"2. Communal Marriage. — Bachofen and M'Lennan, two of the most devoted students of marriage among the savages, will have it that the primitive condition of man was one of jiure Iletuirism, or, as it might \>qy- haps be conveniently Englished, "communal marriage," where every man and Avoman in a small community were regarded as equally married to one another. Of course none of our readers will be misled by the use of the word " primitive." It is not our province here to enter into a discussion on primeval man [see Pre- Ada.mites] ; we use the word with reference to the lowest condition of imchristiunized man, satisfied, as we stated at the beginning of our subject, that the mar- riage relation, as it exists among civilized men, is due solely to the influence of divine revelation — man's no- blest educator. The most extravagant form of commu- nism we find related of the Techurs of Oude. "They live together almost indiscriminately in large commu- nities, and even when the people are regarded as mar- ried the tie is but nominal" (\\'atson and Kaye, People of India, ii, 85). In the Andaman Islands, we are told by Sir Edward Belcher (Trans. Ethn. Soc. v, 45), it is the custom for man and woman to remain together un- til the child is weaned, when they separate as a matter of course, and each seeks a new partner. Among the Southals, one of the aboriginal tribes of India, marriages take place once a j'ear, mostly in January. "For six days all the candidates for matrimony live together in promiscuous concid)inage, the introductory rite to the marital relation; for only after this are the separate couples regarded as ha'ving established their right to marry" (\\ atson and Kaye, i, 2), Among the Todas, of the Hawaian race, when a man marries a girl, she becomes the wife of all his brothers as they successively reach manhood ; and they also become the husbands of all her sisters, as they become old enough to marry. (Comp. here Ethn, Journ. 1867, p. 286, on a practice among the Sioux and other North American Indians.) Among the Greenland Esquimaux it is related that •■those are reputed the best and noblest tempered who, without any pain or reluctancy, will lend their friends their wives" (^Egede, Hist. Greenland, p. 142), This custom of wife-lending is, however, by no means con- lined to the inhabitants of Greenland, but prevails among North and South American Indians, Polynesians, East- ern and Western negroes, Arabs, Abyssinians, Kaffirs, Mongols, Tutski, etc. (see Lubbock, p. 89), and is prac- ticed especially as an act of hospitality. Plutarch will have it that the custom of lending wives existed also among the Ivomans. Nor must it be forgotten that it was held one of the essentials of the model Platonic re- public that " among the guardians, at least, the sexual arrangements shoidd be under public regulation, and the monopoly of one woman by one man forbidden" (Bain, Mental and Moral ^Science ; comp. Karnes, Hist, of Man, ii, .")0). See also Pkostitute. A very peculiar "custom is found among tlie Xassaniyeh Arabs. They practice what migiit be appropriately termed three-quarter mar- riage ; i. e. the woinan is legally married for three davs out of four, remaining perfectly free for the fourth (Lub- bock, ]). 54). In Ceylon, according to Davy {Ceylon, p, 286), marriages are provisional for the first "fortnight, at the expiration of which they are either amudled or con- firmed. Among the Keddies of Soutliern India a still more singular custom prevails. " A young woman of six- teen or twenty years of age may be married to a boy of five or six years. She, however, lives with some other adult male — perhaps a maternal uncle or cousin — but is not allowed to form a connecTion with the' father's rela- tives; occasionally it may be the boy-husband's father himself— that is, the woman's father-in-law. Should there be children from these liaisons, they are fathered
on the boy-husband. When the boy grows up the wife is cither old or past child-bearing, when he, in his turn, takes up with some other boy's wife in a manner precisely similar to his own, and procreates children for the bov- hnsband" (Shortt, Trans. Ethnol. Soc, New Series, v'ii, 194),
o. 3far7-iage hj Purchase. — Those who believe, like Tyler, M'Lennan, Bachofen, and Lubbock, that the com- munal system of the marital relation existed in the pri- meval state, hold that out of it arose the system of indi- vidual marriage. We who depend upon the guidance of a written revelation are rather of the opinion that it is the influence of Christian civilization upon savage life that has led some of them to prefer individual to communal marriage. It is true that the marriage by capture has done much to bring about individual mar- riage, but it is by no means clear to us that even then the practice was not borrowed from Christianized peo- ple directl}' or indirectly. We certainly do not believe, with Lessmg, that nations develop without external in- fluences, that civilization is the possession of every peo- ple, and that it is constantly progressive. The condi- tion of the American savage, and the remnants of an early and high civilization, bear witness to the contrarj\ Yet we believe, with Brinton (Jfijfhs of the Kexc World, p. 5), that "religious rites are living commentaries on religious beliefs;" and that, while the idea of God does not and cannot proceed from the external world, it nev- ertheless finds its historical origin, also, in the desper- ate struggle for life, in the satisfaction of the animal wants and passions, in those vulgar aims and motives which possessed the mind of the primitive man to the exclusion of everything else. It is pretty clear that with all pre-Christian nations the modes of getting a wife were the same with those of acquiring any other species of propertj^ — capture, gift, sale. The contract of sale may be said to be at the foundation of the mar- I'iage relation in every system of ancient law. When daughters belonged to parents as goods, they were part- ed with only on the principles of fair exchange. Usually the contract was between the heads of families, the in- tending bride and bridegroom not being consulted. As to the marriage ceremonies, they then were those and no other which were necessary to complete and evidence a sale — delivery, on the price being paid, and " the tak- ing home." It was never thought of that the children should be consulted, and allowed to act on their likings. Just so the savage has been in a measure addicted to the purchase of his wife, with only this difference, how- ever, that the property is secured by the buyer for him- self. In Sumatra, e. g., there were formerly three per- fectly distinct kinds of marriage : the " Jugur," in which the man purchased the woman; the "Ambel-anak," in which the ^^•oman purchased the man (see below, Poli/- andry') ; and the " Semando." in which they joined on terms of equality (comp. jMarsden, ///jt^ of Sumatra, p. 262 sq.). "Among low races," says Lubbock (p. 08), "the wife is indeed literally the property of the husband, as Petruchio says of Catharine :