VII. Exogamy: Its Origin; Comparative Archaism of Exogamy and Endogamy

At the outset of our argument it was seen that if it could be shown that exogamous tribes existed, and that the usual relations of savage tribes to each other were those of hostility, we should have found a social condition in which it was inevitable that wives should systematically be procured by capture. It also appeared that if the existence of exogamous tribes either actually capturing their wives, or observing the symbol of capture in their marriage ceremonies, should be established in a reasonable number of cases, it would be a legitimate inference that exogamy has prevailed wherever we find a system of capture, or the form of capture, existing. We now confidently submit that the conditions requisite for this inference have been amply established in the three preceding chapters; so that we may conclude that wherever capture, or the form of capture, prevails, or has prevailed, there prevails, or has prevailed, exogamy. Conversely, we may say that, wherever exogamy can be found, we may confidently expect to find, after due investigation, at least traces of a system of capture. We have traced the law and the corresponding practice among tribes scattered over a large portion of the globe. What farther knowledge of rude tribes now existing may show to us it would be idle to conjecture; but it might be plausibly maintained, upon the facts already known to us, that the principle of exogamy has in fact prevailed, and the system of capturing wives in fact been practised at a certain stage among every race of mankind.

Perhaps there is no question leading deeper into the foundations of civil society than that which regards the origin of exogamy, unless it be the cognate question of the origin of caste, which admits, however, more readily of ingenious surmises, and what mathematicians call singular solutions. We believe this restriction on marriage to be connected with the practice in early times of female infanticide, which, rendering women scarce, led at once to polyandry within the tribe, and the capturing of women from without. Female infanticide—common among savages everywhere—prevails as a system, and has been customary from time immemorial amongst many of the races that exhibit the symbol of capture. With some of the exogamous races it appears to be the rule to kill all female children, except the first-born when a female. To tribes surrounded by enemies, and, unaided by art, contending with the difficulties of subsistence, sons were a source of strength, both for defence and in the quest for food, daughters a source of weakness. Hence the cruel custom which, leaving the primitive human hordes with very few young women of their own—occasionally with none—and, in any case, seriously disturbing the balance of the sexes within the hordes, forced them to prey upon one another for wives. Usage, induced by necessity, would in time establish a prejudice among the tribes observing it—a prejudice strong as a principle of religion, as every prejudice relating to marriage is apt to be—against marrying women of their own stock. A survey of the facts of primitive life, and the break-down of exogamy in advancing communities, exclude the notion that the law originated in any innate or primary feeling against marriage with kinsfolk. Indeed, we shall hereafter see that it is probable that necessity may have established the prejudice against marrying women of the group even before the facts of blood-relationship had made any deep impression on the human mind. At present it may be observed that the existence of infanticide, so wide-spread in itself, indicates how slight the strength of blood-ties was in primitive times. To form an adequate notion, on the other hand, of the extent to which tribes might, by means of infanticide, deprive themselves of their women, we have only to bear in mind the multitude of facts which testify to the thoughtlessness and improvidence of men during the childish stage of the human mind.

To show that the analysis by which the true solution of the questions respecting endogamy and exogamy is to be obtained, is the analysis of a series of phenomena which appears to form a progression, we notice the following as the divisions into which the less advanced portions of mankind fall when ranked according to their rules as to connubium:—

Exogamy Pure.—1. Tribal (or family) system.—Tribes separate. All the members of each tribe of the same blood, or feigning themselves to be so. Marriage prohibited between the members of the tribe.

2. Tribal system.—Tribe a congeries of family groups, falling into divisions, clans, thums, etc. No connubium between members of same division: connubium between all the divisions.

3. Tribal system.—Tribe a congeries of family groups embracing several village communities or nomadic hordes: members of families (or primitive stock groups) somewhat interfused. No connubium between persons whose family name points them out as being of the same stock.

4. Tribal system.—Tribe in divisions. No connubium between members of the same divisions: connubium between some of the divisions; only partial connubium between others—e.g., a man of one may marry a woman of another, but a woman of the former may not marry a man of the latter. Approach to caste.

5. Tribal system.—Tribe in divisions. No connubium between persons of the same stock: connubium between each division and some other. No connubium between some of the divisions. Caste.

Endogamy Pure.—6. Tribal (or family) system.—Tribes separate. All the members of each tribe of the same blood, or feigning themselves to be so. Connubium between members of the tribe: marriage without the tribe forbidden and punished.

7. Tribal system indistinct.—Members of primitive (stock) groups interfused, (1.) Marriage forbidden except between persons whose family name points them out as being of the same stock. (2.) Marriage forbidden except between the members of particular families. Persons having connubium marked as a caste, old tribal divisions being lost sight of.

Although these tribal systems may be arranged as above so as to seem to form a progression, of which the extremes are pure exogamy on the one hand, and endogamy—transmuted into caste of the Mantchu and Hindu types—on the other, we have at present no right to say that these systems were developed in anything like this order in tribal history. They may represent a progression from exogamy to endogamy, or from endogamy to exogamy; or the middle terms, so to speak, may have been produced by the combination of groups severally organised on the one and the other of these principles. The two types of organisation may be equally archaic. Men must originally have been free of any prejudice against marriage between relations—not necessarily endogamous, i. e., forbidding marriage except between kindred, but still more given to such unions than to unions with strangers. From this primitive indifference they may have advanced, some to endogamy, some to exogamy.

The separate endogamous tribes are nearly as numerous, and they are in some respects as rude, as the separate exogamous tribes. It may be noted, however, that endogamy appears in populations formed by the fusion of many tribes, as the almost uniform characteristic of the dominant race. Hereafter we shall see how a tribe organised on the principle of endogamy might be developed from one organised on the principle of exogamy, in perfect consistency with the law against the intermarriage of relations. And while the existence of tribes like those of the Mantchu Tartars, who prohibit marriages between persons whose family names are different, is of great weight in favour of endogamy as a primitive type of organisation; on the other hand, castes like those of India, embracing members of several different families, and with a marriage law like that of Menu, strongly suggest that many endogamous tribes have been developed from tribes organised on the opposite principle. Since, moreover, the reconversion of a caste or of an endogamous tribe into an exogamous tribe is inconceivable—we have no experience of caste disappearing except in advanced communities, and then only on a revolution of sentiment being produced by political influences—the choice seems to be between regarding the two classes of tribes as organised ab initio on distinct principles, or holding the exogamous to be the more archaic.

We may notice as strange, that frequently tribes thus oppositely organised are found inhabiting the same area. On the sub-Himalayan ranges, for example, are the Sodhas, who intermarry with the Rajputs, not with each other; the Magars, who prohibit marriages between members of the same thum; and, again, the Kocch, Bodo, Ho, and Dhumal, who are forbidden to marry except to members of their own tribes or kiels. And, in some districts—as in the hills on the north-eastern frontier of India, in the Caucasus, and the hill ranges of Syria—we find a variety of tribes, proved, by physical characteristics and the affinities of language, of one and the same original stock, yet in this particular differing toto cœlo from one another—some forbidding marriage within the tribe, and some proscribing marriage without it.

What has been said is enough to show that the question of the comparative archaism of exogamy and endogamy is as difficult as it is interesting. We shall in the next chapter lead up to a fuller discussion of that question, while investigating more minutely than we have hitherto done the conditions of the form of capture being evolved. We shall there endeavour to establish the following propositions:—1. That the most ancient system in which the idea of blood-relationship was embodied, was the system of kinship through females only. 2. That the primitive groups were, or were assumed to be, homogeneous. 3. That the system of kinship through females only tended to render the exogamous groups heterogeneous, and thus to supersede the system of capturing wives. 4. That in the advance from savagery the system of kinship through females only was succeeded by a system which acknowledged kinship through males also; and which, in most cases passed into a system which acknowledged kinship through males only. 5. That the system of kinship through males tended to rear up homogeneous groups, and thus to restore the original condition of affairs—where the exogamous prejudice survived—as regards both the practice of capturing wives and the evolution of the form of capture. 6. That a local tribe, under the combined influence of exogamy and the system of female kinship, might attain a balance of persons of different sexes regarded as being of different descent, and that thus its members might be able to intermarry with one another, and wholly within the tribe, consistently with the principle of exogamy. 7. That a local tribe, having reached this stage and grown proud through success in war, might decline intermarriage with other local tribes and become a caste. 8. That on kinship becoming agnatic, the members of such a tribe might yield to the universal tendency of rude races to eponomy, and feign themselves to be all derived from a common ancestor, and so become endogamous. And 9. That there is reason to think that some endogamous tribes became endogamous in this manner.