between members of the same tribe.38 In the same spirit the Arowaks of South America permit no espousals within their own clans; 39 and in their carefully kept pedigrees it is the rule that the children belong to the tribe of the mother. We may cite instances from Africa also. The Hottentots punish incest with death; and among the Kaffirs loss of property is the penalty of marriage with the most distant relations, although they permit of a double marriage with two sisters.40 The Fan negroes, in the west of Equatorial Africa, although they are notorious cannibals, regard marriages between those of the slightest consanguinity as a crime, invariably obtaining their wives from another tribe.41 The Batta of Sumatra, who are also cannibalistic, punish marriages between members of the same horde with the death of both the guilty parties.42 Among the Hindoos the prohibition extends to the sixth degree of relationship; and with them also identity of name is regarded as a sufficient impediment to marriage.43 The same is the case with the Chinese,44 who, as a nation, call themselves Pihsing, or the hundred families. Nevertheless, in modern times, there are four hundred family names which are inherited not from the mother but, as in Europe, from the father. An American missionary of the name of Talmadge knew a village of 5000 inhabitants who nearly all bore the same surname, and are therefore unable to form alliances among themselves.45 Traces of these wide-reaching ideas of incest have been preserved among the nations which practice wife-stealing, for as the different tribes were usually separated by enmity, forcible abduction was the only means of effecting a marriage. Hence ethnographists betray an imperfect knowledge of the subject when they speak of this custom as practised by the Australians as a barbarism, although the Australian women regard this ancient practice not as maltreatment,

38 Waitz, Anthropologie, vol. iii.

29 Martius, Ethnologie, vol. i.

40 Ausland. 1859.

41 Du Chaillu, Ashango Land, p. 427.

42 Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 359.

43 Colebrooke, Essays on the Religion and Philosophy of the Hindus.

44 Huc, Das chinesische Reich.

45 Morgan, Systems of Consanguinity.

Q

but as a homage, and it is a favourite game of their boys and girls.46 The same custom prevailed among the extinct Tasmanians,47 among the Papuans of New Guinea, the Fiji Islands,48 the Aino on the Kurile Islands,49 and among the Fuegians.50 Every Ostiak or Samoyed, s1 every Lapp, even in the present day, must by craft or force seize a girl of another tribe, as was formerly the habit of the Finns (Suomi).52 Ethnologists will agree with us in interpreting Livy's account of the rape of the Sabines as a faint tradition of an ancient Roman custom, by which they were prohibited from marrying within the tribal community. In later and quieter times wife-stealing survived only as part of the wedding festivities. One evening in Khondistan, Campbell saw a lad who was carrying on his shoulder a burden wrapped in a scarlet cloth, pursued by a crowd of women and girls, pelting him with stones, bits of bamboo, and other missiles. It turned out afterwards that the victim was on his wedding journey, and was carrying his young wife in the scarlet wrapper, while the whole affair was only intended as a representation of the pursuit of a wife-stealer. 53 In its last stage the capture becomes a mere game between the bridegroom and the bride, of which the result is always prearranged; yet it is said that among the Maori, a girl who, on such an occasion, has an earnest desire to escape, is able to evade an unwelcome suitor.54 Kennan, who witnessed a similar wedding game among the Koriaks, affirms that the bride must always give a tacit consent to her own capture. Even in Europe a feigned attack is often enacted as a marriage ceremony. Among the Slovaks the bridegroom and his companions actually arm themselves to approach the bride's house, which is closed as if awaiting a siege.55 In old

46 Dumont d'Urville, Voyage de l'Astrolabe, vol. i.

47 Waitz (Gerland), Anthropologie, vol. vi.

48 Williams, Ausland.

1859.

49 Mittheilungen der Wiener geog. Gesellschaft. 1872.

50 W. Parker Snow, Off Tierra del Fuego, vol. ii. p. 359.

51 Castrèn, Vorlesungen.

52 J. A. Frijs, Wanderungen in der drei Lappländern. Globus, 1872. 53 Campbell, Khondistan.

54 Waitz, Anthropologie, vol. i.

55 Klun, Die Slovenen. Ausland, 1872.

The Marriage Market.

227

Bavaria the custom of abduction still continues as a marriage sport, termed "Brautlauf" (bridal run), which in old northern was called "Quânfang" (wife capture).56 Among the Patagonians, with whom Musters spent some time, purchase-money is secretly paid to the parents, while the bride herself is suddenly stolen.57

Where too great consanguinity is not avoided, and wife-stealing is not encouraged, the suitor' was obliged to purchase the bride from the parents; the woman then becomes the property of the husband, and may be left by him to a legal successor. Among the Caribs of Venezuela,58 and in equatorial West Africa, the eldest son inherits all the wives of his deceased father, with the sole exception of his own mother.59 Schweinfurth asserts the same of Munza, the sovereign of the remarkable kingdom of the Monbuttoos on the Uellé.60 On the Gold Coast the vacant throne was occupied by the prince who gained possession of the paternal harem before the other brothers.61 This throws light on certain incidents in the Old Testament history. Absalom took possession of his father's wives in the sight of all Jerusalem, in order to proclaim to the whole people that he had expelled David from the throne.62 In the same spirit Solomon orders the execution of Adonijah, because he begged to have Abishag, David's last favourite, as his wife, thus betraying designs upon the throne.

Where the purchase of the bride is still a reality, as among the Kaffirs, comparatively high prices are paid,63 nor is the inclination. of the chosen bride at all consulted. Among more advanced people, on the contrary, as, for instance, the Abipones and the Patagonians, the purchase becomes invalid or is cancelled if the girl refuses her assent. 64 Marriage was originally a purchase among the Germans, the suitor paying over the price to the individual

* Sepp, Die Schimmelkirchen. Alleg. Zeitung, 1873.

6 Gustav Fritsch, Die Eingebornen Südafrikas.

"Dobrizhoffer, Gesch. der Abiponer. Musters, Unter den Patagoniern.

in whose power the maiden or the widow chanced to be, to the father, brother, or guardian.65 As the wife thus fell under the guardianship (vormundschaft) of the husband, this legal act was also termed a mundkauf. Again, in Iceland and in Norway the wife was purchased; 66 and the English, as late as 1549, in their marriage ritual, preserved traces of this ancient legal procedure.67 It is a long-known fact that in ancient Rome the ceremonial form of marriage contract (confarreatio) was customary only among patricians, while the plebeians effected their marriages by a merely formal purchase (coemptio). Where Islam prevails the wife must even now be bought.68 Manu's law, which abolished the customary bridal gift of a yoke of oxen, indicates a great refinement and softening of manners. 69 The bridegroom is instead welcomed as a guest in the house of his father-in-law on the wedding day, and receives the bride with the forms usual in the case of ceremonial gifts.70 Divorce is open to the husband at his own will wherever polygamy prevails.

Sir John Lubbock has ventured to maintain that in the 'primitive state mankind did not live together connubially, but that the women of a tribe were the common property of all the men. For this barbarous idea he has also invented a barbarous word, for he speaks of this condition as "hetarism." He recognizes traces of it even now in Australia, appealing to statements made by John Eyre.71 He could certainly have no better testimony, for Eyre is inspired with such sympathy for these perishing races, that he would certainly not have recorded unfavourable facts concerning them, either maliciously or recklessly. He does say that the Australians with whom he became acquainted did not value conjugal fidelity in their women; but his statements refer

65 J. Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer. 1854.

66 Paul Laband in Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie. 1865.

67 Friedberg, Das Recht der Eheschliessung In the Netherlands, in Spain, according to West Gothic law, and in Lorgobard law, traces of the purchase of brides still exist.

68 Warnkönig, Juristische Encyclopädie.

69 Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums.

7 Colebrooke, Essays on the Religion and Philosophy of the Hindus. 71 Central Australia. 1845.

only to the tribes in the vicinity of the Murray River, who were already in frequent intercourse with European settlers. Such intercourse has nearly everywhere corrupted the manners of the natives. The supposed habit of hetarism is moreover contradicted by Eyre's own statement,72 that paternal authority is entirely unlimited, and, on the other hand, by the traits which he gives of the passionate tenderness of fathers for their children. Other observers attribute jealousy in a special degree to the Australian men, and it is asserted that they take bloody vengeance on the adulterer.73 Neumayer, moreover, who spent many nights among the natives, never noticed any breach of propriety or morality.74 When we remember that, from a horror of consanguinity, the Australians marry only women with a different family name, the hetaristic state appears very unlikely, and we may regard the facts communicated by Eyre as a local degeneration of manners, confined to the southern portion of the continent, where there really are tribes in which the husband's brothers call the wife by a like name.75

The hypothesis that at a remote age marriage was unknown to the human race is hardly credible. Even among animals we sometimes find a strict pairing, that is to say, among monkeys,76 predatory animals, ungulates, ruminants, and among song birds, chickens, and birds of prey. Darwin has also disputed the probability of a community of wives among prehistoric man, on the grounds that the males of many mammals are extremely jealous, and are furnished with weapons with which to fight for the possession of the females. The Veddahs of Ceylon, whom we should expect to find most primitive, have, as we have already seen, a beautiful proverb that death alone can part man and wife.77 In the fact that the chase, which is the most primitive means

72 Central Australia. 1845. 73 Waitz (Gerland), Anthropologie, vol. vi. 74 Zeitschrift für Ethnologie. 1871.

75 Waitz (Gerland), Anthropologie, vol. vi.

7 In Borneo, between the Padass and the Papar, Lieut. C. de Crespigny came upon a family of Mias (Orang-outang), consisting of the male, female, and two young ones of different ages. Their connection must therefore have lasted some time. Proceedings of the Royal Geogr. Society, vol. xvi.

1 Darwin, Descent of Man, vol. ii. p. 318.