128 



EXOGAMY IN CHINA 



Maine, Ancient 

 Law. p. 132. 



Parker, Op. eit., 

 pp. 34-6. 

 Jamieson, 

 Op. eit. p. 95. 

 von Mollendorff 

 Op. eit. pp. 9-10. 



Legge, C.C. 

 Pt. I., Vol. III., 

 P. 195. 



LI Kl. Legge, 

 Op. eit., S.B.E. 

 Pt. Ill, p. 78. 



but that, on the other hand, if a man captured a 

 woman belonging to another tribe he thereby acquired 

 an individual and peculiar right to her, and she became 

 his exclusively, no one else having any claim or pro- 

 perty in her. 



Neither ''female infanticide," nor "promiscuity," 

 nor "communal marriage," nor "polyandry," nor 

 "matriarchy," nor "the tracing of descent through 

 women only (with or without matriarchy)" can in the 

 present state of the debate as to the origin of the 

 human family claim be treated as axioms; and to 

 accept them, as regards the primitive life of the 

 Chinese race, as necessary stages of development would 

 be contrary to such evidence as we possess. 



Sir Henry Maine in his "Ancient Law" states that 

 it would be difficult to say what society of men had 

 not been originally based on the patriarchal family. 



Such careful and well equipped enquirers as 

 Parker, Jamieson and Von Mollendorff, ready as they 

 were to* give full weight to "traces" of any such sup- 

 posed state of human society, all found that Chinese 

 family life could not be shown to have been, at any 

 time, other than patriarchal. 



As regards China there is nothing to show that 

 E-Yin, the Chief Minister of the first four soverigns 

 of the Shang dynasty, was mistaken when, in B.C. 

 1539 in advising King Tae-Keah, he said "The com- 

 mencement is in' the family and State; the consump- 

 tion in the Empire." 



The rule of exogamy in China cannot be more 

 shortly, or clearly, stated than in the words of "The 

 Summary of the Eules of Propriety," — the first book 

 of the Li Ki : — 



"One must not marry a wife of the same surname 

 with himself. Hence in buying a concubine, if he do 

 not know the surname, he must consult the tortoise 

 shell about it." 



In the same book it is said "Male and female, 

 without the intervention of the match maker, do not 

 know each other's name." 



As Legge notes, the tortoise shell was not expected 

 to give the unknown surname of the desired concubine, 

 but to answer whether, or no, it was the same as that 

 of the man : whether in fact the proposed alliance was 

 prohibited by the rule of exogamy, or allowable. 



Having found so strong a taboo on the use of the 

 personal name, and assuming that in China, as else- 



