apart were classed with relatives of the same generation. Since the
first group of correspondences had been explained by a marriage between
persons one generation apart, it should have been obvious that the
classing together of persons two generations apart might have been
the result of marriage between persons two generations apart. The
idea of a society in which marriages between those having the status
of grandparents and grandchildren were habitual must have seemed
so unlikely that, if it entered my mind at all, it must have been
at once dismissed. The clue only came later from a man named John
Pantutun, a native of the Banks Islands, who had been a teacher in
Pentecost. In talking to me he often mentioned in a most instructive
manner resemblances and differences between the customs of his own
island and those he had observed in Pentecost. One day he let fall
the observation with just such a manner as that in which we so often
accuse neighbouring nations of ridiculous or disgusting practices, “O!
Raga![14] That is the place where they marry their granddaughters.” I
saw at once that he had given me a possible explanation of the peculiar
features of the system of the island. By that time I had forgotten
the details of the Pentecost system, and it occurred to me that it
would be interesting, not immediately to consult my note-books, but
to endeavour to construct a system of relationship which would be the
result of marriage with a granddaughter, and then to see how far my
theoretical construction agreed with the terminology I had recorded.
The first question which arose was with which kind of granddaughter
the marriage had been practised, with the son’s daughter or with the
daughter’s daughter, and this was a question readily answered by means
of a consideration arising out of the nature of the social organisation
of Pentecost.
[14] This is the Mota name for Pentecost Island.
The society of this island is organised on the dual basis with
matrilineal descent in which a man must marry a woman of the opposite
moiety. Diagram 3, in which _A_ and _a_ stand for men and women of
one moiety, and _B_ and _b_ for those of the other moiety, shows that
a marriage between a man and his son’s daughter would be out of the
question, for it would be a case of _A_ marrying _a_. It was evident
that the marriage, the consequences of which I had to formulate, must
have been one in which a man married his daughter’s daughter.
[Illustration: DIAGRAM 3.
A = b
|
|
+-------------+-------------+
| |
B = a A = b
| |
+------+------+ +-------+-------+
| | | |
A a B b
]
It would take too long to go through the whole set of relationships,
and I choose only a few examples which I illustrate by the following
diagram:
[Illustration: DIAGRAM 4.
A = b
|
|
D = c
|
|
+-------+-------+
| | |
e F f
]
This diagram shows that if _A_ marries _e_, _c_, who previous to the
marriage had been only the daughter of _A_, now becomes also his wife’s
mother; and _D_, who had previously been his daughter’s husband, now
becomes his wife’s father. Similarly, _F_, who before the new marriage
was the daughter’s son of _A_, now becomes the brother of his wife,
while _f_, his daughter’s daughter, becomes his wife’s sister. Lastly,
if we assume that it would be the elder daughters of the daughter who
would be married by their grandfathers, _e_, who before the marriage
had been the elder sister of _F_ and _f_, now comes through her
marriage to occupy the position of their mother’s mother.
When, after making these deductions, I examined my record of the
Pentecost terms, I found that its terminology corresponded exactly with
those which had been deduced. The wife’s mother and the daughter were
both called _nitu_. The daughter’s husband and the wife’s father were
both _bwaliga_. The daughter’s children were called _mabi_, and this
term was also used for the brother and sister of the wife. Lastly, the
mother’s mother was found to be classed with the elder sister, both
being called _tuaga_.
For the sake of simplicity of demonstration I have assumed that a man
marries his own daughter’s daughter, but through the classificatory
principle all the features I have described would follow equally well
if a man married the granddaughter of his brother, either in the narrow
or the classificatory sense. There was one correspondence, according
to which both the husband’s brother and the mother’s father were
called _sibi_, which does not follow from the marriage with the own
granddaughter, but would be the natural result of marriage with the
daughter’s daughter of the brother--_i.e._, with a marriage in which
_e_ was married by _A’s_ brother.
I hope these examples will be sufficient to show how a number of
features which might otherwise seem so absurd as to suggest a system of
relationship gone mad become natural and intelligible, even obvious,
if it were once the established practice of the people to marry the
daughter’s daughter of the brother.
Such inquiries as I was able to make confirmed the conclusion that the
Pentecost marriage was with the granddaughter of the brother rather
than with the daughter of the daughter herself. After I had been put
on the track of the explanation by John Pantutun I had the chance of
talking to only one native of Pentecost, unfortunately not a very
good informant. From his evidence it appeared that the marriage I had
inferred from the system of relationship even now occurs in the island,
but only with the granddaughter of the brother, and that marriage with
the own granddaughter is forbidden. The evidence is not as complete as
I should like, but it points to the actual existence in the island of a
peculiar form of marriage from which the extraordinary features of its
system of relationship directly follow.
When I returned to England I found that this marriage was not unique,
but had been recorded among the Dieri of Australia,[15] where, as I
have already mentioned, it is associated with peculiar features of
nomenclature resembling those of Pentecost.
[15] Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 164, 177.
I must again ask, how are you going to explain the features of the
Pentecost system psychologically? What psychological resemblance is
there between a grandmother and a sister, between a mother-in-law and a
daughter, between a brother-in-law and a grandfather? Apart from some
special form of social relationship, there can be no such resemblances.
Further, if there were such psychological resemblances, why should we
know of their influence on nomenclature only in Pentecost and among the
Dieri? The features to be explained are definitely known to exist in
only two systems of the world, and it is only among the peoples who use
these two systems that we have any evidence of that extraordinary form
of marriage of which they would be the natural consequence.
* * * * *
I have now tried to show the dependence of special features of the
classificatory system of relationship upon special social conditions.
If I have succeeded in this I shall have gone far towards the
accomplishment of one of the main purposes of these lectures. They
have, however, another purpose, viz., to inquire how far we are
justified in inferring the existence of a social institution of which
we have no direct evidence when we find features of the nomenclature
of relationship which would result from such an institution. I have
now to enter upon this part of my subject, and I think it will be
instructive to take you at once to a case in which I believe that an
extraordinary form of marriage can be established as a feature of the
past history of a people, although at the present moment any direct
evidence for the existence of such a marriage is wholly lacking.
When I was in the interior of Viti Levu, one of the Fijian islands,
I discovered the existence of certain systems of relationship which
differed fundamentally from the only Fijian systems previously known.
Any features referable to the cross-cousin marriage were completely
absent, but in their place were others, one of which I have already
mentioned, which brought into one class relatives two generations
apart. The father’s father received the same designation as the
elder brother, and the son’s wife was called by the same term as the
mother. As I have already said, my first conclusion was that these
terms were the survivals of forms of social organisation resembling
the matrimonial classes of Australia, but as soon as I had worked out
the explanation of the Pentecost system, it became evident that the
Fijian peculiarities would have to be explained on similar lines. At
first I thought it probable that the difference between the Pentecost
and Fijian systems was due to the difference in the mode of descent
in the two places. For long I tried to work out schemes whereby a
change from the matrilineal descent of Pentecost to the patrilineal
condition of Fiji could have had as one of its consequences a change
from a correspondence in nomenclature between the mother’s mother
and the elder sister to one in which the common nomenclature applied
to the father’s father and the elder brother. It is an interesting
example of the strength of a preconceived opinion, and of some
measure of the belief in the impossibility of customs not practised
by ourselves, that for more than two years I failed to see an obvious
alternative explanation, although I returned to the subject again and
again. The clue came at last from the system of Buin, in the island
of Bougainville, recorded by Dr. Thurnwald.[16] The nomenclature of
this system agreed with that of inland Fiji in having one term for the
father’s father and the elder brother, but since the people of Buin
still practice matrilineal descent, it was evident that I had been on
a false track in supposing the correspondence to have been the result
of a change in the mode of descent. Once turned into a fresh path by
the necessity of showing how the correspondence could have arisen out
of a matrilineal condition, it was not long before I saw how it might
be accounted for in a very different way. I saw that the correspondence
would be the natural result of a form of social organisation in which
it was the practice to marry a grandmother, viz., the wife of the
father’s father. Not only did this form of marriage explain the second
peculiar feature of the Fijian system, viz., the classing of the son’s
wife with the mother, but it would also account for several features of
the Buin system which would otherwise be difficult to understand.
[16] _Zeitsch. f. vergleich. Rechtswiss._, 1910, xxiii., 330.
[Illustration: DIAGRAM 5.
A = b
|
|
C = d
|
|
+-------+-------+
| | |
E F f
]
If, as shown in Diagram 5, _E_ marries _b_, the wife or widow of his
father’s father, he, who had previously been the elder brother of _F_
and _f_, now comes to occupy the position of their father’s father,
while _d_, the mother of _E_, will now come to stand to him in the
relationship of son’s wife.
I need only mention here one of the features of the Buin system which
can be accounted for by means of this marriage. The term _mamai_ is
used, not only for the elder sister and for the elder brother’s wife,
but it is also applied to the father’s mother; that is, the wife of
the elder brother is designated by the same term as the wife of the
father’s father, exactly as must happen if _E_ marries _b_, the wife
of his father’s father. A number of extraordinary features from two
Melanesian islands collected by two independent workers fit into a
coherent scheme if they have been the result of a marriage in which
a man gives one of his wives to his son’s son during his life, or in
which this woman is taken to wife by her husband’s grandson when she
becomes a widow. If the practice were ever sufficiently habitual to
become the basis of the system of relationship, we can be confident
that it is the former of these two alternatives with which we have to
do.
If you are still so under the domination of ideas derived from your own
social surroundings that you cannot believe in such a marriage, I would
remind you that there is definite evidence from the Banks Islands that
men used to hand over wives to their sisters’ sons. It is not taking us
so much into the unknown as it might appear to suppose that they once
also gave their wives to their sons’ sons.
I have taken this case somewhat out of its proper place in my argument
because the evidence is so closely connected with that by means
of which I have shown the relation between features of systems of
relationship and peculiar forms of marriage in Melanesia. I have now to
return to the more sober task of considering how far we are justified
in inferring the former existence of marriage institutions when we
find features of systems of relationship of which they would have been
the natural consequence. It is evident that, whenever we find such a
feature as common nomenclature for a grandmother and a sister or for a
cross-cousin and a parent, it should suggest to us the possibility of
such marriage regulations as those of Pentecost and the Banks Islands.
But such common designations might have arisen in some other way,
and in order to establish the existence of such forms of marriage in
the past history of the people, we must have criteria to guide us
when we are considering whether a given feature of the terminology of
relationship is or is not a survival of a marriage institution.
I will return to the cross-cousin marriage for my examples. The task
before us is to inquire how far such features of relationship as exist
in Fiji, Anaiteum or Guadalcanar, in conjunction with the cross-cousin
marriage, will justify us in inferring the former existence of this
form of marriage in places where it is not now practised.
If there be found among any people all the characteristic features of
a coastal Fijian or of an Anaiteum system, I think few will be found
to doubt the former existence of the cross-cousin marriage. It would
seem almost inconceivable that there should ever have existed any other
conditions, whether social or psychological, which could have produced
this special combination of peculiar uses of terms of relationship. It
is when some only of these features are present that there will arise
any serious doubt whether they are to be regarded as survivals of the
former existence of the cross-cousin marriage.
One consideration I must point out at once. Certain of the features
which follow from the cross-cousin marriage may be the result of
another marriage regulation. In some parts of the world there exists a
custom of exchanging brothers and sisters, so that, when a man marries
a woman, his sister marries his wife’s brother. As the result of this
custom the mother’s brother and the father’s sister’s husband will come
to be one and the same person, and the father’s sister will become also
the mother’s brother’s wife.
This form of marriage exists among the western people of Torres
Straits,[17] and is accompanied by features of the system of
relationship which would follow from the practice. The mother’s brother
is classed with the father’s sister’s husband as _wad-wam_, but there
is an alternative term for the father’s sister’s husband and there
was no evidence that the mother’s brother’s wife was classed with
the father’s sister. It seemed possible that the classing together
of the mother’s brother and the father’s sister’s husband was not a
constant feature of the system of relationship, but only occurred in
cases where the custom of exchange had made it necessary. The case,
however, is sufficient to show that two of the correspondences which
follow from the cross-cousin marriage may be the result of another
kind of marriage. If we accept the social causation of such features
and find these correspondences alone, it would still remain an open
question whether they were the results of the custom of exchange or
of the marriage of cross-cousins. The custom of exchange, however, is
wholly incapable of accounting for the use of a common term for the
mother’s brother and the father-in-law, for the father’s sister and the
mother-in-law, or for cross-cousins and brothers- or sisters-in-law.
It is only when these correspondences are present that there will
be any decisive reason for inferring the former existence of the
cross-cousin marriage.
[17] _Rep. Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_, vol. v., pp. 135
and 241.
The first conclusion, then, is that some of the features found in
association with the cross-cousin marriage are of greater value than
others in enabling us to infer the former existence of the cross-cousin
marriage where it no longer exists. Next, the probability that such
features as I am considering are due to the former presence of the
cross-cousin marriage will be greatly heightened if this form of
marriage should exist among people with allied cultures. An instance
from Melanesia will bring out this point clearly.
In the island of Florida in the Solomons it is clear that the
cross-cousin marriage is not now the custom, and I could discover
no tradition of its existence in the past. One feature, however, of
the system of relationship is just such as would follow from the
cross-cousin marriage. Both the wife’s mother and the wife of the
mother’s brother are called _vungo_.
Florida is not only near Guadalcanar where the cross-cousin marriage
is practised, (the two islands are within sight of one another), but
their cultures are very closely related. In such a case the probability
that the single feature of the Florida system which follows from the
cross-cousin marriage has actually had that form of marriage as its
antecedent becomes very great, and this conclusion becomes still more
probable when we find that in a third island, Ysabel, closely allied
in culture both to Florida and Guadalcanar, there is a clear tradition
of the former practice of the cross-cousin marriage although it is now
only an occasional event.
Again, in one district of San Cristoval in the Solomons the term
_fongo_ is used both for the father-in-law and the father’s sister’s
husband, and _kafongo_ similarly denotes both the mother-in-law and
the mother’s brother’s wife. This island differs more widely from
Guadalcanar in culture than Florida or Ysabel, but the evidence for
the former existence of the marriage in these islands gives us more
confidence in ascribing the common designations of San Cristoval to the
cross-cousin marriage than would have been the case if these common
designations had been the only examples of such possible survivals in
the Solomons. Speaking in more general terms, one may say that the
probability that the common nomenclature for two relatives is the
survival of a form of marriage becomes the greater, the more similar is
the general culture in which the supposed survival is found to that of
a people who practise this form of marriage. The case will be greatly
strengthened if there should be intermediate links between the supposed
survival and the still living institution.
When we find a feature such as that of the Florida system among a
people none of whose allies in culture practise the cross-cousin
marriage, the matter must be far more doubtful. In the present state
of our knowledge we are only justified in making such a feature the
basis of a working hypothesis to stimulate research and encourage us
to look for other evidence in the neighbourhood of the place where the
feature has been found. Our knowledge of the social institutions of the
world is not yet so complete that we can afford to neglect any clue
which may guide our steps.
I propose briefly to consider two regions, South India and North
America, to show how they differ from this point of view.
The terms of relationship used in three[18] of the chief languages
spoken by the people of South India are exactly such as would follow
from the cross-cousin marriage. In Tamil[19] the mother’s brother, the
father’s sister’s husband, and the father of both husband and wife are
all called _mama_, and this term is also used for these relatives in
Telegu. In Canarese the mother’s brother and the father-in-law are both
called _mava_, but the father’s sister’s husband fails to fall into
line and is classed with the father’s brother.
[18] I know of no complete record of the terminology of the fourth
chief language of South India, Malayalam.
[19] I take my data from the lists compiled for Morgan by the Rev. E.
C. Scudder and the Rev. B. Rice, Morgan’s _Systems ..._, pp. 537-566.
These lists are not complete, giving in some cases only the terms used
in address. They agree in general with some lists compiled during the
recent Indian Census which Mr. E. A. Gait has kindly sent to me.
Similarly, the father’s sister, the mother’s brother’s wife and the
mother of both wife and husband are called _atta_ in Telegu and _atte_
in Canarese, Tamil here spoiling the harmony by having one term,
_attai_, for the father’s sister and another, _mami_, for the mother’s
brother’s wife and the mother-in-law. Since, however, the Tamil term
for the father’s sister is only another form of the Telegu and Canarese
words for the combined relationships, the exception only serves to
strengthen the agreement with the condition which would follow from the
cross-cousin marriage.
The South Indian terms for cross-cousin and brother- and sister-in-law
are complicated by the presence of distinctions dependent on the sex
and relative age of those who use them, but these complications do
not disguise how definitely the terminology would follow from the
cross-cousin marriage. Thus, to take only two examples: a Tamil man
applies the term _maittuni_ to the daughters of his mother’s brother
and of his father’s sister as well as to his brother’s wife and his
wife’s sister, and a Canarese woman uses one term for the sons of her
mother’s brother and of her father’s sister, for her husband’s brother
and her sister’s husband.
So far as we know, the cross-cousin marriage is not now practised by
the vast majority of those who use these terms of relationship. If the
terminology has been the result of the cross-cousin marriage, it is
only a survival of an ancient social condition in which this form of
marriage was habitual. That it is such a survival, however, becomes
certain when we find the cross-cousin marriage still persisting in
many parts of South India, and that among one such people at least,
the Todas,[20] this form of marriage is associated with a system of
relationship agreeing both in its structure and linguistic character
with that of the Tamils. I have elsewhere[21] brought together the
evidence for the former prevalence of this form of marriage in India,
but even if there were no evidence, the terminology of relationship is
so exactly such as would follow from the cross-cousin marriage that we
can be certain that this form of marriage was once the habitual custom
of the people of South India.
[20] Rivers, _The Todas_, 1906, pp. 487, 512.
[21] _Journal Royal Asiatic Society_, 1907, p. 611.
While South India thus provides a good example of a case in which we
can confidently infer the former existence of the cross-cousin marriage
from the terminology of relationship, the evidence from North America
is of a kind which gives to such an inference only a certain degree of
probability. In this case it is necessary to suspend judgment and await
further evidence before coming to a positive conclusion.