Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/337

Rh to disappear, as modern methods of taxation tend to introduce modifications in the economic environment, with corresponding changes in social structure. The Bachelors' Hall is an institution which is found in many parts of the world. In this area it is universal in some form or other. In Meithei literature reference to the Pākhonvāl and to the Ningonvāl to the Pākhonlakpa, to the Nahārakpa, and to the Ningonlakpa is constant, thus proving that there they had the Bachelors' Hall, the Spinsters' Hall, and officials to look after the young unmarriageable males, the young marriageable males, and the unmarried girls. From the Nāgas of the north to the Lushais on the south comes evidence that these houses for the men were strictly forbidden to women.

It seems that married men were bound to live in the Men's House till old age, visiting their wives by stealth and at night only. I know of cases where the men live in the Men's House till marriage, and we have, as I have pointed out above, the household system where the paterfamilias, his wife, and children live together under one roof, until the sons and daughters marry and depart. This separation of the sexes, whether in its modified form or in its severer mode, is a social fact of importance related to social structure. The earliest differentiation of function in economics follows the line of cleavage by sex. In these communities where the men must wive themselves from another clan, the women, if married, are ex hypothesi daughters of another clan, and, if unmarried, are at least prospectively associates of some other clan. The permanent element is therefore small. Yet women are