266 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



offered by her brother out of mere passing lust, 

 marriage with him would have been legitimate and 

 honourable. It is not necessary to contend that these 

 stories are narratives of literal fact. There is no 

 trustworthy evidence that they are. At the same 

 time they are of high antiquity, and must have 

 originated in a social condition where the incidents 

 were not so far removed from daily life as to be 

 incredible or even surprising. In that social condition 

 kinship must have been counted only through the 

 mother, or matrilineal having passed into patrilineal 

 descent certain vestigial customs must have remained 

 over from the prior stage. The incidents cited are 

 therefore justly regarded as among the witnesses 

 preserved to us that before the dawn of history the 

 ancient Hebrews had traversed the stage of mother- 

 right. 



Among the inhabitants of Southern India the 

 Nambutiri Brahmans are the aristocracy. They are a 

 sacerdotal and landowning caste. Next to them in 

 rank are the Nayars whose organisation and customs 

 have often been the subject of discussion by anthro- 

 pologists. They seem to have been in former times 

 the military caste of the western coast. They present 

 a typical case of motherright, but one that has been 

 emphasised and preserved for the advantage of the 

 Nambutiri Brahmans, since their virtual subjugation 

 by that intrusive caste. The Nambutiris are of 

 Aryan origin. Like all other Indian Aryans they are 

 patrilineal. In order to maintain their supremacy, the 

 Brahmans everywhere follow a custom known as 

 hypergamy, by which a man may marry or have sexual 

 relations with a woman of lower rank, but no man of 



