literature. Thus in the Mahabharata the five Pandou brothers marry all together the charming Drâaupadi, with eyes of lotus blue.[1] But in Brahmanic India polyandry is more than a mere memory. Skinner has proved that near the sources of the Djemmah, amongst a very fine race of Hindoo mountaineers, fraternal polyandry still prevailed. "Having asked one of these women," says the traveller, "how many husbands she had—'Only four,' she replied. 'And all living?' 'Why not?'"
These customs, according to the traveller, did not hinder these mountaineers from being, on other points, very moral men. Thus they held lying in horror, and in their eyes to deviate from the truth, even quite innocently, was almost a sacrilege.[2]
At the other extremity of India, in Ceylon, the polyandric régime is still very flourishing, especially in the interior of the island, and among the leisured classes. The number of husbands, generally brothers or relatives, is variable; it varies from three to eight. According to Emerson Tennent, polyandry was formerly general in the island, and it is owing to the efforts of the Dutch and Portuguese that it has disappeared from the coast.[3]
It is particularly in lamaic Thibet that the polyandric régime is in full vigour; and in this country religion strengthens it, for the most distinguished men, the ruling classes, the chiefs or officers of the State, a fortiori the lamas, have the same disdain for marriage so loudly professed by the saints of Catholicism. The greater number exempt themselves from it, and leave to the common people the gross care of producing children. Now, the latter, by reason of their poverty, associate together to lighten the burden of the family. It is, again, fraternal polyandry which is the rule in Thibet. It is in this country that sociologists have sought the classic type of this kind of polyandry.
In Thibet the right of primogeniture is combined with the right of marriage, and the younger brothers follow the fate of their chief. It is this last who marries for all of
