MARITAL JEALOUSY 109 



The marriage customs of the Australian natives 

 have been the subject of much discussion by anthro- 

 pologists during recent years. We need not here 

 concern ourselves with their disputes, for the main 

 facts I am about to cite are, so far as I am aware, un- 

 challenged. In the Dieri tribe of South Australia, 

 when the young women come to maturity there is 

 a ceremony called Wilpadrina, in which the elder men 

 claim and exercise a right to them, and that in the 

 presence of the other women. 1 This, it may be said, 

 is a puberty rite intended to introduce the girls to the 

 status of women, and not to be repeated. But it is 

 not all. The tribe, like other Australian tribes, is 

 divided socially into a number of groups of men on 

 the one side and women on the other, the members 

 of which from birth stand in the relation of noa (that 

 is, potential spouses) to one another, and marriage 

 outside the group is forbidden. The potential marriage 

 may t be converted into the tippa-malku relation 

 (actual marriage) by formal betrothal in childhood or 

 apparently at any time after. The tippa-malku re- 

 lation is not however exclusive appropriation. It is 

 qualified by that of pirrauru, an institution by which 

 either or both of the spouses may be allotted and re- 

 allotted from time to time to a group of secondary 

 spouses of the appropriate sex, who are noa to them. 

 The persons who are pirrauru to one another may 

 always exercise conjugal rights in the absence of 

 the tippa-malku spouse. On certain occasions a 

 tiirrauru husband may even have prior rights to a 

 tippa-malku husband ; and he has the duty of protecting 

 his pirrauru wife during her tippa-malku ljusband's 

 1 Howitt, 664. < 



