SCIENCE. Supplement 



FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1886. 



PRIMITIVE MARRIAGE. 



Prof. W. Robertson Smith, in his 'Kinship 

 and marriage in early Arabia ' (Cambridge, Uni- 

 versity press, 1885), may be regarded as having 

 given the latest contribution to the controversy 

 going on between those who uphold the opinions of 

 the late Lewis H. Morgan in regard to the origin of 

 human society and the primitive form of mar- 

 riage, and those who support the views of the late 

 John F. McLennan upon these subjects. To ex- 

 plain fully in what these differences consist would 

 require too much space, so that we must content 

 ourselves with stating some of the main points of 

 disagreement. 



Mr. Morgan, in his ' Ancient society,' main- 

 tained that the primitive family, which succeeded 

 to a condition of promiscuous intercourse, was a 

 consanguine one, founded on the intermarriage of 

 brothers and sisters in a group. This was followed 

 by the Punaluan or Hawaiian family, in which 

 several sisters or brothers had groups of husbands 

 or wives in common, who were not necessarily of 

 kin. From this sprung the Malayan system of 

 relationship, in which all blood-relations fall under 

 the heads either of parent and child, of grand- 

 parent and grandchild, or of brother and sister. 

 Besides these, the relations by marriage were also 

 recognized. In course of time a second system of 

 relationship grew up, the Turanian, and the form 

 found on this continent, to which he has given the 

 name of the Ganowanian. This second system 

 was based upon Punaluan marriage, accompanied 

 by a division of the tribe into gentes. The gens 

 comprised all those who have sprung from the 

 same mother, and intermarriage in it was pro- 

 hibited. The Turanian system of relationship in- 

 cluded, in addition to the terms used in the Malay- 

 an, also words for uncle, aunt, nephew, niece, 

 and cousin ; and it recognized also the connections 

 by marriage. The Malayan and the Turanian 

 systems are called by Morgan classificatory, as 

 distinguished from that in use among ourselves, 

 which he calls the descriptive system. 



Mr. McLennan, on the other hand, in his ' Primi- 

 tive marriage,' criticised this view of the origin of 

 the classificatory systems very severely as ' utterly 

 unscientific,' and argued that such a system can- 

 not be one of blood-ties at all, but that it is merely 



a mode of addressing persons. In it the terms 

 'son' and 'daughter' do not imply descent from 

 the same mother or father, and the relationship of 

 the child to its mother is completely ignored. The 

 phenomena presented by such a system he under- 

 took to explain as having originated from what he 

 believed to be the oldest form of marriage, that of 

 Nair polyandry, by which several unrelated men 

 have a wife in common. This custom arose from 

 the practice, in the earliest times, of female in- 

 fanticide on account of the difficulty of subsist- 

 ence. Thus a scarcity of women was occasioned, 

 from which originated the general habit of pro- 

 curing wives by capture from neighboring hostile 

 tribes. From this custom sprung the usage of 

 exogamy, by which intermarriage within the tribe 

 was prohibited. Under Nair polyandry the only 

 idea of blood-relationship conceivable would be 

 through females, as the uncertainty of fatherhood 

 would prevent the acknowledgment of kinship 

 through males. Gradually there was developed a 

 higher form of polyandry, the Thibetan, by which 

 several brothers have a wife in common. The 

 recognition of kinship through males having thus 

 become possible, an explanation of the terms used 

 in the classificatory system is not far to seek. 



To this criticism and explanation Mr. Morgan 

 replied by denying the general prevalence of either 

 Nair or Thibetan polygamy, or of exogamy as a 

 tribal custom, which he insisted was restricted to 

 the gentes within the tribe. He argued, that, in 

 the archaic form of the gens, descent was limited 

 to the female line, and that this is what is really 

 meant by McLennan's ' kinship through females 

 only ; ' and he insisted that McLennan's hypothesis 

 is utterly insufficient to account for the origin of 

 the classificatory system, while ridiculing the idea 

 that this could be a system of addresses instead of 

 a system of consanguinity and affinity. 



The discussion was now taken up by Messrs. 

 Fison and Howitt in ' Kamilaroi and Kurnai,' a 

 work upon the organization and primitive mar- 

 riage customs of certain Australian tribes, and in 

 a review of ' Primitive marriage ' by Mr. Fison, in 

 the Popular science monthly for June, 1880; in 

 both of which Morgan's views were stoutly and 

 elaborately maintained. 



Shortly after, Mr. John McLennan having died, 

 his brother Donald continued the discussion, on his 

 side, by a review of 'Kamilaroi and Kurnai' in 

 Nature, April 21, 1881, in which he attempted to 

 refute Mr. Fison's objections to his brother's opin- 



