ship of old. A tribe never eats the animal which is its namesake, using the term 'ila,' hate or dread, in reference to killing it" (D. Livingstone, Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, p. 13). XX. (p. 65). "To this his sister-who was also his principal wifeobjected, being prompted by the instinct of self-preservation. . . . So, gathering together a strong party, she attempted to surprise and kill him in his hut at night. Rumours of these intentions having reached him, he escaped with a mere handful of men, and his sister proclaimed a brother the ruler in his stead" (V. L. Cameron, Across Africa, vol. ii. p. 149). XXI. (p. 66). "When a young (Banyai) man takes a liking to a girl of another village, and the parents have no objection to the match, he is obliged to sit with his knees in a bent position, as putting out his feet towards the old lady would give her great offence. If he becomes tired of living in this state of vassalage, and wishes to return to his own family, he is obliged to leave all his children behind-they belong to the wife. This is only a more stringent enforcement of the law of buying wives' (of allowing) an entire transference of her and her seed into another family. If nothing is given, the family from which she has come can claim the children as part of itself; the payment is made to sever this bond. From the temptations placed here before my men, I have no doubt that some prefer to have their daughters married in that way, as it leads to the increase of their own village" (D. Livingstone, Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, p. 622). XXII. (p. 79). "The men are so gallant as to have made over all property to the women, who in return are most industrious, weaving, spinning, brewing, planting, sowing, in a word, doing all work not above their strength. When a woman dies the family property goes to her daughters, and when a man marries he lives with his wife's mother, obeying her and his wife" (Hodgson, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. xviii. p. 707). XXIII. (p. 81). "The worst feature in the manners of the people... is the laxity of their marriages; indeed, divorce is so frequent that their unions can hardly be honoured with the name of marriage. The husband does not take his bride to his own home, but enters her household, or visits it occasionally; he seems merely entertained to continue the family to which his wife belongs " (H. Yule, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. xiii. p. 624). XXIV. (p. 86). Among the Limboos (India), a tribe near Darjeeling, the boys become the property of the father on his paying the mother a small sum of money, when the child is named and enters his father's tribe girls remain with the mother, and belong to her tribe " (Sir J. Lubbock, The Origin of Civilisation, p. 149). XXV. (p. 86). "When it has previously been agreed on, the bride is carried home. The poverty of the bridegroom, however, often renders it necessary for him to remain with his wife's father for some time, to whom he becomes as a slave, until by his work he has redeemed this bride. .. Children born out of wedlock, and the produce of Limboos and Lepchas, are called 'Koosaba.' Boys become the property of the father on his paying the mother a small sum of money, when the child is named and enters his father's tribe; girls remain with the mother, and belong to her tribe" (A. Campbell, Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. ix. p. 603). XXVI. (p. 91). "When rule is strictly followed, the successor of a deceased king is his next brother; failing whom, his own eldest son, or the eldest son of his eldest brother, fills his place. But the rank of mothers and other circumstances often cause a deviation from the rule. I am acquainted with several cases in which the elder brother has yielded his right to the younger, with a reservation as to power and tribute, becoming a man second only to the king" (T. Williams and J. Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, 1870, p. 18). XXVII. (p. 91). "Rank is hereditary, descending through the female; an arrangement which arises from the great number of wives allowed to a leading chief, among whom is found the widest difference of grade" (Ibid., p. 26). XXVIII. (p. 92). "Vasus cannot be considered apart from the civil polity of the group, forming as they do one of its integral parts, and supplying the high-pressure power of Fijian despotism. In grasping at dominant influence the chiefs have created a power which, ever and anon, turns round and gripes them with no gentle hand. It is not, however, in his private capacity, but as acting under the direction of the king, that the Vasu's agency tends greatly to modify the political machinery of Fiji, inasmuch as the sovereign employs the Vasu's influence, and shares much of the property thereby acquired. Great Vasus are also Vasus to great places, and, when they visit these at their superior's command, they have a numerous retinue and increased authority. A public reception and great feasts are given them by the inhabitants of the place which they visit; and they return home laden with property, most of which, as tribute, is handed over to the king (Ibid., p. 28). XXIX. (p. 98). "Where the common stock (of land) is limited, it is necessary to make rules for its enjoyment; but where all can have as much as they want, no one would take the trouble to make rules, and no one would submit to them if made (J. D. Mayne, Treatise on Hindu Law and Usage, p. 198). XXX. (p. 103). "On the principle of participation already stated, any bandhu who offers a cake to his maternal ancestors will be the sapinda, not only of those ancestors, but of all other persons whose duty it was to offer cakes to the same ancestors. But the maternal ancestors of A may be the paternal or maternal ancestors of B; and in this manner A will be the bandhu, or bhinna-gotra sapinda of B, both being under an obligation to offer to the same persons" (Ibid., p. 478). XXXI. (p. 129). "As among other gregarious animals, the unions of the sexes were probably, in the earliest times, loose, transitory, and in some degree promiscuous. . . . The men of a group must either have quarrelled about their women and separated, splitting the horde into hostile sections; or, in the spirit of indifference, indulged in savage promiscuity. That quarrels and divisions were of frequent occurrence cannot be doubted. These were the first wars for women, and they went to form the habits which established exogamy. And whether quarrels arose or not, we are led to contemplate groups indulging in a promiscuity more or less general. The quarrels must have been between sections of the hordes rather than between individuals. No individual at that stage could well carry off a woman, isolate himself, and found a family" (J. F. McLennan, Studies in Ancient History, pp. 131-134). XXXII. (p. 131). "The earliest human groups can have had no idea of kinship. We do not mean to say that there ever was a time when men were not bound together by a feeling of kindred. The filial and fraternal affections may be instinctive. They are obviously independent of any theory of kinship, its origin, or consequences; they are distinct from the perception of the unity of blood upon which kinship depends; and they may have existed long before kinship became an object of thought.... Previously individuals had been affiliated not to persons, but to some group. The new idea of blood-relationship would more readily demonstrate the group to be composed of kindred than it would evolve a special system of blood-ties between certain of the individuals in the group. The members of a group would now have become brethren. Once a man has perceived the fact of consanguinity in the simplest case, namely, that he has his mother's blood in his veins, he may quickly see that he is of the same blood with her other children. If the paternity of a child were usually as indisputable as the maternity, we might expect to find kinship through males acknowledged soon after kinship through females " (Ibid., pp. 121–124). XXXIII. (p. 131). "Heterogeneity as a statical force can only have come into play when a system of kinship led the hordes to look on the children of their foreign women as belonging to the stocks of their mothers; that is, when the sentiments which grew up with the system of kinship became so strong as to overmaster the old filiation to the group (and its stock) of the children born within it " (Ibid., p. 184). XXXIV. (p. 146). "What is to be done, that the name of the aged or dead man be not put out on earth nor his lot placed in jeopardy beyond the grave? Now all ancient opinion, religious or legal, is strongly influenced by analogies, and the child born through the Niyoga is very like a real son. Like a real son, he is born of the wife or the widow; and, though he has not in him the blood of the husband, he has in him the blood of the husband's race. The blood of the individual cannot be continued, but the blood of the household flows on. It seems to me very natural for an ancient authority on customary law to hold that under such circumstances the family was properly continued" (Sir H. S. Maine, Early Custom and Law, p. 107). XXXV. (p. 154). “Sekeletu, according to the system of the Bechuanas, became possessor of his father's wives, and adopted two of them; the children by these women are, however, in these cases, termed brothers. When an elder brother dies, the same thing occurs in respect of his wives; the brother next in age takes them, as among the Jews, and the children that may be born of those women he calls his brothers also. He thus raises up seed to his departed relative” (D. Livingstone, Missionary Travels in South Africa, p. 185). XXXVI. (p. 180). "All the tribes possessing the Turanian system describe their kindred by the same formula, when asked in what manner one person was related to another. A descriptive system precisely like the Aryan always existed both with the Turanian and the Malayan, not as a system of consanguinity, for they had a permanent system, but as a means of tracing relationships" (L. H. Morgan, Ancient Society, p. 484). XXXVII. (p. 251). "Because the moon was called measurer, or even carpenter, it does not follow that the earliest framers of languages saw no difference between a moon and a man. Primitive men, no doubt, had their own ideas, very different from our own; but do not let us suppose for one moment that they were idiots, and that, because they saw some similarity between their own acts and the acts of rivers, mountains, the moon, the sun, and the sky, and because they called them by names expressive of those acts, they therefore saw no difference between a man, called a measurer, and the moon, called a measurer, between a real mother, and a river called the mother " (Max Müller, Origin of Religion, p. 193). "Our problem is not, how language came to personify, but how it succeeded in dispersonifying " (Ibid., p. 194). "We see how what is called the irrational element in mythology is due to a misunderstanding of ancient names, and how, so far from real events being turned into myths, myths have there, too, been turned into accounts of real events" (Max Müller, Introduction to the Science of Religion, p. 280). |