it is rightly explained as a stage in the decay of purchase and in the rise of the dower; but when we find the return of gifts in use among such rude peoples, for instance, as the Bechuanas, the Kalmucks, the Makassars, and the American Indians,[713] it seems reasonable to suppose that the custom, in some cases at least, may represent a ceremonial development of free marriage, taking its rise in various motives. Thus among the Todas, it has been suggested, the transaction appears as an exchange of dowers to serve as a security for the mutual good behavior of the future couple.[714] Similarly with the American Indians the gift to the bride's parents may sometimes be designed to purchase clan privileges[715] or to procure the "alliance of the wife's cabin;" while the exchange of presents, which is found where it is usual for the husband to take up his abode in the wife's home, ought perhaps to be regarded as a matrimonial compact of alliance between the two families.[716] [709] WESTERMARCK, _op. cit._, 397. [710] Compare SARASIN, _Die Weddas von Ceylon_, I, 460, 461. Sometimes girdles (_Lendenschnuren_) are exchanged by bride and groom. Free courtship exists; and this primitive people presents a notable example of the pairing-family. The English author DEBUTTS naïvely remarks, "The savage Veddahs live in pairs like the beasts of the forest": SARASIN, _op. cit._, I, 549. [711] Such is the case among the Ainos of Yesso and the Brazilian Puris, Coroados, and Coropos: WESTERMARCK, _op. cit._, 397, 398. Among the Polynesians the present seems to be designed to gain the good-will of the wife's parents, but when the wife's family is the inferior in rank, the husband, though rendering the wooing-gift, receives a dower with his bride: WAKE, _op. cit._, 390. On the "wooing-gift" see POST, _Familienrecht_, 173, 175; _idem_, _Afrikanische Jurisprudenz_, I, 342 ff.; KOHLER, in _ZVR._, V, 356; KOEHNE, _ibid._, IX, 461 (Kalmucks); HILDEBRAND, _Ueber das Problem_, 17 ff., who, as already noted, regards gift as preceding purchase; and CRAWLEY, _Mystic Rose_, 386 ff., who holds that "the so-called bride-price was originally of the same class as the _kalduke_, a pledge, a part of one's self, given to another and received from him."