A History of Matrimonial Institutions, Vol. 1 of 3Howard, George Elliott
History
A History of Matrimonial Institutions, Vol. 1 of 3
Howard, George Elliott
Families; Marriage -- History
But forces were now operating within the Punaluan family which
were destined to transform it. "From the necessities of the social
state," there was more or less pairing from the first, "each man
having a principal wife among a number of wives, and each woman
a principal husband among a number of husbands." Moreover, the
fuller development of the gentile organism, with its rule of
exogamy, tended to foster a sentiment hostile to the intermarriage
of near kindred and, in other ways, to produce a scarcity of women
available for marriage within the Punaluan groups, thus leading to
wife-capture and wife-purchase. Under these influences arose the
Syndiasmian, or third general type of the family, based upon the
marriage of single pairs, often temporary and without exclusive
cohabitation. It is found among the Senaca-Iroquois and many other
American tribes, among the Tamils of South India, and some other
races of Asia.[200] This family did not produce a distinct system of
consanguinity, the peoples having it still retaining the Turanian
system.[201] The next, or Patriarchal, family, like the Syndiasmian,
is "intermediate," not being "sufficiently influential upon human
affairs to create a new, or modify essentially the then existing
system of consanguinity."[202] It is found particularly among the
Semites and Romans, and is characterized by the "organization of
a number of persons, bond and free, into a family under paternal
power, for the purpose of holding lands, and for the care of flocks
and herds." The Syndiasmian, and in a less degree the Patriarchal,
constitute the transitional stage in the development of the
Monogamic family. Its rise was especially fostered by the influence
of property and the increase of the paternal power, leading to the
change from the female to the male line of descent. It produced the
system of consanguinity prevailing among the Uralian, Semitic, and
Aryan peoples.[203]
[200] _Ibid._, 384 ff., 453-65. Called the "barbarian" family in
_Systems of Consanguinity_, 490, 491.
[201] _Ancient Society_, 461.
[202] _Ibid._, 384, 465, 466; _Systems of Consanguinity_, 480,
491.
[203] _Ancient Society_, 468-97; _Systems of Consanguinity_, 492,
493, 3-127.
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