Vol. X, No. 9.] Marriage Customs of the Cochin Castes. 311 

 [N.S.] ■ 



countries from the time of Muhammad to our own days. 1 It is 

 absolutely unknown among the Syrian Christians. 



Polygamy was at one time the privilege of the princes and 

 the great, and now the custom tolerates a second wife only in 

 the case of sterility of the first. 



Polyandry. — Among the Nayars of ancient times in Mala- 

 bar, Cochin and Travancore there was polyandry of the matri- 

 archal type, with the primitive family form — matriarchate 

 which corresponds to a system that takes no account of pater- 

 nal filiation and leaves the children to the family of the 

 mother. Another form of polyandry prevailing in the Nor- 

 thern parts of the State among the Thandans, Kanyans, and 

 Panans is the fraternal polyandry, in which the eldest brother 

 takes a woman of the caste as wife, and allows his younger 

 brother a share in the wife, who must otherwise have had to 

 live unmarried. As the first married wife in polygamous 

 families is the chief wife, so the first husband in the poly- 

 androus families of the fraternal type is the chief husband ; 

 while the younger brothers have the position of, if the term 

 may be used, " the male concubines." Fraternal polyandry 

 is said to be superior to the polyandry of the Nayar type ; 

 because the paternal filiation assures them a sort of collective 

 paternal parenthood, since the fathers are of the same blood.* 

 The custom is prevailing to a certain extent in a few low 

 castes. 



The very striking coincidence of polyandry with the 

 poverty of the people among whom it prevails has to be care- 

 fully noted. It was a most polite measure for a set of poor 

 people who could not get sufficient food for their maintenance. 

 Another cause of polyandry is the desire to keep the common 

 patrimony from being distributed among the number of 

 brothers. 



Leverite is the name given to the obligation imposed by 

 custom or law on the brother of the deceased husband to 

 marry his sister-in-law when she became a widow. The custom 

 of the leverite, which for a long time has been thought pecu- 

 liar to the Jews, is very widely spread, and is found among 

 races most widely differing from one another. The custom is 

 in vogue among most of the primitive tribes all over the world. 

 The code of ivfanu imposes the leverite even on the brother of 

 a betrothed man who dies : when the husband of a younger 

 girl happens to die after the betrothal, let the brother of the 

 husband take her for wife. The object of this legal precept 

 in India is to give the posterity to the deceased brother, but 

 a verse seems to limit the duration of the cohabitation with 



1 Islam by Ameer Ali Syed, pages 29-30. 



4 The Historv of Human Marriage, chap, xxi 



