warlike man.”

12. This theory, which bases exogamy on the unconscious result of natural selection, gradually weeding out those groups which persisted in the practice of endogamy, and replacing them by a healthier and more vigorous race, seems on the whole best to account for existing facts. It is, however, perhaps premature to suppose that in all cases the same end was reached by the same course. All through the myths of early India nothing comes out more clearly than the instructive hatred of the Arya or white man for the Dasyu, or the man of the black skin. The balance of opinion now seems to be moving in the direction of assuming that the so-called Aryan invasion was much more moral than physical, that the attempt to discriminate between the ethnological strata in the population is practically impossible. The conversion may have been the work, not of armies of invaders moving down the valleys of the Ganges and Jumna, but of small bodies of missionaries who gradually effected a moral conquest and introduced their religion and law among a population with whom they ultimately to a large extent amalgamated. That some form of exogamy was an independent discovery made by the autochthones prior to their intercourse with the Aryans seems certain; but it is possible that the special form of prohibited degrees which was enforced among the higher races may have been to some extent the result partly of their isolation in small communities among a black-skinned population, and partly, as Dr. Tylor suggests, as a means of enhancing the political importance and establishing the influence of these groups. That this procuring of suitable brides from foreign groups was sometimes impossible is proved by the curious Buddhistic legend that the Sakyas became endogamous because they could get no wives of their own rank, and were in consequence known as “pigs” and “dogs” by their neighbours. [49]

[Exogamy and Totemism.] 13. There is, however, another side to the discussion on the origin of exogamy which must not be neglected. In another place I have collected some of the evidence as to the existence of totemism in Northern India. [50]

The present survey has given indication of the existence of totemistic sections among at least twenty-four tribes, most of whom are of Dravidian origin.

Now we know that one of the ordinary incidents of totemism is that persons of the same totem may not marry or have sexual intercourse with each other, [51] and it is perhaps possible that, among the Dravidians at least, one basis of exogamy may have rested on their totemistic group organization. The indications of totemism are, however, too vague and uncertain, being mainly based on the fact that the names of many of their sections are taken from those of animals and plants, to make it possible at present to express a definite opinion on such an obscure subject.

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