I. Sexual Proportion of Births: its Influence on Marriage.—Sexual proportion amongst animals—The state of this in Europe—Its variations according to race and profession—Its oscillations—Proportion of the sexes disturbed by war, by infanticide, and by the sale of daughters—Polyandry has not been general.
II. Ethnography of Polyandry.—Examples of polyandry—Great polyandrous centres—The polyandry of Thibet—The polyandry of the Naïrs.
III. Polyandry in Ancient Arabia.—Its causes—Infanticide in Arabia—The legend of Caïs, the infanticide—Evolution of polyandry in Arabia—Mot’a marriage—Ba’al marriage.
IV. Polyandry in General.—Matriarchal polyandry and patriarchal polyandry.
I. Sexual Proportion of Births, and its Influence on Marriage.
With the exception of the rare and singular forms of sexual or conjugal association which we have just passed in review, matrimonial types are not numerous among the peoples more or less civilised who have already instituted a marriage—that is to say, a sexual association regulated by generally admitted convention. The forms of marriage most universally practised, those which the majority of mankind has reached and stopped at, are polygamy and monogamy, or monandry. I shall have much to say of these. For the moment I shall treat of another kind of marriage, far less widely spread without doubt, but which, however, exists or has existed at divers points of the globe; I allude to polyandry.
I have no longer to prove that morality is variable and perfectible, that it results from social life, and is only to be taken together with the other needs, desires, and necessities of the struggle for existence. Our moral sentiments are simply habits incarnate in our brain, or instincts artificially created; and thus an act reputed culpable at Paris or at London may be and frequently is held innocent at Calcutta or at Pekin. In order to judge impartially of polyandric marriage we must remember these elementary truths. Not, certainly, that polyandry is rare amongst us, but it is censured, counted as criminal, and obliged to hide itself. The legal and regulated possession, publicly acknowledged, of one woman by several men, who are all husbands by the same title, shocks our feelings and morality extremely in the present day.
Nevertheless, human societies, small or large, must and will live, and it is an imperious condition which imposes the polyandric régime, namely, a considerable inequality between the number of men and that of women. Now, this disproportion may result from divers causes. In the first place, it may be natural, as it is among certain animal species. Among the lepidoptera, for example, nine hundred and thirty-four males have been counted as against seven hundred and sixty-one females.[169] Although smaller, the disproportion is not less real amongst mankind. As a general rule, and in nearly all countries where it has been possible to ascertain it, the relation between masculine and feminine births gives a certain excess of boys. This relation has been found in Europe to be 106 for 70 million of births; but our great masculine mortality re-establishes the equilibrium in the early years of life. The proportion of births, besides, is far from being identical in all the countries of Europe, and we even find oscillations in a given country. In England it is generally 104.5, in France 106.3, in Russia 108.9, at Philadelphia 110.5. In certain ethnic or social categories the proportion of masculine births notably augments. It rises to 113 for the Jews of Russia, to 114 for those of Breslau, to 120 for the Jews of Livonia. More singular still, the proportion of masculine to feminine births augments for certain professions; it is, for example, higher amongst the English clergy.[170] It is even seen to vary spontaneously. In the year 1886, during several months, the proportion of feminine births rose at Paris. In France, for a period of forty-four years, it has happened five times in one department, and six times in another, that the female births have been in excess. At the Cape of Good Hope, among the whites, for several years there have been ninety to ninety-nine masculine births. The reason or reasons of these spontaneous oscillations in the proportion of the sexes still escapes us. We verify it only, and we are warranted in concluding that the production of sex in the embryo depends on some relatively second causes. It is sure, for example, that the clergy of England are not of a special race. If, however, they have more male children than the other inhabitants of England, the fact can only depend on intimate particulars of their kind of life. This reminds us of certain biblical precepts relative to conjugal life, and the too neglected theory of M. Thury (of Geneva) on the influence of the degree of ovular maturity on the production of the sexes.
But spontaneous oscillations in the proportion of the sexes are always feeble; even the matrimonial type does not seem to influence them, for in the harems of Siam the sexual relation of births is the same as in Europe.[171] On the other hand, it is proved that race-horses, which are very polygamous, since they serve as stallions, have male and female descendants in exactly equal proportions.[172]
It is the social actions of men which produce the most profound disturbances in the proportion of the sexes. To begin with, in savage or barbarous countries, where violent death has become an ordinary occurrence for men, the number of adult females much exceeds that of adult males. Thus, at Bantou, when the Dutch established themselves there, they found ten women to one man.[173] In La Soñora, at the end of a civil war, there were seven women to one man. In spite of all moral and legal precepts, such conditions unfailingly result in polygamy, disguised or not.
On the contrary, a custom very widely spread in savage countries, that of the infanticide of girls, not less necessarily engenders polyandry, if the equilibrium in the numerical proportion of the sexes is not re-established in another manner. In reality, the infanticide of girls has been largely practised in nearly all polyandrous countries. It seems also that the custom of sacrificing the female children influences in the long run the natural production of the sexes. Thus the polyandrous Todas, who formerly killed their girls, have actually a sexual proportion of 133.3 for adults, and of 124 for the children.[174]
In Polynesia, where the infanticide of girls was so largely practised, the sexual relation to-day is altogether in favour of male births.
In New Zealand the proportion of the sexes in 1858 was 130.3 for adults, and 122.2 for non-adults.[175]
In 1839, in the Sandwich Islands, the numerical proportion was 125.08 for adults, and 125.75 for non-adults.
In 1872 a general census of all the Sandwich Islands gave for the numerical proportion of the sexes 125.36.
But there is more than one way of falsifying the proportion of the sexes. It is not necessary to kill nearly all the female children, as was the custom among the Gonds of Bengal, where in many villages Macpherson did not see a single girl;[176] it suffices to sell them. It is even the sale of girls which in many countries has at first restrained the savage practice of feminine infanticide. Girls became a merchandise negotiated by the parents, and afterwards redeemed by the men, because they could not do without them; but then it happened, in various countries and among various races, that men joined together to lighten the expense, and that several of them contented themselves with one wife in common, became polyandrous.
But we must not believe, with certain sociologists, that polyandry has ever been a universal and necessary matrimonial phase. The enormous consumption of men, necessitated by a savage or barbarous life, has often given an impulse to polygamy. It is only in certain societies where the practice of female infanticide exceeded all measure, or in certain islands, or certain regions with little or no population, where conquerors badly off for wives came to settle, that polyandry has become general and enduring. It is surely only an exceptional form of marriage, and we can enumerate the countries where it has been or is still in use.
Cæsar speaks thus of the polyandry of the ancient Britons:—“By tens and twelves the husbands have their wives in common, especially brothers with brothers, and parents with children.”[177]
I have previously quoted Strabo on the polyandry of the primitive Arabs, which was also fraternal.
In the sixteenth century the Guanches of two of the Canary Isles, Lancerote and Tortaventura, were still polyandrous, but amongst them the husbands did not number more than three.[178]
Polyandry also existed in New Zealand and in the Marquesas, but restricted to certain women only.[179]
In America, amongst the Avaroes and the Maypures, according to Humboldt, brothers had often only one wife.
But the great polyandric centres exist or have existed in Asia, in India, Ceylon, and Thibet. Various aboriginal tribes of India, nearly always much addicted to female infanticide, have practised polyandry. The Miris and Dophlas of Bengal are still polyandrous.[180] Among the Todas of Nilgherry polyandry was fraternal. When a man married a girl, she became on that account the wife of all his brothers, and inversely these became the husbands of all the sisters of the wife. The first child born of these marriages was attributed to the eldest brother, the second to the next brother, and so forth.[181]
But polyandry has not flourished only among the primitive races of India. The Hindoo populations had also adopted it, and traces of it are found in their sacred literature. Thus in the Mahabharata the five Pandou brothers marry all together the charming Drâaupadi, with eyes of lotus blue.[182] But in Brahmanic India polyandry is more than a mere memory. Skinner has proved that near the sources of the Djemmah, amongst a very fine race of Hindoo mountaineers, fraternal polyandry still prevailed. “Having asked one of these women,” says the traveller, “how many husbands she had—‘Only four,’ she replied. ‘And all living?’ ‘Why not?’”
These customs, according to the traveller, did not hinder these mountaineers from being, on other points, very moral men. Thus they held lying in horror, and in their eyes to deviate from the truth, even quite innocently, was almost a sacrilege.[183]
At the other extremity of India, in Ceylon, the polyandric régime is still very flourishing, especially in the interior of the island, and among the leisured classes. The number of husbands, generally brothers or relatives, is variable; it varies from three to eight. According to Emerson Tennent, polyandry was formerly general in the island, and it is owing to the efforts of the Dutch and Portuguese that it has disappeared from the coast.[184]
It is particularly in lamaic Thibet that the polyandric régime is in full vigour; and in this country religion strengthens it, for the most distinguished men, the ruling classes, the chiefs or officers of the State, a fortiori the lamas, have the same disdain for marriage so loudly professed by the saints of Catholicism. The greater number exempt themselves from it, and leave to the common people the gross care of producing children. Now, the latter, by reason of their poverty, associate together to lighten the burden of the family. It is, again, fraternal polyandry which is the rule in Thibet. It is in this country that sociologists have sought the classic type of this kind of polyandry.
In Thibet the right of primogeniture is combined with the right of marriage, and the younger brothers follow the fate of their chief. It is this last who marries for all of them, and chooses the common wife.[185] However, if we may believe other accounts, a certain liberty is allowed to younger brothers. The pressure on them is chiefly economic. When the eldest son marries, the property is transmitted to him in advance of his inheritance, with the charge of maintaining his parents, who, however, can live in a separate house. The youngest brother takes orders, and becomes a lama. The others, if they choose, become inferior husbands of the wife, who with us would be their sister-in-law, and they are almost forced to do this, since their eldest brother is sole inheritor. Once within the polyandric régime, the younger brothers have a subordinate position. The eldest, the husband-in-chief, considers them as his servants, and has even the right to send them away without any resource, if he pleases. If the principal husband dies, then his widow, his property, and his authority pass to the younger brother next in age. In the case of the brother not being one of the co-husbands, he cannot inherit the property without the wife, nor the wife without the property. We have here, then, a sort of polyandrian levirate.[186]
The children springing from these unions give the name of father sometimes to the eldest of the husbands, and sometimes to all.[187] Travellers tell us that these polyandrous households are not more troubled than our monogamous ones. Some Thibetans, living thus in conjugal association, could not understand V. Jacquemont when he asked them if the preference of their single wife for one or other of them did not cause quarrels between the husbands. But if jealousy is unknown to the husbands, it is, on the contrary, frequent with the wife. “A Thibetan woman,” says Turner, “united to several husbands, is as jealous of her conjugal rights as an Indian despot could be of the beauties who people his zenana or harem.”[188]
As to the manner in which the intimate relations between husbands and wife are regulated in the polyandric households of Thibet, we have scarcely any information. Among the Todas the wife never had conjugal commerce with more than one husband at a time, but she changed every month; sometimes also the associated husbands add to their number temporarily some young man belonging to the tribe, but not yet engaged in the bonds of wedlock.[189]
There is another form of polyandry besides the fraternal, but quite as curious, and which has been made to play a great rôle in various sociological theories. It is the polyandry of the Naïrs, an indigenous high caste of Malabar.
However extraordinary the fraternal polyandry called Thibetan may seem in our eyes, that of the Naïrs of Malabar is far more so. Here the reality exceeds all that we could have imagined in the way of conjugal customs. The Naïr parents married their daughters early. The bride was rarely more than twelve years old. The proceedings began with an ephemeral union, a sort of fictitious marriage, but celebrated nevertheless with great rejoicings in presence of parents and friends. The initiative and provisional husband passed round the neck of the bride the conjugal collar, the tali, and henceforth the marriage was concluded and had to be consummated; only at the end of four or five days the new husband was obliged to quit the house of the wife for ever. On the contrary, the young bride remained in the family, and from this period contracted a series of partial but durable marriages. The first marriage of the young Naïr girl had evidently no other object than defloration; it was a service demanded of a fictitious husband, and for which he was often paid. A traveller relates that for this preliminary marriage a porter or a workman was employed and paid. If his pretensions were too high, recourse was had to an Arab or a stranger; and, says the narrator, the gratuitous services of these last were always preferred if, when the ceremony was over, they withdrew in time and with good grace. When once well and duly prepared for marriage, the young Naïr girl might take for husband whomsoever she liked, except the provisional husband of the first few days.[190] The number of her husbands varied from four to twelve.[191] Each one of them was at first presented to her either by her mother or by her maternal uncle, an important personage in the family. Each co-partner was in his turn husband in reality during a very short time, varying from one day to ten, and he was free, on his side, to participate in divers polyandric conjugal societies. We are assured that in these curious ménages all the associated husbands lived in very good understanding with each other.[192]
Generally the Naïr husbands were neither brothers nor relatives, for these polyandrous people seemed to have ideas about incest analogous to our own. But the unions outside the caste were the only ones reputed culpable; they constituted a sort of social adultery. The conjugal prerogatives of the husbands were not unaccompanied by certain duties. They had to maintain the common wife, and they agreed together to share the expense. One took on himself to furnish the clothes, another to give the rice.[193] On these conditions each one could in his turn enjoy the common property, and, in order not to be troubled in the use of his rights, it sufficed the husband on duty to hang on the door of the house and on the wife’s door his shield and his sword or knife.
The Brahmins were obliged to tolerate these polyandric marriages, so contrary, however, to their laws; they finished by even deriving a profit from them. In the Brahmanic families in contact with the Naïrs the eldest son alone married, so as not to scatter the patrimony; the others entered the matrimonial combinations of the Naïrs, and thus their children did not inherit.[194]
On their side, the Naïrs were naturally only acquainted with matriarchal heredity. No Naïr, says Buchanan, knows his father, and every man has for heirs the children of his sister. He loves them as if they were his own, and unless he is reputed a monster, he must show much more grief at their death than he would for his own possible children—namely, those of his own wife.[195]
In comparing the two kinds of polyandry that I have just described, the patriarchal polyandry of the Thibetans, and the matriarchal polyandry of the Naïrs, the majority of sociologists consider the first as superior to the other. In so doing they seem to me not to be able to shake off sufficiently our European ideas. Doubtless the fraternal Thibetan polyandry, while leaving undecided the paternal filiation of the children, assures them a sort of collective paternal parenthood, since the fathers are of the same blood. This polyandrian family consequently differs less than the Naïr family from our own system of patriarchal kinship, which is reputed superior; but surely the liberty, and even the dignity of the woman, which must count for something, are more respected under the Naïr system, which not only does not reduce the woman to a thing possessed, that one lends to one’s friends, but gives her the power of choosing her husbands.
Fraternal polyandry being declared superior to polyandry of the Naïr type, it has been concluded that in virtue of the law of progress it must have been preceded in all times and places by the latter. As regards the greater number of cases of Thibetan polyandry, the supposition is gratuitous; it seems, however, established as far as ancient Arabia is concerned, where, thanks to a very learned treatise recently published by Mr. W. Robertson Smith, professor of Arabic at the University of Cambridge,[196] we may note the causes of polyandry and follow its evolution.
III. Polyandry in Ancient Arabia.
The chief cause of ancient Arabian polyandry was the one we find in nearly all the polyandric countries—that is to say, the infanticide of daughters.
The primitive Arabs, extremely savage and even anthropophagous, were led to adopt the custom of female infanticide by the difficulty of living in their arid country, where famines were very common. Down to the present time the nomads of Arabia suffer constantly from hunger during a great part of the year.[197]
The custom of infanticide was inveterate among the Arabs, and Mahomet was obliged to condemn it over and over again in the Koran:—“They who from folly or ignorance kill their children shall perish.[198] Kill not your children on account of poverty.[199] Kill not your children for fear of poverty; we will feed them, and you also.[200] When it shall be asked of the girl buried alive for what crime she is put to death ... every soul will then acknowledge the work that she had done.”[201]
In this last verse the Koran bears witness to the custom of killing the girls, and it indicates the process in use, which actually consisted in burying them alive. This was done openly, and often the grave of the newly-born infant was dug by the side even of the couch of the mother who had just given birth to it. According to the morality of the primitive Arabs, these acts were not only very simple, but even virtuous and generous,[202] which seems to indicate that they were indeed only precautions against famine. An Arab legend, quoted by Mr. R. Smith, paints in lively colours these atrocious customs. It relates to a chief of Tamin, who became a constant practitioner of infanticide in consequence of a wound given to his pride. He was called Caïs, and was contemporary with Mahomet. The daughter of his sister was carried off in a razzia and given to the son of her captor, as was the usage in Arabia, where the captured women made part of the booty and were divided with it. This time, when Caïs came to reclaim his niece by offering to pay her ransom, the latter, being well pleased with the adventure, refused to quit her husband. Caïs, the uncle, was mortally offended, and from that moment he interred alive all his daughters, according to the ancient custom. But one day, during his absence, a daughter was born to him, whom the mother secretly sent to a relative to save her, and then declared to her husband that she had been delivered of a still-born child. Some years later, the girl, grown tall, came to pay a visit to her mother. Caïs discovered her, while her mother was plaiting her hair and ornamenting it with cowries. “I arrived,” the father is made to say, speaking to Mahomet, “and I said, ‘Who is this young girl?’ ‘She is yours,’ replied the mother, weeping, and she related how she had formerly saved her. I waited till the emotion of the mother was calmed; then one day I led away the girl; I dug a grave and I made her lie down in it. She cried, ‘Father, what do you intend to do with me?’ Then I covered her with earth. She cried again, ‘Father, do you wish to bury me? Are you going away, and will you abandon me?’ But I continued to heap earth on her until her cries were stifled. That was the only time it has happened to me to feel pity in burying a daughter.”[203]
Such customs, combined with the sale to strangers of girls carried off in razzias, and the polygamy of the rich men, must assuredly have profoundly disturbed the numerical proportion of the sexes, and have rendered polyandry almost a necessity, which, besides, could not excite any scruple with the ancient Arabs, whose morals were very licentious. Thus the captured women often remained common to a group of relatives.[204] In the fifth century the Syrio-Roman law had even to forbid the contracts of fraternity, by which all was held in common, including the wives and children.[205]
That fraternal polyandry, called Thibetan, may have existed in Arabia, the passage of Strabo, which I have previously quoted in regard to promiscuity, would suffice to establish; but Arab writers expressly attest it, and notably Bokhâri (vi. 127), according to whom the number of polyandrous husbands was not allowed to exceed ten; besides this, various customs of more modern date, as, for example, the passing of the widow, by heritage, to the relatives of the husband, seem to arise from it. Moreover, even at the present day in Arabia, the father cannot give his daughter to another if the son of his brother demands her, and the latter has the right to obtain her at a lower price;[206] this is the right of pre-emption applied to the woman.
It seems, indeed, as if these were the vestiges of an antique fraternal polyandry, and it is in fact of fraternal or Thibetan polyandry that Strabo speaks. Has this fraternal patriarchal polyandry been preceded by a matriarchal polyandry, after the mode of the Naïrs—a polyandry which did not make the woman the property of the husbands? Without being able to give a direct proof of this, we may, however, consider it as very probable. In the present day the partial marriages, by which the women of the Hassinyeh Arabs engage themselves for some days of the week only, strongly resemble the matriarchal polyandry of the Naïrs, and temporary marriage, or mot’a, of the ancient Arabs approaches nearly to it also.
It is this kind of marriage, in all probability, that the prophet means when he inveighs against “fornication.”
By the mot’a marriage the woman does not leave her home; her tribe preserves the rights it has over her, and her children do not belong to the husband. In short, the conjugal union is only contracted for a fixed time. These mot’a marriages had nothing dishonourable in them, and did not in the least prevent the women from finding fresh husbands when, at the expiration of the lease, they became once more free.[207]
The custom of mot’a marriage was long prevalent in Arabia. Ammianus speaks of it,[208] saying that the wife received a price or indemnity from her temporary husband, and that, if it happened to the contracting parties to wish to continue to live together at the expiration of the time fixed, they inaugurated a fresh and more durable union by a symbolic ceremony, during which the wife offered to her husband a javelin and a tent.
The prophet himself decided with great hesitation to condemn the mot’a marriage. A tradition makes him say that “if a man and a woman agree together, their union should last for three nights, after which they may separate or live together, as they please.”[209]
In fact, the mot’a marriage was only abolished in the time of Omar; and it is important to remark with regard to it, that this mode of marriage, singular as it may appear to us, was, for the woman, very superior to the servitude of the Mussulman harem. It was a personal contract, in which her parents did not interfere, and which did not degrade her from the rank of an independent person to the humiliation of merely being a thing possessed. The mot’a marriage indicates, besides, very free manners, as is attested by a number of facts and traditions, particularly certain religious rites of the Canaanites, the Aramites, and the pagan Hebrews, and also the licentious practices of women and girls in the temple of Baalbek.
By degrees the mot’a marriage gave place to a definite marriage, the ba’al marriage, by which the young girl went to live with her husband and owed him fidelity. Marriages of this kind were sought at first by the chiefs, to whom they assured alliances. As a consequence these unions became honourable, and dethroned the ancient matrimonial custom.[210] Henceforth the women who continued to live in the ancient mode were dishonoured, and treated as prostitutes, whose dwelling was indicated by a special flag. At the same time the taste for paternity was born in men, and, in case of doubt on this matter, sages whose profession it was, declared the signs by which a man could recognise his own offspring.[211]
I have quoted or made a summary of nearly all the information that has reached us on the subject of ancient and modern polyandry. From thence we may conclude that in no way are we authorised to consider this form of conjugal union as having been general. Still it has become a necessity in a good number of gross societies. It has specially prevailed in countries badly supplied with food, where the struggle for existence was severe, where warlike conflicts with neighbouring tribes were incessant, and where, in order to endure, the community was forced to diminish the impedimenta and the useless mouths. In such conditions, men still savage or barbarous have recourse without hesitation all over the world to female infanticide; and as, on the other side, the chiefs and strong men monopolise as many women as possible, the debauchery of unmarried women and polyandrian households become necessary palliatives.
We have seen that there are two principal kinds of polyandry—the matriarchal and patriarchal. In the first, the woman or girl does not quit her family or her gens; sometimes even she is permitted the right of choosing her husbands, who are not related to each other, and upon whom the woman scarcely depends at all, since she remains with her own relations, and bears children for them.
On the contrary, in the patriarchal polyandry, the woman, captured or bought, is almost entirely uprooted; she leaves her natural protectors to go and live with her husbands, to whom she belongs, who are limited in number, are nearly always brothers or relations, and to whom she cannot be unfaithful without authorisation.
Both forms of polyandric marriage suppose a complete absence of modesty, of sexual reserve and moral delicacy. But we know that these qualities can only be the fruit of long culture. In this respect both matriarchal and patriarchal polygamy are equal. But it is important to observe that the first enslaves woman much less. On the other hand, the second already permits the establishment of a sort of paternal filiation, since the husbands are generally of the same blood. For this reason it is reputed superior.
In reality matriarchal polyandry always coincides with the primitive family form, the matriarchate—that is to say, with a system that takes no account of paternal filiation, and leaves the children to the tribe of the mother.
Patriarchal polyandry, on the contrary, already presents the outline of a sort of paternal family, with the right of primogeniture attributed to the first-born.
We shall have to study in detail both the patriarchate and the matriarchate. Polyandry, in its reputedly highest form, the Thibetan, only constitutes a patriarchate of the most imperfect kind, since there is still a confusion of fatherhood.
Proof is still wanting to force us to conclude that matriarchal polyandry must always have preceded the other. This appears to be true for ancient Arabia only. In all other places we can merely suppose it to have been so. We should be equally mistaken if we admitted a priori that patriarchal polyandry implies a degree of civilisation superior to that of the countries where matriarchal polyandry prevails. The ancient Arabs, of whom Strabo speaks, practised fraternal polyandry, and yet we know that they were scarcely civilised, they were cannibals, and so ferocious that their wives accompanied them in combats in order to despatch and mutilate the wounded enemies. These furies made themselves necklaces and bracelets for their ankles with the nose and ears of a dead enemy,[212] and sometimes even they ate his liver.
In conclusion, polyandry is an exceptional conjugal form, as rare as polygamy is common. It must be classed with experimental and term marriages. With our European ideas on conjugal fidelity, obligatory by the right of proprietorship, we can scarcely conceive even of the possibility of this perfect absence of jealousy, this placidity of the co-husbands. It is indelicate, doubtless. But how shall we describe our morality and the laws that give to the deceived husband the right of life and death over his faithless companion, and in this respect bring us down to the level of the savage? Do indelicate manners rank lower than ferocious manners? They are both those of the animal.