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
particular with more recent converts to orthodox Hinduism from the
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.