ON POLYANDRY. 805 



whether the associated husbands are brothers, or are not related to 

 each other. Wherever, therefore, we find the custom of " raising 

 up seed " to a deceased brother, we are justified in holding that 

 the people who observe it were once polyandrous. It could not be 

 feigned spontaneously that the children born of the new union 

 were the offspring of the deceased brother. Such a practice could 

 not come into being unless the people who observe it had formerly 

 passed through a phase of polyandry, and had been accustomed to 

 feign all the children born to the associated brothers to be the off- 

 spring of the eldest brother. The following are examples of this 

 custom : 



Among the Makololo, when an elder brother dies, the brother 

 next in age takes his wives, " as among the Jews, and the children 

 that may be born of these women he calls his brother's also. He 

 thus raises up seed to his departed relative." * Among the Gallas, 

 says Bruce,f " when the eldest brother dies, leaving younger broth- 

 ers behind him, and a widow young enough to bear children, the 

 youngest brother of all is obliged to marry her ; but the children 

 of the marriage are always accounted as if they were the eldest 

 brother's." Among the Zulus, when a son inherits his father's 

 property, if any of his father's widows are young enough, his 

 uncles are appointed to raise up seed to the heir's house that is, 

 the brothers take the wives of the deceased brother, and the off- 

 spring of these unions are reckoned as children of the deceased. 

 This custom, called ukeengena, is now, however, modified, and the 

 widow may, if she chooses, marry some other man ; but, in this 

 case, the new husband pays a certain sum in cattle to the estate of 

 the deceased. J The Kirghis used strictly to observe this custom, 

 but among them, as among the Zulus, it is now dying out ; though, 

 should a widow marry a man in her late husband's tribe, other 

 than her brother-in-law, the man has to pay her brother-in-law 

 a fine for the slight done him by her preferring another to him- 

 self.* 



The case of the Jews must be familiar to everyone. In Deut. 

 xxv, 5, we read, " If brethren dwell together, and one of them 

 die and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry with- 

 out unto a stranger : her husband's brother shall go in unto her, 

 and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an husband's 

 brother unto her." 6. " And it shall be, that the first-born which 

 she beareth shall succeed in the name of his brother which is 

 dead, that his name be not put out of Israel." That this was an 

 old custom of the Jews we know from the case of Onan (Genesis, 

 xxxviii), where, after Onan has avoided raising up seed to his 



* Livingstone's Travels in South Africa, p. 185. $ Incwadi Yami, p. 39. 



f Travels, etc., vol. ix, p. 225. * Russian Central Asia, vol. i, pp. 329-330. 



