M'LENNAN'S STUDIES IN ANCIENT HISTORY.*

[SECOND NOTICE.]

4 THE earliest human groups," says Mr. M'Lennan, "can have had no idea of kinship." There is something almost startling about this proposition when heard for the first time, but it is a -very simple and obvious matter nevertheless, for what it asserts is that the fact of consanguinity is a fact of observation, and there- fore must for a time have been unobserved. To develop out of that fact, when attention had been fixed upon it, a system of blood-ties required both time and thought, and that, therefore, must have been slowly effected. Mr. M,Lennan suggests that the idea of blood-connection would much more readily yield to the people of a group the belief that they were of one stock, a body of kindred, than it would give them any system of kinship. But the relationship of mother and child must have been the first perceived blood-relationship, and therefore a system of blood-ties through women was sure in time to be developed. A system of blood-ties through men must have been developed almost simul- taneously with it, if there was anything like certainty as to father- hood ; but the absence of certainty as to this—implying the non- recognition of fatherhood, that fathers were not usually known— would necessarily prevent the acknowledgment of blood-ties through men. And nothing else would have that effect. Upon this reasoning, Mr. M‘Lennan concludes that it may be confidently inferred that there either is, or formerly was, non-recognition of fatherhood, wherever kinship is counted through women only ; and conversely, that wherever the co-ordination of the sexes is or can be inferred to have been such as to leave fatherhood uncer- tain or unrecognised, there can have been at first acknowledgment of kinship through women only. If there is kinship through women only, non-recognition of fatherhood at a former period may be inferred in the case of peoples who now practise monandry or polygamy (the latter of which would obviously favour the maintenance of that system of kinship once it had been established). And of course both kinship, through women • Studies ill Ancient History, comprising a Reprint of Primitive Marriage, an In- quiry into the Origin of the Form of Capture in Marriage Ceremonies. By J. F. AULennan, M, LL.D., Advocate. London: Bernard Quaritoh.

only and the non-recognition of fatherhood, as existing anteriorly, may be inferred from laws of marriage or of succession, which indicate that the blood-tie through a father, though recognised to other effects, was no bar to marriage and gave no right of succession,—for example, from the marriage of Abraham with his sister-german Sarah, and from the succession- law of the ancient Picts, which gave the crown, not to the son, but to the sister's son of a monarch deceased.

Passing to the facts on account of which this basis of reasoning is laid, it comes out clearly that the system of kinship through females only has been the common system of kinship among the ruder races of men with which travellers, old and recent, have made us acquainted,—races, that is, like the Blacks of Australia, the Red-men of America, and the South-Sea Islanders. Again, it seems clearly indicated by the succession-law of the Celts, and indicated, though less surely, by the prohibition contained in the Sutras of Gautama against marriage between a man and his cousin on the mother's aide. The marriages of Abraham, his brother Nahor, and of Amram, the father of Moses and Aaron— all made with women who were close relatives through the father, and not relatives through women—cannot, according to Mr. M‘Lennan, mean anything else than the imperfect establish- ment of kinship through males among the Semitic stock to which the Patriarch belonged ; and there is the same evidence of the pristine acknowledgment of kinship only through females among the Phcenicians, and also among the Athenians. At Athens, it was express law that a man might marry his sister-german, but not his sister-uterine ; and in the essay on "Kinship in Ancient Greece," Mr. M‘Lennan has brought to- gether a mass of facts—which it is quite beyond our power to recapitulate—tending to show, for Greece generally, that while in the time of Homer the blood-tie through the mother was a closer bond than that through the father, the latter at an earlier period had little force, or had been altogether unacknowledged. Wherever he can make out acknowledgment of kinship only through females, Mr. M‘Lennan, of course, infers uncertainty of fatherhood, and a state of sexual relations capable of giving that result. We now go on to the cases in which, from uncertainty of fatherhood shown or inferred to have at an early period existed, he infers the acknowledgment at the same early period of kinship through females only.

" Polyandry " is a term comprehensive enough to include every variety of relations between the sexes which could leave fatherhood uncertain or unacknowledged, though in the form of it most commonly met with, while leaving fatherhood uncertain, it gives certainty as to the father's blood, and therefore admits of kinship through males, and is even usually accompanied by it. It still prevails rather extensively. Mr. M‘Lennan, indeed, starting from Tibet, has tracked it over the greater part of the earth. In ancient times it can be shown to have prevailed in many regions where it has been for ages extinct—e.g., in parts of Media, among the Britons, among the Germans, among the Picts ; while the remarkable story of the five Pandhava princes contained in the Mahabharata seems to leave no doubt that at one time it was the marriage law of, at least, some of the leading tribes from whom the Hindus are descended. Now there have been known of poly- andry two leading varieties. lathe one, which, from its prevalence among the Nairs of Malabar, Mr. M‘Lennan has called Nair polyandry, a woman's husbands are such persons—usually not relatives of each other—as she or her family may select ; they do not live with her—she lives with her mother and brothers, there being kinship only through women, fathers being unknown—and her children are her brothers' heirs. When there is a family estate, the eldest brother has the management of it, and in this function he is succeeded by his brothers in order of age ; and when they are exhausted, by the sister's eldest son. Distinct known cases of this form of polyandry are by no means numerous, but by the law of succession which is characteristic of it, the succession, not of son to father, but of brother to brother, and failing brothers, of the sister's son, Mr. M‘Lennan seeks to establish for it a much more extensive prevalence. Laws relating to succession are very enduring, and especially when they regulate the succession to titles or places of honour ; and the prevalence of the Nair suc- cession-law in the case of thrones or chieftainships is often all there is from which to infer the former existence among a people of Nair polyandry and of kinship through females only. The other leading form of polyandry—and the form commonly met with—is that which from its being universal throughout Tibet and the adjoining Himalayan regions, Mr. M‘Lennan has called Tibetan polyandry. The brothers of a family take a wife between them. The eldest is the head of the family, the children

are accounted his, and he is succeeded as head of the family by brother after brother, and ultimately by the eldest son of the brotherhood. In Ladak the Tibetan polyandry is found in a state of decadence. The younger brothers of a family may, if they choose, become co-husbands with their elder brother. But whether they do or not, when a man dies, his heir is not his son, though he may have a son of his own, but his next brother ; and he succeeds to his brother's widow and position in the family, as well as to his estate. The inference is made that the succession-law which, kinship being counted through males, prefers a brother to a son, and in effect gives the succes- sion to the eldest male of a family, is derived from Tibetan poly- andry, and that this may be taken as indicated wherever that law is found. It is a law found far and wide, especially as regulating the succession to dignities—we have all heard of it recently in connection with the Sultanate of Turkey, in which case it has held ith ground in spite of the Koran—and if Mr. M'Lennan's reason- ing be accepted, it proves a very extensive prevalence in former times of Tibetan polyandry.

But be casts his net still further. The Levirate, the law which required a younger brother to take the wife of his elder brother deceased without issue, and "raise up seed to the deceased upon his inheritance "—well known from its having existed among the Hebrews and the Hindus—belongs to a much later stage of develop- ment, as regards both marriage and property, than the succession- law which has just been noticed. It occurs not only with monan- dry or polygamy, but with the partition of family estates among the members of the family. Obviously, it is altogether opposed to monandrous ideas of propriety, which in time became strong enough to suppress it. Mr. M'Lennan maintains that the ideas of propriety which could tolerate it were derived from Tibetan polyandry, which, ascribing as it does the fatherhood of the children of a group of brothers to the eldest brother, was also able to supply the fiction which accompanied it, that the children born of the Levirate union were the children of the elder brother deceased.

If all his inferences be received as sound, there is no doubt that by means of them and of direct evidence he has almost covered the world with Tibetan polyandry, and made out that nearly everywhere monandry was an advance made from it. This, if it were admitted, would make it easy, and indeed almost neces- sary, to accept his further position that Tibetan polyandry in its turn was an advance made from a grosser type of polyandry such as is found among the Nein, and even that an improvement upon older arrangements. His theory at this point is that the acknow- ledgment of kinship through females, by forming special attach- ments between a mother and her sons and daughters, made possible the formation of family groups of the Nair type, which gradually came to be accompanied by a more or less regulated polyandry, to which—since it was regulated—the name of marriage may be applied. Then the notion that sexual relations should be regulated once firmly established, the group of brothers stood ready, the most natural group, to be sharers in marriage, as in property, so far as there was any, and in the quest for food. It gradually became customary that they should be so, and that was Tibetan polyandry. It would follow that wherever Tibetan poly- andry can be spelt out, the Nair polyandry—which left paternity unknown or unrecognised—must be taken to have preceded it, and along with that, the acknowledgment of kinship through females only. The evidence there is of the prevalence of this system of kinship would then be hardly needed to compel the ad- mission that it has been the first established system of kinship.

If, in astonishment at such results, gravely brought out and supported by an appearance of weighty reasoning, one asks how early men could have become addicted to polyandry, Mr. M.'Lennan has his answer ready. It is that they could not help themselves. He points to the system of capturing wives and the law of exogamy, only to be explained, in his opinion, by a want of balance between the sexes ; and again, he points to the numerous systems of female infanticide of which we have knowledge, and asks us to think in what cruel circumstances they must have originated. Such, he says, must have been the circumstances of primitive men,-.-the struggle for existence very fierce ; self-preservation stronger than the tendency to rear offspring ; female infants, as being less valuable than the male, slain more or less frequently, according to circumstances, the result being a scarcity of women, Which drove men, on the one hand, into stealing from their neigh- berms, and on the other, into the practice of polyandry. Other circumstances in primitive life—for example, loss through cap- tures—would from time to time derange still further the balance of the sexes. Polygamy, when it came to be practised, would

tend in the same direction ; but it can hardly be conceived of as' co-existing to any extent with a scarcity of women, and indeed, in the societies which permit it, it can only be for the few.

The common view as to kinship, lucidly expounded in our time by Sir Henry Maine, has been that Agnation—that is, the ac- knowledgment of kinship through males only—came first ; ant that the blood-ties, arising through women, worked their way very slowly into recognition. According to Mr. M.Lennan, the, system of kinship through females only having first introduced the rude Nair type of family, and then led to the establishment of the. Tibetan type of family, the latter, with which there was certainty as to the father's blood, introduced male kinship, upon which, in: process of time, the acknowledgment of kinship through males' only, that is, agnation, in most cases supervened. Given agnation,. however, he points out, as naturally arising out of the circum- stances which must have preceded it, on the one hand, con- ditions which might have originated endogamy ; and on the other hand, conditions which would give us tribes like those of Rome, consisting of portions of different gentes, the totality of each of which found throughout the tribes was reputed to be a body or kindred. Whether he is right or wrong in the first case is per- haps no very great matter. His view in the other case is sub- versive of what is known as the Patriarchal system, and is, in fact, an entirely new account of the growth of human societies.

If one of the first effects of the introduction of the idea of kin-- ship would be to make people of the same group believe them- selves to be of one stock, a body of kindred, the establishment of the law of exogamy—which required a man to marry a woman of another stock—with the system of kinship through females only, which made children of the stock of their mother, would quieltly transfuse the stocks of a district, so that several of them, perhaps- all of them, would be found in every local tribe. Between them,. they would produce tribes such as are the most common in Au- tralia or North America ; and as in each tribe there would be men and women who, being of different stocks, were free to marry each other, this state of things would tend to limit resort to cap- ture, and by-and-by, if there were women enough, might super- sede it altogether. Let the acknowledgment of kinship through males now supervene, and the local tribe, with such stocks as- happened to be in it, would be, as it were, stereotyped, for henceforth children would be of the stock of their father,— marriage would have become powerless to vary the stocks.

Suppose, now, that the stocks within a tribe so balanced that the men might find wives within it consistently with exogamy ; and this being so, suppose, again, that military successes, or such other circumstances, as minister to human vanity, led it to- look down upon its neighbours. The tribe is now in a fair way to become a caste, forbidding its men and women to make mar- riages outside it. When it has become so, there wants nothing but agnatib kinship and the fiction of a common ancestor—and among agnatic races this, it is well known, has been a very com- mon fiction—to make it an endogamous tribe. Such is Mr. M‘Lennan's account of the way in which an exogamous tribe- might pass into an endogamous tribe. One of the chief facts in its favour is that among endogamous races there are often pro- hibitions upon marriage which seem to indicate the law of ex- ogamy, for example, the prohibition of marriage between all persons of the same family name.

But from the stereotying in each of the local tribes of a district of several or perhaps all of the stocks which there had been in the district, another result was likely, as time went on, to follow. The tribes would all be made up of the same, or nearly the same, elements. Each would consist of several bodies of kindred, and each of these bodies of kindred would form part of a wider' kindred spread throughout the tribes. Observe that this is just what occurs in the tribes of Rome, of Greece, of India, of Central Asia,—the tribe made up of genies, and the gels spread over several tribes. There is no difficulty in understanding how, between such tribes, similar in elements and structure, each connected with the other by the blood-bonds existing between its. members, unions should take place, as life became more settled, under the influence of contiguity and convenience. Then the tribe would be merged in the common-wealth. Mr. M‘Lennan contends that, starting from exogamy and female kinship, he has accounted, naturally and completely, for early common-wealths, such as they have been known to us, and that the Patriarchal system entirely fails to do this. And time-honoured, and at first sight, plausible as it is, that the Patriarchal system accounts. satisfactorily for the constitution of tribes like those of Rome, or- even for the union of tribes in a community, can scarcely be pre- tended. To recapitulate, his theory is that society began, not

with the family, hat with the stock-tribe ; that the operation of exogamy and kinship through females produced the local tribe, containing several stocks, parts of a tribe of descent which

might be spread over many local tribes ; that within the stock or yens the family was gradually developed, passing through the

stages which have been described ; that male kinships stereotyped the tribes, such as exogamy and female kinship bad made them,—a state of things which agnation, when it became established, would further consolidate ; and that the composition of the tribes was consequently such as to make union between them easy, when convenience made union desirable. Appeal is made to the history of property in support of this theory. That history, as regards details, has yet to be made out ; but certain

leading points seem sufficiently established. The earliest times present to us property held in common,—held, that is, by the group of kindred. From the kindred or yens property was gradually wrested by the families formed within it, and naturally, though probably after a long interval, individual property suc- ceeded to family property. Mr. M‘Lennan suggests that the break-down of exogamy in advancing communities was chiefly caused by the succession-laws which came up with the establish- ment of properties in families and individuals. At Rome, the yens was a man's heir, failing relatives within certain degrees of consanguinity ; and such a succession-law, while strongly attesting the ancient position of the yens, was undoubtedly calculated to undermine to all effects the sense of relationship outside the limits within which there was the right of inheritance.

If his theory as to the growth of society were received, of course it would powerfully corroborate Mr. M‘Lennan's view as to the very wide prevalence of exogamy in early times. We should almost be forced to believe, too, that in the case of the most important endogamous communities, endogamy had super- vened upon a precedent practice of exogamy. From the explana- tion offered of the way in which this might have occurred, it is plain that it might occur, if at all, at almost any stage of social development short of the formation of large communities, while the tribe was a small polyandrous group, or after a group of tribes had become joined in a federal union.

The subsidiary essays here contained which have not been already noticed must be very briefly dealt with. The object of the essay, "Kinship in Ancient Greece," is to test in the case of the Greeks the validity of the history of kinship and the family set forth in Primitive Marriage. Mr. M‘Lennan is of opinion that he has at least made out a case calling for an answer from people like Sir Henry Maine, who stand upon the old lines ; and without going into criticism, perhaps this much may be admitted to him. He has put his scheme to a further test in his essay on the classificatory system of Relationships. But a whole article would be needed for an account of this long and closely reasoned paper. We must confine ourselves to saying that he seems to have utterly demolished the theories of Mr. Morgan—by whom the facts relating to the classificatory system were collected—and shown that it does not denote systems of relationship at all, but systems of addresses, for use in social intercourse among peoples with many of whom it would be much more than impoliteness to address a man by his real name. The only essay which remains to be noticed, that on the "Early Irish Family," is the only one which is not directly con- nected with the subjects treated of in Primitive Marriage. When Sir Henry Maine, in his Early institutions, put forward a solution of the problem here attacked, his practised powers of exposition and argumentation did not prevent many readers from feeling that the solution was a failure,—and as against him, we may venture to say that Mr. M‘Lellan has been completely suc- cessful. There are very few qualified to pronounce whether his own solution can be accepted,—it seems to satisfy the conditions, but the facts are few, and the meaning assigned to them has to be got at by a painful process of spelling out ; and perhaps it will be best to have no strong opinion about it, until further investigation has supplied us with fresh light.