wholly or chiefly occupied with the rearing of cattle. In the former case a diminution in the number of a household is a loss which it is difficult to supply, and they are chiefly concerned in keeping up their numbers, that is, in retaining their hold on the individual. But in a cattle-breeding community men make it their first object to increase the number of stock. In the former community the head of the family opposes the departure of his daughter, and seeks to induce her wooer to become one of the household; but in the latter he will sell her as early, and for as high a price as possible. The agricultural community will therefore display a natural tendency to the female line of descent, which we accordingly find in America; the rearing of cattle is favourable to the male line, as in the case of the Bechuanas, where this tendency offers a strong resistance to all those tendencies which endeavour to introduce the female line into the polygamous family. The Hindu communities are almost exclusively agricultural; but this was not the case with our Aryan forefathers, who were wholly occupied with the rearing of cattle. Starting from the assumption that the Hindu clans were developed from families and family groups, an organization into clans which Lyall describes as still existing in Rajputana,1 the word used for a clan reminds us of conditions analogous to those of Bechuanaland. Gotra (a clan), as well as the Bechuana kotla, signifies a cow-place; and the part which it plays in Bechuanaland probably affords a true picture of the part it played in the times of our remote ancestors. Squatters establish themselves round the huts of the large proprietor, and although not entitled to inherit with those who are really his children, they are all called his children. They hold together for the sake of protection, and the sons 1 Lyall, Asiat. Stud., p. 152. The process described by Lyall is so far unsatisfactory that he speaks throughout of the institution of the clan as already existing, and says nothing of its origin. remain with their father, in the hope of becoming his heirs. It was a custom of comparatively late date that sons who withdrew from their father's authority should not inherit from him, just as a Bechuana is disinherited who migrates to another kotla. The religious character of these cow-places, as centres for the mystical ideas of each separate circle, and their use as a burial-place for the dead patriarch, to the exclusion of all others, present facts from which it is not difficult to explain the Aryan worship of ancestors, the worship of the hearth, the Lares and Penates. The further development of ancestor-worship leads also to the further development of groups in an agnatistic direction, and the right of inheritance becomes inseparable from the duty of offering sacrifices to the dead. We wholly accept McLennan's view, which is vehemently opposed by Maine, that the marriage of the father and mother is not the basis of agnation, but that this is due to the father's patriarchal power. Since the Aryan clans are exogamous, like nearly all other clans, the child's assignment to the clan must have been on one side only, either agnatistic or uterine, and we find nothing to indicate that a female line of descent had given place to the agnation now found in Aryan races. Every attempt to point out a primitive female line is based upon the erroneous belief that through agnation the child was severed from all relations to the mother and her family. It is, however, evident that agnation only excludes the child from its mother's clan and from the concerns of that clan. McLennan bases the opinion that the Hindus at one time observed the female line of descent on the marriage prohibitions which existed among them. According to Manu, a Hindu might not marry within his father's clan, and the subsequent edicts of Kulluka extended this prohibition to the mother's clan. As this 1 Maine, Anc. Law, p. 149. 2 McLennan, Pat. Theor., p. 219. latter edict was issued by the later authority, it seems impossible to deduce from it the prior existence of maternal kinship, yet this is what McLennan ventures to do. He is of opinion that the bond which held together the individual members of the same gotra became weak as soon as the gotra included large and scattered groups only sharing the same family name. Hence he thinks it probable that the prohibition dated from a remote period, when the gotra constituted a small and closely united community. It could not have been invented by Kulluka, but it was merely more strictly defined, after having been in general use. McLennan naturally brings forward all the signs of the great importance ascribed by Manu to the mother as confirmations of his opinion; for instance, that when Manu speaks of both parents, he always puts the mother first. It is, however, difficult to ascertain the antiquity of this prohibition of marriage into the maternal clan.1 I am myself disposed to think that it was of early date, without, however, attaching much importance to the matter. There is nothing surprising in such a prohibition; the facts of religion and kinship are at first identical, but as they gradually become more distinct, a medley of ideas arise, in which this prohibition necessarily has its origin. We mentioned above the Sapinda and Samanodoka degrees of kinship, and must now consider them somewhat more closely. Persons who are associated in the chief sacrifice to the dead are Sapinda, so that their relations are always mutual. The man who offers sacrifice is Sapinda to the dead man to whom it is offered, and the converse is also the fact. Each man serves as the centre of seven persons, of whom he is the first, and the other six are his Sapinda. But these six are not all Sapinda to each other, for the Sapinda of each consist in three superior and three inferior members. We must also observe that the dead Hindu not only profits 1 Schrader, p. 385. from the sacrifices offered to himself, but from those which were not offered to him, but to persons to whom he himself had been bound to sacrifice during his lifetime.1 Since such sacrifices were offered to the mother's father, etc., those who do not stand in agnatistic relations to each other may mutually become Sapinda, and these cognates are termed Bandhus. The maternal ancestors of the agnate may, however, be either the paternal or maternal forefathers of the Bandhu, and the agnate thus becomes the Bandhu or Bhinna-gotra (member of another clan) Sapinda to the Bandhu, since both sacrifice to the same person. This, however, is a later consequence of the religious development of the Hindu community. As a rule, and in primitive times, all agnatistic Sapindas and Samanodokas started from very closely cognate Sapindas (Bhinna-gotra).3 A Bandhu never takes precedence of an agnate of the same degree. If, as J. D. Mayne observes, the Sapinda did not originally imply that persons were associated by sacrificing to the dead, but by being parts of the same body, we shall easily understand that man and wife become Sapinda because their union has produced one body; and from this beginning the other conditions of maternal kinship can be explained without difficulty. It is therefore not necessary, although always possible, that Kulluka's prohibition against intermarriage with the maternal clan was based upon a prevalent custom; he may only have deduced the consequence of such an act from the ideas which were entertained by his contemporaries. Dargun, another writer on this subject, has much stronger reasons for showing that the female line was formerly observed by the Germans. He undertakes to establish the thesis, "that the ancient Aryans at the time of their dispersion regarded kinship through the mother as the sole or chief basis of blood-kinship, and 2 Ibid., p. 478. Appendix XXX. Ibid., p. 487. 1 J. D. Mayne, p. 477. all their family rights were governed by this principle."1 This thesis is, indeed, not quite adequately supported by the facts which he adduces, but it seems to him warranted by the fact that the peoples among whom he traces the existence of the female line must otherwise have adopted it instead of agnatism after the dispersion, and he asserts that throughout the world there is not a single instance of such a transition, while there are, on the other hand, numerous examples of the converse transition from the mother's to the father's line. Dargun, as usual, regards the doubtful paternity of primitive times as the original cause of the female line, and he lays special stress on the fact that the relationship between mother and child appears to consist only in the tie of blood, while, on the other hand, a juridical character, derived from the conditions of holding property, forged the link between father and child, and only gave place to a deeper feeling as time went on. "In the same proportion as the popular conscience began to recognize the tie through the father as equal to the tie of blood through the mother, men began also to use the names, hitherto only applied to the maternal kinsfolk, for the paternal kinsfolk in the same degree." "3 Our foregoing investigation contradicts these reflections in every respect. We have endeavoured to show that the female line was, as a rule, a transition form, and it is a familiar thought that the definition of kinship was an essentially juridical act, produced by the exclusive and exogamous character of the clan. It is a question which we must leave unsolved for the present, whether the primitive consciousness of peoples enabled them to see any distinction between the tie of blood and the legal tie; it is a question which would throw no light on Dargun's views, since his argument only regards the tie of blood as a tie of the heart, of sentiment, and mutual sympathy. Dargun states that the Germans always 1 Dargun, p. 13. Ivid., p. 76. 3 Ibid., p. 75. |