Quiz: Primitive Marriage

All 30 questions. A perfect score earns the gold medal; 80% earns silver.

1. 1. In the Institutes of Menu, to which class is the Racshasa marriage by capture permitted?

   The servile class The military class The merchant and trading class The Brahmans
2. 2. How does McLennan explain the name of the Racshasa form of marriage?

   It took its name from the Rakshasas, a people among whom capture was the system It means “seizure” in Sanskrit It was named after a king who first practised it It was the name of the god of war
3. 3. In the Irish poem McLennan quotes, on what condition did the Irish give wives to the Picts?

   That succession to the Pictish crown should always pass through the female line That the Picts should convert to Christianity That the children should be raised as Gaels That the Picts should pay tribute in cattle
4. 4. What order of social development does McLennan propose?

   Family first, then tribe, then state Gens first, then family, then tribe Tribe first, then gens or house, then family Family first, then house, then tribe
5. 5. How does McLennan explain the late appearance of usus and coemptio in Roman law?

   They were invented by legislators to give plebeians marriage in manu They were introduced by the Sabine priesthood They were borrowed from Greek law in the time of the Twelve Tables Early law was aristocratic, and popular customs entered it only as the plebs rose
6. 6. Which explanation of the Spartan custom does McLennan reject as the “primitive prudery hypothesis”?

   Müller’s view that a maiden could surrender her purity only to force Festus’s view that it commemorated the Sabine rape Herodotus’s view that it was borrowed from Egypt Plutarch’s view that the custom was meant to harden young Spartans for war
7. 7. Where does McLennan locate the origin of marriage by sale and purchase?

   In the priestly marriage ceremonies of endogamous tribes In the earliest promiscuous hordes, where women were held in common In the Roman law of the Twelve Tables In marriages between distinct groups, one of which loses a member
8. 8. Which of these is one of Mr. Skene’s findings about the Pictish kings?

   Daughters succeeded when there were no sons Every king was the son of a Pictish father Kings were elected from a single royal family No son ever succeeded his father
9. 9. Why, according to McLennan, could endogamous tribes not develop a system of capture?

   They married among their own kin, so force was needless They were too few and too weak to make war on their neighbours Their religion forbade any violence in the conduct of a wedding They always bought their wives from foreign tribes instead
10. 10. In Sir Henry Piers’s account of Irish weddings, what did the bridegroom’s party throw at the bride’s company?

    Stones and bamboos Spears with torches Short darts Handfuls of grain
11. 11. What striking consequence of wife-capture does McLennan report among the Caribbean tribes?

    Men and women of the same tribe did not speak the same language Children always took their names from the tribes of their captors Women outnumbered men two to one The tribes had no women of their own and raided for every single wife
12. 12. Which part of the book does McLennan himself call the most important?

    Chapter VI, on the state of hostility Chapters VIII and IX, on kinship, caste and endogamy The appendix of additional examples Chapter II, the long catalogue of capture ceremonies in many lands
13. 13. Why does McLennan reject Dr. Latham’s derivation of polyandry from the levirate?

    Latham had no evidence at all for the levirate among rude races The levirate is a late institution of the Christian Church It inverts the order of nature, which is progressive Polyandry is found only where the levirate is wholly absent
14. 14. Which of these is not one of the three heads McLennan proposes to treat?

    How far the state of war prevails among primitive groups The prevalence of female infanticide The prevalence of capturing wives de facto Whether marriage within the group is forbidden where capture prevails
15. 15. Which people does McLennan cite as weighty evidence for endogamy as a primitive type?

    The Khonds The Mantchu Tartars The Australian Blacks The Circassians
16. 16. Among the Nairs, according to Buchanan, who are a man’s heirs?

    His brothers’ sons His sister’s children His wife’s brothers and their sons His eldest son by his first wife
17. 17. How did the men of Benjamin obtain wives, according to the Book of Judges as McLennan tells it?

    By capturing Egyptian and Canaanite women in raids beyond the Jordan From the virgins of Jabesh-Gilead, and by seizing girls at Shiloh By marrying the widows of the Israelites slain in the war against them By purchase from the Philistines
18. 18. What does McLennan admit had changed the habits of many South American tribes?

    The introduction of horses and firearms by the Spanish The spread of Christianity by the Jesuit missions of Paraguay Slave-hunting fostered by the Dutch and Portuguese Famines and epidemics brought in by European settlers
19. 19. Which marriage does McLennan say Athenian law allowed?

    Any sister if she was an heiress A half-sister by the same mother, but never one by the same father No sister of any kind A half-sister by the same father, but not by the same mother
20. 20. What is McLennan’s test for the presence of the symbol of capture?

    The bride resists with real violence and her kinsmen pursue the party The bridegroom pays no price for the bride The capture takes place at night, by torchlight, before witnesses The capture is concerted and preceded by a contract of marriage
21. 21. In Tibetan polyandry as Turner describes it, who chooses the wife?

    The village lama The mother of the bride The eldest brother The youngest brother
22. 22. Why, according to McLennan, are small communities a necessity in early times?

    Because there are too many languages to allow any lasting union Because chiefs always divide their lands equally among all their sons Because religion forbids large assemblies of armed men in one place The conditions of subsistence while the arts are undeveloped
23. 23. What does McLennan conclude from finding the symbol of capture among Indo-European, Turanian and Semitic peoples?

    That the phase of society producing it probably existed almost everywhere That it is a mark of the Indo-European race alone That it was invented by one Semitic people and then borrowed by the others That the custom spread outward from the early Aryans to all their neighbours
24. 24. What penalty does Bell say the Circassians now exact for marriage within one’s own fraternity?

    Enslavement of the husband to the wife’s family Death by drowning in the nearest river Exile from the fraternity for life and loss of all property A fine of two hundred oxen and the wife’s return to her parents
25. 25. To what does McLennan trace the origin of exogamy?

    The need to form alliances with powerful neighbours An innate horror of marriage with kin Female infanticide, which made women scarce within the group The commands of early lawgivers
26. 26. Which two laws, according to McLennan, spread Australian family names across many tribes?

    Children take the father’s name, and men marry only within their tribe Children take the mother’s name, and a man may not marry a woman of his own family name Land passes to the eldest son, and wives are bought Brothers share one wife, and sons inherit from uncles
27. 27. According to Major M’Pherson, how do the Khonds regard marriage between members of the same tribe?

    As permitted only for chiefs As incestuous and punishable by death As lawful if a price is paid As preferable to marriage with strangers
28. 28. Why does McLennan doubt that exogamy arose from a natural feeling against marriage of near kin?

    Exogamy is found only among peoples who have no idea of blood-relationship Early exogamy permitted unions such as half-siblings, uncles with nieces Natural feelings cannot be inherited Savages had no idea of incest at all
29. 29. Which cases, according to McLennan, probably called for the earliest violations of exogamy?

    Kings marrying their own sisters to keep the royal blood unmixed Captive women taken in war Widows marrying their dead husbands’ brothers under the levirate Heiresses, whose marriages would carry estates out of the gens
30. 30. In the sciences of law and society, what does McLennan say “old” means?

    Old in chronology, as measured by written records Old as dated by the geological record of the race Nearest to the beginning of human progress Old as reconstructed by comparative philology