710 REPORT—1904. 
fertility. Population kept down by Nature; life short but easy. The Indian 
matriarchal state. Its chief racial (caste) divisions: the great horizontal division 
into caste and casteless ; the great vertical cross-division into east-coast men and 
west-coast men, or patriarchalists and matriarchalists. Extremely primitive 
religious, social, and marital relationships among the indigenous population. 
Effects of early immigration of Aryan patriarchalists, The matriarcliate as a 
working social system. (a) Advantages: Leads to love marriages, terminable at 
pleasure, and leaving the mother the custody of the children ; facilitates natural 
selection ; secures the liberty of woman. (4) Disadvantages: Desertion of wife. 
The system conflicts with the natural affection of father for child, and the desire 
to provide for wife and children independent of the matriarchal clan. Position of 
the wife on the death of the husband. Impoverished clans. 
Effect of progress on the matriarchate. Helpless position of wife and children 
on death of husband. Neglect by brother and headman of clanswomen and 
children, who become dependent on the father’s gifts for their comforts, education, 
and start in life, Great difficulty in alienating or even developing the land of tbe 
clan owing to the necessity for getting the consent of every clansman. The 
matriarchate puts the husband in the position of tenant at will, never secure from 
eviction in favour of a successful rival. Nor is the wife ever sure of her husband’s 
faithfulness, Consequent dislike of the system by both husband and wife in cases 
of true love marriages. 
Effects of a further influx of patriarchal families. The Brahman patriarchalist 
contempt for matriarchalism. This disgusts the matriarchal man. 
Tendency for the matriarchate to pass into the patriarchate when the latter is 
the highest system known as practicable, owing to the unsettled state of society. 
Advantages of the patriarchate. The matriarchate as a political form, Matri- 
archal monarchical succession: its nature and peculiarities. The monarch’s 
children cannot succeed ; hence he cannot so well train his successor. Danger of 
splitting the nation into factions. Great difficulty which consequently conironts 
the ruler. Consolidation of matriarchal tribe states into matriarchal country 
states. Risk of a breach of administrative continuity on a change of the suc- 
cession. Peculiar system of adoption. Dangers of regencies. 
The progressive matriarchal state. The matriarchate and the education of 
women ; the patriarchate and female ignorance. Rapid material and intellectual 
progress of Travancore and Cochin. The patriarchal-matriarchal feud. The 
matriarchalist as natural man. The outlook. Attempts to modify the matri- 
archate. Revolt against the matriarchate very marked during the last twenty- 
five years, 
4, An Anthropological View of the Origin of Tragedy. 
By Professor W. Rineuway, JA. 
In the case of Greek tragedy scholars were agreed until recently (1) that it 
originated in the worship of Dionysus; (2) that it was invented by the Dorians; 
(8) that the Satyric drama was invented by the same Dorians; (4) that the thymele 
was from the outset the altar of Dionysus. 
All these propositions are either wholly or in part untrue. 
(1) Dionysus was a newcomer in Greece. In Homer he is a Thracian deity, 
and his great Thracian sanctuary was his oracle among the Satre, an aboriginal 
melanochroous tribe, of lax social habits. The Satyrs and Bacche are simply 
the young men and women of the Satre in their native dress and behaviour, 
Similar orgies are practised by modern savages to ensure fertility and good crops, 
and similar rites are traceable in early Greece, e.g. the ‘tragic dances’ in honour 
of the pre-Achzan Adrastus at Sicyon (in the very region where the Dorians are 
said to have invented tragedy), which Herodotus (v. 67, when rightly inter- 
preted) describes as being subsequently transferred to Dionysus by Cleisthenes. 
The dramatic celebration of the death of Scephrus at Tegea (Pausanias, viii. 53) and 
the ceremonies held to expiate the massacre of the Phoceans (Herodotus, i. 167) 
