188 A CRUISE IN THE LACCADIVE SEA 



clean little village that houses the entire population, 

 except a few lepers ; and that which first strikes the 

 visitor, especially if he have come from India, is the 

 remarkable number of women that he sees, and the 

 freedom with which, being Mahomedans, they move 

 about uncovered. As a matter of fact, there are 

 far more women than men on the island, and this is 

 partly due to the circumstance that many of the males 

 are seamen, and are away either with their own little 

 trading - smacks, or as lascars on British steamers, 

 leaving their wives in the position of Penelope. Not 

 only do the women take the lead in numbers, but it 

 is a singular fact — and specially singular in a 

 Mahomedan community — that in all the affairs of the 

 island, fishing and navigation alone excepted, they 

 exercise a paramount influence. 



The clue to this feminine supremacy is to be found 

 in a survival, after the conversion of this people several 

 hundred years ago to Mahomedanism, of one of their 

 original Hindu institutions, by which, as among 

 certain Hindus of the neighbouring mainland of 

 Malabar, inheritance follows, not from father to son, 

 but in the female line from maternal uncle to nephew. 

 In accordance with this curious law of succession, a 

 happy lover when he marries does not take his 

 bride to his own hard-won home, but goes with her 

 to his father-in-law's establishment ; and any one can 

 understand that such an arrangement is not calculated 



