enable them to marry.[1] Another verse[2] accords to the daughter the inheritance of the maternal property, composed of what has been given to the mother at her marriage. But to be capable of inheriting, this daughter must still be celibate. In the contrary case, she merely receives a present. In short, the whole Brahmanic code is based, in what concerns the family, on masculine filiation and the patriarchate. Nevertheless, customs that are kept up by the side of it, and doubtless in spite of it, prove that in certain parts of India there must formerly have existed exogamic clans and a system of maternal filiation.
But it is important to remark that these survivals are, or were, met with especially in Tamil districts, in Malabar or Ceylon, which were in great measure colonised by Tamils. In certain small kingdoms of Malabar, as late as the seventeenth century, the right of succession was transmitted through the mother; a princess could also, if she pleased, marry an inferior.[3] Custom still designated as brothers to each other the children either of two brothers or two sisters, but the children of the brother and of the sister were only german cousins.[4] Certain families never made any partition, thus preserving the custom of the ancient familial clan.[5] Wherever feminine filiation prevailed, it was the sister's son who succeeded the defunct Rajah.[6] So also in the eastern part of Ceylon, the property was transmitted to the sister's son, to the exclusion of the sons.[7] To conclude, I will mention the custom, also very widely spread in India, of not marrying a woman of the same name.
We must beware of exaggerating the value of these partial facts; they permit us, however, to infer that in certain parts of India, and especially among the Tamils, the family has at first been maternal, and has slowly evolved from the primitive clan.
VI. The Greco-Roman Family.
The chief object of this book being to study the evolution of the family and of marriage, I need not describe in detail
