Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. (IA journalofstraits8386roya).pdf/203

 In the case of Ngai Lan Shia the scholarly pen of Mr. Justice Ebden has illuminated and summed up the whole views of our Courts on the subject of Chinese secondary marriages: and an article such as this would be quite incomplete and ineffective without reprinting in it the following passage from his judgment.

"The Chinese equivalent of the English word "marriage" in its most careful sense is used only of the man and only with reference to his union with the t'sai, the principal wife, chosen for him by his father or by the person under whose patria potestas he happens to be.

"If the man enters on a second kit-fat union [full marriage] during the lifetime of his t'sai he is punishable with 100 blows of the bamboo (the usual instrument) and the union is null and void.

"The man who degrades a t'sai to the level of a t'sip or raises a t'sip to the level of a t'sai is punishable with 100 or 90 blows according to the respective offences, and the ladies in each case are to be replaced in the position to which they are originally entitled. The process of elevation or reduction is not defined but the provision indicates that the t'sip has some position from which she can be wrongly elevated and to which she can be reduced.

"The t'sai becomes a relative of her husband's family and a 'senior to be treated with respect.' The t'sip does not enjoy these privileges. She cannot share the man's honours. She can attain to honours only through her sons.

"A man having married a t'sai at his father's choice may buy or 'acquire' as many t'sips as he pleases at his own. The t'sai is chosen from his own rank: he may take his t'sips from a lower class. But the t'sip may not any more than the t'sai be taken from the Seh [family name] of the man.

"As to this the "Book of Rites" mentions an interesting injunction by Confucius:—

"'In marrying a t'sai do not marry anyone of the same family name so as to make a distinction.

"'So in the purchase of a t'sip whose name is unknown find it out by divination.'

"This because the t'sip may be drawn from a class in which girls are the subject of barter and sale in their childhood with the result that her Seh may have been lost.

"The Manchu Code accepts the t'sip as having an established position in the Chinese family system and protects her in that position though it does not define it.

"Scholars and lexicographers have not hesitated to define the concubinage of the patriarchs as amounting to legitimate marriage though implying an inferior condition of the wife to whom the