SOME REMAEKABLE CUSTOMS. 277 



markable. It is to be noticed that, in this special imposture, 

 we have not only the belief that a disease is caused by some 

 extraneous substance inside the body, but we have also this 

 belief turned to account in remote parts of the world by the 

 same knavish trick. It is hard even to see a reason for the be- 

 lief, and much harder to imagine the sucking-cure to have grown 

 independently out of it in several places. 



In the civilized world, the prohibition from marrying kindred 

 has usually stopped short of forbidding the marriage of cousins 

 german. It is true that the Roman Ecclesiastical Law is, at 

 least in theory, very different from this. Hallam says, " Gre- 

 gory I. pronounces matrimony to be unlawful as far as the 

 seventh degree, and even, if I understand his meaning, as 

 long as any relationship could be traced, which seems to have 

 been the maxim of -strict theologians, though not absolutely 

 enforced."^ But this disability may be reduced by the dis- 

 pensing power to the ordinary limits; and in practice the 

 Society of Friends go farther than the Canon Law, for they 

 really prohibit the marriage of first cousins. If, however, we 

 examine the law of marriage among certain of the middle and 

 lower races scattered far and wide over the world, a variety of 

 such prohibitions will be found, which overstep the practice, 

 and sometimes even approach the theory of the Roman Church. 

 The matter belongs properly to that interesting, but difiicult 

 and almost unworked subject, the Comparative Jurisprudence 

 of the lower races, and no one not versed in Civil Law could do 

 it justice ; but it may be possible for me to give a rough idea of 

 its various modifications, as found among races widely separated 

 from one another in place, and, so far as we know, in history. 



In India, it is unlawful for a Brahman to marry a wife whose 

 clan-name or gotra (literally, " cow-stall ") is the same as his 

 own, a prohibition which bars marriage among relatives in the 

 male line indefinitely. This law appears in the Code of Manu 

 as applying to the three first castes, and connexions on the fe- 

 male side are also forbidden to marry within certain wide limits. 

 The Abbe Dubois, nevertheless, noticed amoug the Hindoos a 

 tendency to form marriages between families already connected 



' Hallam, ' Middle Ages,' uh. vii. part ii. See Du Cange, s. v. "generatio." 



