Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/824

804 maxime fratres cum fratribus,et parentes cum liberis; sed si quisunt ex hisnati, eorum habentur liberi a quibusprimum virgines quaeque ductae sunt". In the Irish Nennius we also find direct evidence of its existence. . In Media, according to Strabo, in certain cantons polygamy was ordained by law, while in other cantons the opposite rule was in force: a woman was allowed to have many husbands, and those who had less than five were regarded with contempt. Polyandry receives a partial sanction in the Institutes of Menu, and it is adverted to without reproach in the epic of the Maha-bharata, the heroine of which, Draupadi, was the wife of five Pandu brothers. It existed among the Getes of Transoxiana, the Guanches of the Canary Islands, and the Caribs of the West Indies.

Polyandry thus can not be regarded as exceptional, since we find direct evidence of its existence among so many peoples. But, as has been said, the conditions which alone could have caused it have, in the great majority of cases, passed away: the general rule is for women to be more numerous than men, and it is therefore to the survivals from polyandry, to the practices derived from it and perpetuated through custom, that we must chiefly trust for indications of its former wide distribution. Now, one of the most remarkable customs connected with polyandry is that of a brother taking to wife a deceased brother's widow, and reckoning the children born of the new union as the children of the deceased. This custom originates from the practice, in polyandrous unions, of the children always being considered the offspring of the husband who first espouses the wife. The first husband is considered the head of the household, the family property is vested in him, and all the children are feigned to be his. At his decease the brother next in age succeeds to the headship; but as the children, no matter which of the associated husbands were their true fathers, have always been reckoned the offspring of the first husband, the practice is continued, through custom, even after his death, and children born subsequently are still called his. Thus, in Thibet, the right of choosing the wife belongs to the eldest brother, to whom also all the children of the marriage are held to belong. In Ladak, when the eldest brother marries, the juniors, if they agree to the arrangement, become inferior husbands of the wife; all the children, however, being considered as belonging to the eldest brother. Among the ancient Britons the children of the wife were accounted to belong to the husband who first married her. In Ceylon, the offspring of polyandrous unions are looked upon as the children of the first husband, and that equally