Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/194

170 of human history. If this be (as we believe it) a favourable specimen of the evidence afforded by the careful collections Mr. Crooke has made, it is clear that we cannot look to this part of India for any decisive answer to the questions put by current controversy.

Most of the tribes described in these volumes trace descent and succession to property through the father only, though the mother is recognised for the purpose of sexual prohibitions. Polyandry is tolerated in very few. A number of marriage rites, however, point to a very different state of things in former times. Among many tribes the bridegroom's father's sister's husband acts as match-maker and performs parts of the ceremony. Among others, prominent parts are taken by the bridegroom's or bride's maternal uncle or sister's husband. Mr. Crooke often points out that this interference is a relic of matriarchy. It would seem to be so wherever the maternal uncle intervenes. But in the other cases it appears to go beyond this, and to be a relic of group-marriage. The father's sister's husband, or the sister's husband of either of the principals, would have no place in any community organised on the basis of mother-right alone. But where group-marriage obtains, the father's sister's husband would be the mother's brother; the bridegroom's sister's husband would be the bride's brother; the bride's sister's husband would be the bridegroom's brother, and would be entitled, jointly with the bridegroom, to the bride. The cases in which the sister of the bride or bridegroom takes part are not, perhaps, quite so strong. Where, for instance, the bridegroom's sister bars his entrance to the marriage-chamber until satisfied with a gift, we probably have a simple survival of the transition from mother-right to father-right. This, however, can hardly apply to the custom among the Kols, by which the bride and bridegroom are anointed for five days prior to the wedding, the latter by his sister, but the former by her sister-in-law, that is to say, her brother's wife, who in group-marriage would be the same person as the bridegroom's sister. The Kols have another curious custom: the men do not carry about their own babies, but "if two brothers live together they generally each carry about the child of the other." Female kinship would not account, as the author conjectures, for this