ON POLYANDRY. 803 



is thus -widely distributed in India. It also exists among the Cal- 

 mucks, the Australians, and the Iroquois. Humboldt found it 

 among the Avanos and Maypures Indians of the Orinoco, and 

 attributed it to a scarcity of women. 



Both forms exist among the Eskimos of Boothia,* and in Cey- 

 lon. Of the latter, Sirr says : f " Although when polyandry is in- 

 dulged in by the highest caste the husbands are usually brothers, 

 still a man can, with the consent of his wife, bring home another, 

 unrelated to him, who has all the marital rights, and is called an 

 associated husband. In fact, the first husband can bring home as 

 many men as his wife w T ill consent to receive as husbands, and 

 these marriages are recognized by the Kandian laws." Sirr saw a 

 Kandian matron of high caste who was the wife of eight hus- 

 bands who were brothers. In his time polyandry was limited to 

 the province of Kandy ; but Tennant tells us J that it was at 

 one time universal throughout the island, and was extinguished 

 in the maritime provinces by the influence of the Portuguese and 

 Dutch. Here, too, we find that the men are more numerous than 

 the women. By the census of 1821 the number of males exceeded 

 by twenty thousand that of the females. In one district there 

 were only fifty-five women to every hundred men.* 



Erman tells us that polyandry exists in the Aleutian Islands, 

 and among the Koriaks to the north of the Okhotsk Sea, but does 

 not say which form of it. It also exists in western Eskimo 

 Land, among the Garos of the Himalayas, and the Smerenkur 

 Gilyaks in the southeastern corner of Siberia, but the exact form 

 of it is left in doubt. | 



We thus find polyandry existing in the present century in 

 each quarter of the globe. That it should exist at all, considering 

 that the conditions which gave rise to it have almost universally 

 passed away, and that the practice itself is manifestly to the dis- 

 advantage of the males, is a matter for surprise, and is a fresh 

 proof of how enduring is custom. Of its existence in other locali- 

 ties in the past we also have direct evidence. 



According to Polybius, polyandry was practiced in ancient 

 Greece, and in the twelfth book we read that it was an old es- 

 tablished custom in Sparta, where the brothers of a house often 

 had one wife between them. That it existed among the Celtic in- 

 habitants of Great Britain, the well-known passage in Csesar 

 proves : " Uxores habent deni duodenique inter se communes, et 



* Sir J. Ross's Narrative, vol. i, p. S35 ; vol. ii, p. 43. 

 f Ceylon and the Cingalese, vol. ii, p. 162. 



\ Ceylon, vol. ii, p. 428. 



* Heber's Journal, vol. ii, pp. 518, 519. 



| See Journal of the Anthropological Society, London, 1865, p. cccvi; Hooker's Hima- 

 layan Journals, vol. ii, p. 273 ; and Lansdell's Through Siberia, vol. ii, p. 225. 



