to the widowed fiancée, was to furnish the deceased man with a fictitious son, who could perform for him the sacrifices to the manes, a duty of the highest importance in the religion of Brahma. For the Hebrews, a much more practical people than the Hindoos, the levirate had only an earthly object—that of keeping up the name or family of the deceased, and all that belonged to it. It may be compared with the obligation imposed at Athens on the nearest relative in the masculine line to marry the heiress, or to supplement at need the impotence of the husband. The old practice of the levirate still exists in Abyssinia with this curious detail, that it is applied during the lifetime of the husband if he has been the victim of an accident, frequent in the Abyssinian wars, of emasculation. The mutilated husband, being thus struck with what might be called "virile death," his brother succeeds him in his marital rights and duties.[1] Some sociologists, too much given to theorise, have tried to prove that the levirate was a remnant of polyandry. Certainly the levirate is practised under a polyandric régime, but polyandry has never been more than an exceptional mode of marriage, and there is hardly any trace of it among the New Caledonians, the Redskins, the Mongols, the Afghans, the Hindoos, the Hebrews, the Abyssinians, etc., who, all of them, practise different varieties of levirate. The much more natural reasons that I have given above appear to me quite sufficient and more probable. IV. Conclusions.
From a consideration of all these facts, we find that the fate of the widow has varied according to the matrimonial form in use, and according to the degree of civilisation, but that it has not always been ameliorated in proportion to the general progress. Laws and customs have ever been kind to the widower. It has been very different for the woman, and her position has perhaps been better, from our point of view, in certain primitive societies, than it became later. Thus, in the confused state of primitive families,
- ↑ A. d'Abbadie, Douze ans de séjour dans la haute Éthiopie, p. 273.
