MOTHERRIGHT 265 



sisters. This is the rule of the Papuan tribe settled 

 about Mowat on the Daudai coast of British New 

 Guinea, 1 and indeed wherever motherright is pure and 

 uncomplicated by rules which prescribe or presume 

 the marriage of two or more sisters respectively to two 

 or more brothers. Such children may accordingly 

 intermarry. This permission however sometimes tends 

 to be restricted, as among the Bayaka, of whom we 

 are told that " marriage between children of the same 

 mother is prohibited ; between children of the same 

 father it occurs, but is considered unseemly/' 2 On the 

 other hand it sometimes persists for a time, even a 

 considerable time, among patrilineal peoples. By the 

 laws of Athens children of the same father, but 

 apparently not of the same mother, were allowed to 

 intermarry. 3 The same rule prevailed in Japan. 4 

 According to Hebrew legend Sarah was the daughter 

 of Abraham's father, but not of his mother. And 

 when Amnon, King David's son, sought to ravish his 

 half-sister Tamar, in the course of her protest and 

 struggles she said : "Now therefore I pray thee, speak 

 unto the king ; for he will not withhold me from 

 thee." 5 That is: while she resented the indignity 



1 Haddon,/. A. I. xix. 467. The Yorubas of the Slave Coast of 

 West Africa now reckon descent through the father. They perhaps 

 owe the change to intercourse with the Mohammedan tribes of the 

 interior. Be this as it may, so strong even yet is the influence of 

 uterine kinship that children of the same father by different mothers 

 are by many natives hardly considered true blood-relations (Ellis, 

 Yoruba, 176). 



2 J. A. I. xxxvi. 45. 



3 Maclennan, Studies, i. 223, quoting the Leges Atticce. 



4 Rev. Hist. Rel. 1. 328 note; Aston, Shinto^ 249. Traces are 

 also found among the Slavs (Kovalevsky, 13). 



6 Gen. xx. 12 ; 2 Sam. xiii. 13. 



