234 KINDRED GROUP-MARRIAGE 



connected by blood with him. The correlative to father- 

 in-law, namely, daughter-in-law or son-in-law, might then 

 be expected to have a different and perhaps much later 

 origin. I am fully aware of the many difficulties of this 

 account, but I doubt whether they are more or harder 

 than those which any one will meet with who starts 

 from svapura, the father-in-law, and tries, not only to 

 deduce all the sveJcr terms from it anthropologically and 

 philologically, 1 but by asserting the recognition in a 

 position of honour of the husband's father among the 

 primitive Aryans, will also have to overthrow all the 

 evidence that can be collected in favour of matriarchal 

 custom and kindred group-marriage. 



We now turn to the terminology for brother-in-law 

 and sister-in-law beyond that connected with the term 

 schwager already referred to. For sister-in-law we have 

 in Greek <yd\ow<;, ydXax;, with the Latin glos, both of 

 these denote the husband's sister, the term which is 

 possibly related to <yd\a, as duhitd to dadhan appears 

 as Slavonic zluva, Czech zelva, but not otherwise. 



We find another series of terms spreading through 

 several Aryan languages, but not universally, namely, 

 Greek elvdrepes, Latin Janitrices, for the wives of two 

 brothers. There is also a Sanskrit ydter (for yndter) and 

 Slavonic jetry for husband's brother's wife. 2 Janitrices 

 is possibly only an attempt at elvdrepe^, and we find it 

 glossed dS\<f>cov yvvaiKes. Isidore gives us a quaint deri- 

 vation : " Janitrices dicuntur uxores duorum fratrum, 



1 For example, the use of schwager in Swabia for co- wooers, rivals lor the 

 hand of the same lady ! 



2 Fick connects Lithuanian gente, sister-in-law, also with this root (see 

 p. 225). 



