The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India Volume I (of IV)

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70. Marriage.

The transfer of the reckoning of kinship and descent from the
mother's to the father's side may perhaps be associated with the full
recognition of the physical fact of paternity. Though they may not
have been contemporaneous in all or even the majority of societies,
it would seem that the former was in most cases the logical outcome
of the latter, regard being had also to the man's natural function
as protector of the family and provider of its sustenance. But this
transition from female to male kinship was a social revolution of the
first importance. Under the system of female descent there had been
generally no transfer of clanship; both the woman and her partner or
husband retained their own clans, and the children belonged to their
mother's clan. In the totemic stage of society the totem-clan was the
vital organism, and the individual scarcely realised his own separate
existence, but regarded himself as a member of his totem-clan, being
a piece or fraction of a common life which extended through all the
members of the clan and all the totem animals of the species. They
may have thought also that each species of animals and plants had a
different kind of life, and consequently also each clan whose life
was derived from, and linked to, that of its totem-species. For the
name, and life, and qualities, and flesh and blood were not separate
conceptions, but only one conception; and since the name and qualities
were part of the life, the life of one species could not be the same
as that of another, and every species which had a separate name must
have been thought to have a different kind of life. Nor would man have
been regarded as a distinct species in the early totem-stage, and there
would be no word for man; but each totem-clan would regard itself as
having the same life as its totem-species. With the introduction of the
system of male kinship came also the practice of transferring a woman
from her own clan to that of her husband. It may be suggested that
this was the origin of the social institution of marriage. Primitive
society had no provision for such a procedure, which was opposed
to its one fundamental idea of its own constitution, and involved a
change of the life and personality of the woman transferred.

71. Marriage by capture.

The view seems to have been long held that this transfer could only
be effected by violence or capture, the manner in which presumably
it was first practised. Marriage by capture is very widely prevalent
among savage races, as shown by Mr. M'Lennan in _Primitive Marriage_,
and by Dr. Westermarck in _The History of Human Marriage_. Where the
custom has given place to more peaceable methods of procuring a wife,
survivals commonly occur. In Bastar the regular capture of the girl is
still sometimes carried out, though the business is usually arranged
by the couple beforehand, and the same is the case among the Kolams of
Wardha. A regular part of the marriage procedure among the Gonds and
other tribes is that the bride should weep formally for some hours,
or a day before the wedding, and she is sometimes taught to cry in the
proper note. At the wedding the bride hides somewhere and has to be
found or carried off by the bridegroom or his brother. This ritualistic
display of grief and coyness appears to be of considerable interest. It
cannot be explained by the girl's reluctance to marriage as involving
the loss of her virginity, inasmuch as she is still frequently not a
virgin at her wedding, and to judge from the analogy of other tribes,
could seldom or never have been one a few generations back. Nor is
affection for her family or grief at the approaching separation from
them a satisfactory motive. This would not account for the hiding
at all, and not properly for the weeping, since she will after all
only live a few miles away and will often return home; and sometimes
she does not only weep at her own house but at all the houses of
the village. The suggestion may be made that the procedure really
indicates the girl's reluctance to be severed from her own clan and
transferred to another; and that the sentiment is a survival of the
resistance to marriage by capture which was at first imposed on the
women by the men from loyalty to the clan totem and its common life,
and had nothing to do with the conjugal relationship of marriage. But
out of this feeling the sexual modesty of women, which had been
non-existent in the matriarchal condition of society, was perhaps
gradually developed. The Chamars of Bilaspur have sham fights on the
approach of the wedding party, and in most Hindu castes the bridegroom
on his arrival performs some militant action, such as striking the
marriage-shed or breaking one of its festoons. After the marriage
the bride is nearly always sent home with the bridegroom's party for
a few days, even though she may be a child and the consummation of
the marriage impossible. This may be in memory of her having formerly
been carried off, and some analogous significance may attach to our
honeymoon. When the custom of capture had died down it was succeeded
by the milder form of elopement, or the bride was sold or exchanged
against a girl from the bridegroom's family or clan, but there is
usually a relic of a formal transfer, such as the Hindu _Kanyadan_ or
gift of the virgin, the Roman _Traditio in manum_ or her transfer from
her father's to her husband's power, and the giving away of the bride.

72. Transfer of the bride to her husband's clan.

These customs seem to mark the transfer of the woman from her
father's to her husband's clan, which was in the first instance
effected forcibly and afterwards by the free gift of her father or
guardian, and the change of surname would be a relic of the change of
clan. Among the Hindus a girl is never called by her proper name in
her husband's house, but always by some other name or nickname. This
custom seems to be a relic of the period when the name denoted the
clan, though it no longer has any reference either to the girl's
clan or family. Another rite portraying the transfer in India is the
marking of the bride's forehead with vermilion, which is no doubt a
substitute for blood. The ceremony would be a relic of participation
in the clan sacrifice when the bride would in the first place drink
the blood of the totem animal or tribal god with the bridegroom in
sign of her admission to his clan and afterwards be marked with the
blood as a substitute. This smear of vermilion a married woman always
continues to wear as a sign of her state, unless she wears pink powder
or a spangle as a substitute. [167] Where this pink powder _(kunku)_
or spangles are used they must always be given by the bridegroom to
the bride as part of the _Sohag_ or trousseau. At a Bhaina wedding the
bride's father makes an image in clay of the bird or animal of the
groom's sept and places it beside the marriage-post. The bridegroom
worships the image, lighting a sacrificial fire before it, or offers
to it the vermilion which he afterwards smears upon the forehead of
the bride. The Khadals at their marriages worship their totem animal
or tree, and offer to it flowers, sandalwood, vermilion, uncooked rice,
and the new clothes and ornaments intended for the bride, which she may
not wear until this ceremony has been performed. Again, the sacrament
of the Meher or marriage cakes is sometimes connected with the clan
totem in India. These cakes are cooked and eaten sacramentally by all
the members of the family and their relatives, the bride and bridegroom
commencing first. Among the Kols the relatives to whom these cakes are
distributed cannot intermarry, and this indicates that the eating of
them was formerly a sacrament of the exogamous clan. The association of
the totem with the marriage cakes is sometimes clearly shown. Thus in
the Dahait caste members of the clans named after certain trees, go to
the tree at the time of their weddings and invite it to be present at
the ceremony. They offer the marriage cakes to the tree. Those of the
Nagotia or cobra clan deposit the cakes at a snake's hole. Members of
the Singh (lion) and Bagh (tiger) clans draw images of these animals on
the wall at the time of their weddings and offer the cakes to them. The
Basors of the Kulatia or somersault clan do somersaults at the time of
eating the cakes; those of the Karai Nor clan, who venerate a well,
eat the cakes at a well and not at home. Basors of the Lurhia clan,
who venerate a grinding-stone, worship this implement at the time
of eating the marriage cakes. M. Fustel de Coulanges states that
the Roman Confarreatio, or eating of a cake together by the bride
and bridegroom in the presence of the family gods of the latter,
constituted their holy union or marriage. By this act the wife was
transferred to the gods and religion of her husband. [168] Here the
gods referred to are clearly held to be the family gods, and in the
historical period it seems doubtful whether the Roman _gens_ was still
exogamous. But if the patriarchal family developed within the exogamous
clan tracing descent through males, and finally supplanted the clan as
the most important social unit, then it would follow that the family
gods were only a substitute for the clan gods, and the bride came to
be transferred to her husband's family instead of to his clan. The
marriage ceremony in Greece consisted of a common meal of a precisely
similar character, [169] and the English wedding cake seems to be a
survival of such a rite. At their weddings the Bhils make cakes of
the large millet juari, calling it Juari Mata or Mother Juari. These
cakes are eaten at the houses of the bride and bridegroom by the
members of their respective clans, and the remains are buried inside
the house as sacred food. Dr. Howitt states of the Kurnai tribe: "By
and by, when the bruises and perhaps wounds received in these fights
(between the young men and women) had healed, a young man and a young
woman might meet, and he, looking at her, would say, for instance,
'Djiitgun! [170] What does the Djiitgun eat?' The reply would be
'She eats kangaroo, opossum,' or some other game. This constituted a
formal offer and acceptance, and would be followed by the elopement of
the couple as described in the chapter on Marriage." [171] There is
no statement that the question about eating refers to the totem, but
this must apparently have been the original bearing of the question,
which otherwise would be meaningless. Since this proposal of marriage
followed on a fight between the boys and girls arising from the fact
that one party had injured the other party's sex-totem, the fight
may perhaps really have been a preliminary to the proposal and have
represented a symbolic substitute for or survival of marriage by
capture. Among the Santals, Colonel Dalton says, "the social meal
that the boy and girl eat together is the most important part of the
ceremony, as by the act the girl ceases to belong to her father's tribe
and becomes a member of the husband's family." Since the terms tribe
and family are obviously used loosely in the above statement, we may
perhaps substitute clan in both cases. Many other instances of the rite
of eating together at a wedding are given by Dr. Westermarck. [172]
If, therefore, it be supposed that the wedding ceremony consisted
originally of the formal transfer of the bride to the bridegroom's
clan, and further that the original tie which united the totem-clan
was the common eating of the totem animal, then the practice of the
bride and bridegroom eating together as a symbol of marriage can be
fully understood. When the totem animal had ceased to be the principal
means of subsistence, bread, which to a people in the agricultural
stage had become the staff or chief support of life, was substituted
for it, as argued by Professor Robertson Smith in _The Religion of the
Semites_. If the institution of marriage was thus originally based on
the forcible transfer of a woman from her own to her husband's clan,
certain Indian customs become easily explicable in the light of this
view. We can understand why a Brahman or Rajput thought it essential to
marry his daughter into a clan or family of higher status than his own;
because the disgrace of having his daughter taken from him by what
had been originally an act of force, was atoned for by the superior
rank of the captor or abductor. And similarly the terms father-in-law
and brother-in-law would be regarded as opprobrious because they
originally implied not merely that the speaker had married the sister
or daughter of the person addressed, but had married her forcibly,
thereby placing him in a position of inferiority. A Rajput formerly
felt it derogatory that any man should address him either as father-or
brother-in-law. And the analogous custom of a man refusing to take food
in the house of his son-in-law's family and sometimes even refusing
to drink water in their village would be explicable on precisely the
same grounds. This view of marriage would also account for the wide
prevalence of female infanticide. Because in the primitive condition
of exogamy with male descent, girls could not be married in their
own clan, as this would transgress the binding law of exogamy, and
they could not be transferred from their own totem-clan and married
in another except by force and rape. Hence it was thought better to
kill girl children than to suffer the ignominy of their being forcibly
carried off. Both kinds of female infanticide as distinguished by Sir
H. Risley [173] would thus originally be due to the same belief. The
Khond killed his daughter because she could not be married otherwise
than by forcible abduction; not necessarily because he was unable to
protect her, but because he could not conceive of her being transferred
from one totem-clan to another by any other means; and he was bound to
resist the transfer because by acquiescing in it, he would have been
guilty of disloyalty to his own totem, whose common life was injured
by the loss of the girl. The Rajput killed his daughter because it
was a disgrace to him to get her married at all outside his clan,
and she could not be married within it. Afterwards the disgrace was
removed by marrying her into a higher clan than his own and by lavish
expenditure on the wedding; and the practice of female infanticide
was continued to avoid the ruinous outlay which this primitive view of
marriage had originally entailed. The Hindu custom of the Swayamvara
or armed contest for the hand of a Rajput princess, and the curious
recognition by the Hindu law-books of simple rape as a legitimate
form of marriage would be explained on the same ground.

73. The exogamous clan with male descent and the village.

It has been seen that the exogamous clan with female descent contained
no married couples, and therefore it was necessary either that outside
men should live with it, or that the clans should continually meet each
other, or that two or more should live in the same village. With the
change to male descent and the transfer of women to their husbands'
clans, this unstable characteristic was removed. Henceforth the clan
was self-contained, having its married couples, both members of it,
whose children would also be born in and belong to it. Since the
clan was originally a body of persons who wandered about and hunted
together, its character would be maintained by living together, and
there is reason to suppose that the Indian exogamous clan with male
descent took its special character because its members usually lived
in one or more villages. This fact would account for the large number
and multiplication of clans in India as compared with other places. As
already seen one of the names of a clan is _khera_, which also means
a village, and a large number of the clan names are derived from, or
the same, as those of villages. Among the Khonds all the members of
one clan live in the same locality about some central village. Thus
the Tupa clan are collected about the village of Teplagarh in Patna
State, the Loa clan round Sindhekala, the Borga clan round Bangomunda
and so on. The Nunias of Mirzapur, Mr. Crooke remarks, [174] have
a system of local subdivisions called _dih_, each subdivision being
named after the village which is supposed to be its home. The word
_dih_ itself means a site or village. Those who have the same _dih_
do not intermarry. In the villages first settled by the Oraons, Father
Dehon states, [175] the population is divided into three _khunts_
or branches, the founders of the three branches being held to have
been sons of the first settler. Members of each branch belong to
the same clan or _got_. Each _khunt_ or branch has a share of the
village lands. The Mochis or cobblers have forty exogamous sections
or _gotras_, mostly named after Rajput clans, and they also have an
equal number of _kheras_ or groups named after villages. The limits of
the two groups seem to be identical; and members of each group have an
ancestral village from which they are supposed to have come. Marriage
is now regulated by the Rajput sept-names, but the probability is that
the _kheras_ were the original divisions, and the Rajput _gotras_
have been more recently adopted in support of the claims already
noticed. The Parjas have totemistic exogamous clans and marriage is
prohibited in theory between members of the same clan. But as the
number of clans is rather small, the rule is not adhered to, and
members of the same clan are permitted to marry so long as they do
not come from the same village. The Minas of Rajputana are divided
into twelve exogamous _pals_ or clans; the original meaning of the
word _pal_ was a defile or valley suitable for defence, where the
members of the clan would live together as in a Scotch glen.

Thus among the cultivating castes apparently each exogamous clan
consisted originally of the residents of one village, though they
afterwards spread to a number of villages. The servile labouring
castes may also have arranged their clans by villages as the primitive
forest-tribes did. How the menial castes formed exogamous clans is
not altogether clear, as the numbers in one village would be only
small. But it may be supposed that as they gradually increased,
clans came into existence either in one large village or a number
of adjacent ones, and sometimes traced their descent from a single
family or from an ancestor with a nickname. As a rule, the artisan
castes do not appear to have formed villages of their own in India, as
they did in Russia, though this may occasionally have happened. When
among the cultivating castes the lands were divided, separate joint
families would be constituted; the head only of each family would be
its representative in the clan, as he would hold the share of the
village land assigned to the family, which was their joint means
of subsistence, and the family would live in one household. Thus
perhaps the Hindu joint family came into existence as a subdivision
of the exogamous clan with male descent, on which its constitution
was modelled. In Chhattisgarh families still live together in large
enclosures with separate huts for the married couples. A human
ancestor gradually took the place of the totem as the giver of life
to the clan. The members thought themselves bound together by the tie
of his blood which flowed through all their veins, and frequently,
as in Athens, Rome and Scotland, every member of the clan bore his
name. In this capacity, as the source of the clan's life, the original
ancestor was perhaps venerated, and on the development of the family
system within the clan, the ancestors of the family were held in
a similar regard, and the feeling extended to the living ancestor
or father, who is treated with the greatest deference in the early
patriarchal family. Even now Hindu boys, though they may be better
educated and more intelligent than their father, will not as a rule
address him at meals unless he speaks to them first, on account of
their traditional respect for him. The regard for the father may be
strengthened by his position as the stay and support of the family,
but could scarcely have arisen solely from this cause.

Dr. Westermarck's view that the origin of exogamy lay in the feeling
against the marriage of persons who lived together, receives support
from the fact that a feeling of kinship still subsists between Hindus
living in the same village, even though they may belong to different
castes and clans. It is commonly found that all the households of a
village believe themselves in a manner related. A man will address
all the men of the generation above his own as uncle, though they may
be of different castes, and the children of the generation below his
own as niece and nephew. When a girl is married, all the old men of
the village call her husband 'son-in-law.' This extends even to the
impure castes who cannot be touched. Yet owing to the fact that they
live together they are considered by fiction to be related. The Gowari
caste do not employ Brahmans for their weddings, but the ceremony is
performed by the _bhanja_ or sister's son either of the girl's father
or the boy's father. If he is not available, any one whom either the
girl's father or the boy's father addresses as _bhanja_ or nephew
in the village, even though he may be no relation and may belong to
another caste, may perform the ceremony as a substitute. Among the
Oraons and other tribes prenuptial intercourse between boys and girls
of the same village is regularly allowed. It is not considered right,
however, that these unions should end in marriage, for which partners
should be sought from other villages. [176] In the Maratha country
the villagers have a communal feast on the occasion of the Dasahra
festival, the Kunbis or cultivators eating first and the members of
the menial and labouring castes afterwards.

74. The large exogamous clans of the Brahmans and Rajputs. The
Sapindas, the _gens_ and the g'enoc.

The Brahmans and Rajputs, however, and one or two other military
castes, as the Marathas and Lodhis, do not have the small exogamous
clans (which probably, as has been seen, represented the persons
who lived together in a village), but large ones. Thus the Rajputs
were divided into thirty-six royal races, and theoretically all these
should have been exogamous, marrying with each other. Each great clan
was afterwards, as a rule, split into a number of branches, and it is
probable that these became exogamous; while in cases where a community
of Rajputs have settled on the land and become ordinary cultivators,
they have developed into an endogamous subcaste containing small
clans of the ordinary type. It seems likely that the Rajput clan
originally consisted of those who followed the chief to battle and
fought together, and hence considered themselves to be related. This
was, as a matter of fact, the case. Colonel Tod states that the great
Rathor clan, who said that they could muster a hundred thousand swords,
spoke of themselves as the sons of one father. The members of the
Scotch clans considered themselves related in the same manner, and
they were probably of similar character to the Rajput clans. [177]
I do not know, however, that there is any definite evidence as to
the exogamy of the Scotch clans, which would have disappeared with
their conversion to Christianity. The original Rajput clan may perhaps
have lived round the chiefs castle or headquarters and been supported
by the produce of his private fief or demesne. The regular Brahman
_gotras_ are also few in number, possibly because they were limited
by the paucity of eponymous saints of the first rank. The word _gotra_
means a stall or cow-pen, and would thus originally signify those who
lived together in one place like a herd of cattle. But the _gotras_
are now exceedingly large, the same ones being found in most or all of
the Brahman subcastes, and it is believed that they do not regulate
marriage as a rule. Sometimes ordinary surnames have taken the place
of clan names, and persons with the same surname consider themselves
related and do not marry. But usually Brahmans prohibit marriage
between Sapindas or persons related to each other within seven degrees
from a common ancestor. The word Sapinda signifies those who partake
together of the _pindas_ or funeral cakes offered to the dead. The
Sapindas are also a man's heirs in the absence of closer relations;
the group of the Sapindas is thus an exact replica within the _gotra_
of the primitive totem clan which was exogamous and constituted by
the tie of living and eating together. Similarly marriage at Rome
was prohibited to seven degrees of relationship through males within
the _gens_, [178] and this exogamous group of kinsmen appear to have
been the body of agnatic kinsmen within the _gens_ who are referred
to by Sir H. Maine as a man's ultimate heirs. [179] At Athens, when
a contest arose upon a question of inheritance, the proper legal
evidence to establish kinship was the proof that the alleged ancestor
and the alleged heir observed a common worship and shared in the
same repast in honour of the dead. [180] The distant heirs were thus
a group within the Athenian g'enoc corresponding to the Sapindas and
bound by the same tie of eating together. Professor Hearn states that
there is no certain evidence that the Roman _gens_ and Greek g'enoc
were originally exogamous, but we find that of the Roman matrons whose
names are known to us none married a husband with her own Gentile name;
and further, that Plutarch, in writing of the Romans, says that in
former days men did not marry women of their own blood or, as in the
preceding sentence he calls them, kinswomen suggen'idac, just as in
his own day they did not marry their aunts or sisters; and he adds
that it was long before they consented to wed with cousins. [181]
Professor Hearn's opinion was that the Hindu _gotra_, the Roman
_gens_ and the Greek g'enoc were originally the same institution,
the exogamous clan with male descent, and all the evidence available,
as well as the close correspondence in other respects of early Hindu
institutions with those of the Greek and Latin cities would tend to
support this view.