Part 12 (1/2)

The Dieri rule is that of the eight-cla.s.s tribes. The person designated as the proper spouse for a male is his mother's mother's brother's daughter's daughter, in other words, the grandchildren of brother and sister intermarry. This, as we have already seen, is precisely the effect of the eight-cla.s.s rules. We are therefore confronted with three possibilities. Either the Dieri regulations are aberrant or they have introduced these rules under the influence of the neighbouring eight-cla.s.s system; or the eight-cla.s.s organisation is a systematisation of the Dieri rule, adopted perhaps to facilitate the determination of marriageableness or otherwise in the case of persons residing at some distance from each other and therefore less likely to be acquainted with genealogical niceties than the members of a small community. Now if the second of these hypotheses is correct, it is by no means clear why the Dieri, having in view the attainment of the object of the eight-cla.s.s system, did not simply adopt it; for this we can find no reason; and it is clearly more reasonable on other grounds to suppose that these regulations are of independent origin. But we know the eight-cla.s.s rule to have arisen from a division within a generation, which the Dieri rule is not. Therefore the latter must be sporadic.

The same is probably true of the Urabunna, but here our information is very scanty and the precise working of the rules is far from clear. What happens is that an elder brother (A) of a woman (B) marries an elder sister (D) of a man (C); the daughter of this elder sister (D) is the proper mate for the son of the younger sister (B) of her husband; this younger sister's husband is the younger brother, C. Now the term elder brother, elder sister, does not seem to refer to age; the rule appears to be--once an elder brother, always an elder brother from generation to generation.

We learn from Spencer and Gillen, that all the women of a generation in the one phratry, and presumably within the right totem only, are to a man either _nupa_ (=marriageable) or _apillia_. In the case given by Dr Howitt the younger sister is _nupa_ to the younger brother, the elder to the elder brother; but we do not learn how elder and younger are distinguished, if it is not by descent. Apparently it cannot be by descent, however; for we find that the son of the younger brother and sister marries the daughter of the elder brother and sister. As to what would happen if the younger brother and sister have a daughter, the elder a son, we have no information; but apparently they cannot marry.

Such a daughter must find the son of two people who stand to her father and mother as they stood to A and D.

From this example it is clear that the boundaries of the _nupa_ and _apillia_ groups are not fixed in a given group of women; it is not possible to divide the women and the men into elder brothers and sisters on the one hand, younger brothers and sisters on the other. But if this is the case, we are quite in the dark as to the meaning of the marriage regulations.

One thing however seems certain; viz., that the Urabunna regulations do not give the same result as the four-cla.s.s regulations. With them the division is within the generation. There is no cla.s.s of women, who, with their descendants, are the normal spouses of a cla.s.s of men, with their descendants. That being so, the Urabunna case can hardly throw light on the genesis of the four-cla.s.s system.

Among the Urabunna, however, like the Wathi-Wathi, we find the rule that a man must marry in his own generation; and this is _prima facie_ the meaning of the four-cla.s.s rule. It is true that the origin of the eight-cla.s.s rule was not what its _prima facie_ meaning suggests, viz., the desire to prevent the marriage of cousins, for we know that it originated in the distinction between elder and younger sisters. But no similar theory appears to fit the case of the four-cla.s.s tribes. No division within the generation could possibly produce an alternation of generations.

The Red Indians have in many cases different names for the elder and younger sister; the Hausa impose on persons standing in these relations certain prohibitions and avoidances, which are not the same for both elder and younger; in Australia a man may speak freely to his elder sisters in blood, but only at a distance to his tribal _ungaraitcha_. To his younger sisters, blood and tribal, he may not speak save at such a distance that his features are indistinguishable. In many parts the elder brother has special rights with regard to the younger, and many similar customs might be quoted[139].

The question why marriage within the generation--the rule of four-cla.s.s and two-phratry tribes alike--should have come into existence is a complicated one and involves that of the origin of kins.h.i.+p terms. If we take a crucial case of kins.h.i.+p terminology, we find that a child applies the same term to its actual mother as to all the women whom its father might have married, to its potential mothers in fact. If therefore we have to choose between the gradual extension of the terms from the single family to the group or their original application to a group, this instance seems decisive in favour of the latter theory.

Now if marriage was originally not ”group” but individual, a question to be fully discussed in later chapters, we can hardly doubt that parent-child marriage was forbidden or perhaps instinctively avoided.

But this would be equivalent to prohibiting marriage with one of a number of men or women embraced under a common kins.h.i.+p term. In the lower culture generally and especially among the Australians there is a tendency to follow things out to their logical conclusions. If this were done in the present case, the result would be to extend the prohibition to all the persons embraced under the kins.h.i.+p term.

In any case the natural tendency in a small group would be to marry within the generation, and this might readily become crystallised in the kins.h.i.+p terms.

The eight-cla.s.s system, as we have seen, resulted from the distinction between elder and younger sister. What is the meaning of this and what a.n.a.logies do we find to it?

Widely extended also are the systems of age-grades. In all parts of the world the men, and sometimes the women, are or have been divided into a.s.sociations, to which reference was made in Chapter I, which begin by being co-extensive with the tribe for all practical purposes, since all pa.s.s through the initiation ceremonies. The various initiation ceremonies during what may be termed the involuntary stage of these a.s.sociations, no less than in their later form of secret societies, determine the rights and duties of the individuals who undergo them. The period at which they take place is determined, broadly speaking, by the age of the individual. It is therefore clear that for the peoples in the lower stage of culture considerations of age are of the highest importance.

We find that in practice the elder brother has much authority, both over the younger brother and the sister. In Victoria he decides whom they are to marry. As we have seen in the tables of terms, the Wathi-Wathi man distinguishes both elder and younger of either s.e.x by special terms, which points to their having special rights or duties[140].

If therefore we cannot see why primitive man should have enacted that the elder rather than the younger, or the daughter of the elder rather than the daughter of the younger, should be preferred, it is at any rate of a piece with his other customs.

From the terms of kins.h.i.+p tabulated above various conclusions have been drawn. It will be seen that a man applies to all the women in the other phratry on the level of his generation the same term as he applies to his actual wife. On this basis it has been argued that at one time all the men in one phratry were united in marriage with all the women in the other within the limits of the generation. Before this again a stage of absolute promiscuity is supposed to have existed. This alternative explanation of the kins.h.i.+p organisations demands to be considered.

FOOTNOTES:

[138] _J.A.I._ XIV, 354; _N. Queensl. Eth. Bull._ VI, 6; Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes_, p. 90.

[139] Morgan, in _Smithsonian Contr._ vol. XVII; _Globus_, LXIX, 3; _Nat. Tribes_, pp. 88-9.

[140] For lists of tribes where this distinction is found see Mathew, _Eaglehawk_, p. 223-4.

CHAPTER X.

TYPES OF s.e.xUAL UNIONS.

Terminology of Sociology. Marriage. Cla.s.sification of Types. Hypothetical and existing forms.

Students of the sociology of white races enjoy conspicuous advantages over those who devote themselves to the investigation of the organisation of races in the lower stages of culture. In the first place they deal with conditions and forms with which they are personally familiar; and this familiarity is shared by those who form the audience, or the reading public, of these investigators, who may thus count on making themselves understood. Even should they find the already existing terminology insufficient, the knowledge of the phenomena enables them to introduce suitable modifications or innovations without fear of causing misunderstanding. It is true that terminology is often loose, but it exists and can be made to express what is meant.