MOTHERRIGHT 273 



growth of civilisation vengeance has gradually come to 

 be concentrated upon the offender only. Under 

 mother-right relatives through the mother were alone 

 liable to the duty of vengeance ; and where the father 

 or a member of his kin was guilty, he would not be 

 spared in pursuit of the end in view. It may be con- 

 fidently said that a few generations ago an Ingush 

 would not have scrupled indeed, would have regarded 

 it as his duty to avenge his kin even upon his own 

 father, just as Chopa's son does, if not in a more extreme 

 fashion. 



The subject of the blood-feud is so important in 

 this connection that it is worth while following it 

 further. In so doing we will confine ourselves to 

 some of those cases in which our reports bring out 

 the position of the husband and father in strong con- 

 trast to his wife and her kin, including his children. 

 Starting then from the Caucasus, among the Chechen 

 (a tribe related to the Ingush) the murderer of a son, 

 although he might be subjected to no blood-feud or 

 ransom, was compelled formally to make his peace 

 with the relations of the victim's mother ; and in fact 

 it sometimes happened that the other sons (where 

 there were any) avenged their brother's death on 

 their own father. Among the Kumiks if one murdered 

 his brother by a different mother a blood-feud arose 

 between him and the surviving brothers born of the 

 mother of the murdered man. Blood-feud cannot arise 

 between members of the same kin ; hence if a brother 

 by the same mother were murdered there would 

 of course be none. In southern Daghestan the 

 murderer of a wife was required to pay her kinsmen 

 ransom ; and if she left sons by him they shared 



