practice, without the addition of group-marriage or fraternal polyandry. The kinship names point to group-marriage. Nor can, we think, the incident found among the Dusâdh tribe be construed as Mr. Crooke suggests. The bridegroom enters the oratory of the bride's family gods and worships them. The bride's sister waits at the door, and will not let him issue until he gives her a present, "apparently a survival of marriage by capture." With submission, it seems to us it is rather a relic of marriage by purchase, where every member of the bride's family or clan had to be satisfied with a recompense for the loss of her, or, more likely still, of a stage where the bridegroom was received into the family and became entitled to all the sisters.[1] The complicated ceremonies of marriage in many of the tribes indicate the crossing of many influences, and it is very difficult to unravel them. Yet on the whole the evidence seems to us to be in favour of an early predominance of group-marriage.
The legends, though many of them are tedious and rambling enough, present many features of interest. That told to account for the burial of Kabîr in two places recalls the legend of Saint Patrick. The Julâha who took the linseed field, covered with blue flowers, for a river and tried to swim in it, has his analogues all over Europe. The story is given at length by Christian (Behar Proverbs, p. 137), to whom Mr. Crooke refers. M. Sébillot's Breton tale of "How the Jaguens journeyed to Paris," is an exact parallel, down even to the counting of the simpletons to make sure that none of them had been drowned. (Contes Pop. de la Haute Bretagne, No. 37, vol. i. p. 243.) One of the commonest tribal sagas is that which ascribes the origin of the tribe to the child of a pregnant woman saved from some massacre: a tale unquestionably founded in mother-right. In fact, when one considers the overwhelming predominance of inheritance through the father, the remains of mother-right, both in usage and story, are very numerous and striking, forming a strong contrast with the few and uncertain traces of totemism.
The foregoing samples of the importance and value of the information packed into these four volumes will give but a poor and
- ↑ The point, however, cannot be finally determined without statistics. It were greatly to be wished that Mr. Crooke, or someone equally competent, should give us a complete study of the marriage customs of the natives of India.
