A RUN THROUGH KATHIAWAR. 257 



neither ethnologists nor philologists have yet de- 

 cided. 



Yet there are points about the Kathis which in- 

 dicate a Turanian origin. A probable though by no 

 means a certain trace of polyandry is to be found in 

 a regular custom which they have of making the 

 widow of the elder brother become the wife of the 

 next surviving brother ; and so on, should the second 

 brother die and the remarried widow survive. There 

 is something more here than the mere adding a 

 brother's widow to the number of the surviving 

 brother's wives, which is a custom that exists in 

 many countries. Among the Kathis, the widow 

 comes down as the head wife of the surviving 

 brothers successively ; and this looks very like a 

 remnant of polyandry, but polyandry divested of its 

 most obnoxious feature. The three great divisions 

 of the Kathi tribes namely, the "Wala, the Khuman, 

 and the Kachar are said to point towards a Turanian 

 origin ; but the reasons for this conclusion have not 

 been assigned, and the names of most of the individ- 

 ual tribes, such as Lain, Ivadadad, and Somasarya, 

 are evidently Aryan. They are worshippers of the 

 sun ; but no attempt has been made to identify them 

 with the Zoroastrians, and there does not appear to 

 be any ground for doing so. In the division of pro- 

 perty at death all the sons inherit equally, and this 

 affords a reason why the Kathi chiefs do not care to 

 have any number of sons. Daughters do not inherit 



VOL. v. R 



