Australian tribes. Much more common is the custom of obtaining a wife by services rendered to her father, the man taking up his abode with the family of the girl for a certain time, during which he works as a servant. But the ordinary compensation for a girl is property paid to her father, or in some cases to her uncle, or to some other relatives as well as to the father. Marriage by exchange or purchase is not only general among existing lower races; it occurs, or formerly occurred, among semi-civilised nations of a higher culture as well-in Central America and Peru, in China and Japan, in the various branches of the Semitic race, in the past history of all so-called Aryan peoples. We have no evidence that it is a stage through which every race has passed; we notice its absence among some of the rudest races with whom we are acquainted. Yet with more reason than marriage by capture, purchase of wives may be said to form a general stage in the social history of mankind. Although the two practices may occur simultaneously, the former seems more often to have succeeded the latter, as barter in general has followed upon robbery. It has been suggested that the transition from marriage by capture to marriage by purchase was brought about in the following way abduction, in spite of parents, was the primary form; then there came the offering of compensation to escape vengeance; and this grew eventually into the making of presents or paying a sum beforehand. The price was a compensation for the loss sustained in the giving up of the girl, and a remuneration for the expenses incurred in her maintenance till the time of her marriage. The girl was regarded more or less in the light of property, to take her away from her owner without his consent was theft. To claim a compensation for her was his right, or even his duty. The Indians in Columbia consider it in the highest degree disgraceful to the girl's family if she is given away without a price; 2 and in certain tribes of California "the 1 Koenigswarter, Étuaes historiques sur le développement de la société humaine, p. 53. Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i. 625. 2 Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, i. 277. Cf. von Weber, Vier Jahre in Afrika, ii. 215 sq. (Kafirs). children of a woman for whom no money was paid are accounted no better than bastards, and the whole family are condemned." 1 "3 With progressing civilisation, however, the practice of purchasing wives has been gradually abandoned, and come to be looked upon as infamous. The wealthier classes took the first step, and poorer and ruder persons subsequently followed their examples. Thus in India, in ancient times, the Âsura form, or marriage by purchase, was lawful for all the four castes. Afterwards it fell into disrepute, and was prohibited among the Brâhmanas and Kshatriyas, whereas it was still approved of in the case of a Vaisya and a Sûdra. But in the Laws of Manu' it is forbidden altogether. It is said there, "No father who knows the law must take even the smallest gratuity for his daughter; for a man who, through avarice, takes a gratuity, is a seller of his offspring.' The Greeks of the historical age had ceased to buy their wives. In Rome confarreatio, which suggested no idea of purchase, was in the very earliest known time the form of marriage in force among the patricians; and among clients and plebeians, also, the purchase of wives came to an end in remote antiquity, surviving as a mere symbol in their coëmptio.* Among the Germans marriage by purchase was abolished only after their conversion to Christianity. In the Talmudic law the purchase of wives appears as merely symbolical, the bride-price being fixed at a nominal amount. In China, although marriage presents correspond exactly to purchase-money in a contract of sale, the people will not hear of their being called a price"; which shows that here, too, some feeling of shame is attached to the idea of selling a daughter. 6 5 We may discern two different ways in which this 1 Powers, pp. 22, 56. Tribes of California, 2 Laws of Manu, iii. 23 sqq. 3 Ibid. iii. 51. Cf. ibid. ix. 93, 98. 4 Rossbach, op. cit. pp. 92, 146, 248, 250, &c. 5 Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, p. 424. 7 Gans, Erbrecht, i. 138. Jamieson, Marriage Laws,' in China Review, x. 78 n.* gradual disappearance of marriage by purchase has taken place. On the one hand, the purchase became a symbol, appearing as a sham sale in the marriage ceremonies or as an exchange of presents; on the other hand, the purchase sum was transformed into the morning gift and the dotal portion, a part-afterwards the whole-being given to the bride either directly by the bridegroom or by her father. These transformations of marriage by purchase have taken place not only in the history of the civilised nations, but among several peoples who are still in a savage or semi-civilised state; and of a few of them it is expressly stated that they consider marriage by purchase a disgraceful practice.1 From marriage by purchase we have thus come to the practice of dower, which is apparently the very reverse of it. But whilst the marriage portion partly derives its origin from the purchase of wives, it does not do so in every case. It serves different ends, often indissolubly mixed up together. It may have the meaning of a return gift. It may imply that the wife as well as the husband. is expected to contribute to the expenses of the joint household. It is also very often intended to be a settlement for the wife in case the marriage be dissolved through the husband's death or otherwise. In the social history of the civilised races the marriage portion has played so prominent a part, that, as we have spoken of a stage of marriage by purchase, we may speak of another and later stage where fathers are bound by custom or law to portion their daughters. The Jews and Muhammedans* consider it a religious duty for a man to give a dower to his daughter. In Greece the dowry came to be thought almost necessary to make the distinction between a wife and a concubine. Isaeus says that no decent man would give his legitimate daughter less than a tenth of his 3 à Athènes,' in Revue de législation et de jurisprudence, xxiv. 152. Potter, Archeologia Græca, ii. 268. Cf. Meier and Schömann, Der attische Process, p. 513 sq. с с 8 property; indeed, so great were the dowers given that in the time of Aristotle nearly two fifths of the whole territory of Sparta were supposed to belong to women.2 In Rome, even more than in Greece, the marriage portion became a mark of distinction for a legitimate wife;3 and though later on Justinian in several of his constitutions declares that dos is obligatory for persons of high rank only, the old custom did not fall into desuetude. The Prussian Landrecht' still prescribes that the father, or eventually the mother, shall arrange about the wedding and fit up the house of the newly-married couple." According to the 'Code Napoléon,' on the other hand, parents are not bound to give a dower to their daughters, and the same principle is generally adopted by modern legislation. It is true that especially in the so-called Latin countries. there is still a strong tendency to dotation, but another feeling, in some measure opposed to it, is gaining ground everywhere. In a society where monogamy is prescribed by law, where the adult women outnumber the adult men, where many men never marry, and where married women. too often lead an indolent life-in such a society the marriage portion in many cases becomes a purchase-sum by means of which a father buys a husband for his daughter, as formerly a man bought a wife from her father. But, as Mr. Sutherland observes, "that pecuniary interests, either on one side or on the other, should conspicuously enter into the motives which lead to marriage becomes repulsive to the increasing delicacy of feeling; and so we find that in cultured communities the dowry dies out, just as the purchase-money declined in the civilised stages. 1 Isaeus, Oratio de Pyrrhi hereditate, 51, P. 43. 2 Aristotle, Politica, ii. 9, p. 1270 a. 3 Laboulaye, Recherches sur la condition civile et politique des femmes, p. 38 sq. Ginoulhiac, Histoire du régime dotal, p. 66. Meier and Schömann, op. cit. p. 513 sq. Ginhoulhiac, op. cit. p. 103. 5 For dos necessaria in Germany during the Middle Ages, see Mittermaier, Grundsätze des gemeinen deutschen Privatrechts, ii. 3. 6 Eccius, in von Holtzendorff, Ency clopädie der Rechtswissenschaft, ii. 414. 7 Code Napoléon, art. 204. 8 See Maine, Early History of Institutions, p. 339. Sutherland, Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct, i. 243. Whilst most of the lower animal species are by instinct either monogamous or polygynous, with man man every possible form of marriage occurs. There are marriages of one man with one woman (monogamy), of one man with many women (polygyny), of many men with one woman (polyandry), and, in a few exceptional cases, of many men with many women.1 race. Among the causes by which the forms of marriage are influenced the numerical proportion between the sexes plays an important part. Polyandry seems to be due chiefly to a surplus of men, though it prevails only where the circumstances are otherwise in favour of it. It presupposes an abnormally feeble disposition to jealousy, and has probably at all times been exceptional in the human There is no solid evidence for the theory set forth by McLennan that it was the rule in early times.3 On the contrary, this form of marriage seems to require a certain degree of civilisation; we have no trustworthy account of its occurrence among the lowest savages. In polyandrous families the husbands are most frequently brothers, and the eldest brother, at least in many cases, has the superiority. It seems a fair conclusion that in such instances polyandry was originally an expression of fraternal benevolence on the part of the eldest brother, or of urgent demands on the part of the younger ones, who otherwise, on account of the scarcity of women, would have to live unmarried. If additional wives were afterwards acquired, they would naturally be considered the common property of all the brothers; and in this way the group marriage of the Toda type seems to have evolved.* Polygyny, also, is to some extent dependent upon the proportion between the sexes. It has been observed in India that polyandry occurs in those parts of the country where the males outnumber the females, polygyny in those 1 Westermarck, op. cit. ch. xx. 2 Ibid. p. 482. 3 McLennan, The Levirate and Polyandry,' in Fortnightly Review, N.S. xxi. 703 sqq. Idem, Studies in 4 Westermarck, op. cit. p. 510 sqq. See also Rivers, Todas, pp. 515, 519, 521. |