Accordingly, through polyandry, it is held, the transition to the parental or paternal system of kinship becomes possible, and sooner or later it usually takes place. Among the Todas father-right is fully established. In Tibet the inheritance goes to the brothers in the order of birth; and, failing these, to their eldest son, who, as already seen, is often known to be the eldest brother's child. This rule, it is maintained, may readily lead to agnation. Nevertheless the primitive custom of mother-right was very tenacious. Resisted by the gentile organization and the blood-feud, the transition was slow and painful. It was facilitated by contract and initiation.[252] A woman might be bought with the understanding that the children should belong, not to her own clan, but to that of her husband. Or, when contract alone was not sufficient to overcome the resistance of religion and the blood-feud, the same result might be obtained by purchase, followed by initiation into the sacred rites of the husband's kindred.[253] Moreover, as in Tibet and among the Todas, wife-purchase or its survival is sometimes found in connection with polyandry.[254] [252] On wife-purchase and initiation, as a means of transition to the paternal system, see MCLENNAN, _Patriarchal Theory_, 232-38. [253] Thus, in Guinea, according to Bosman, in ordinary marriages, even when the wives were purchased, the children belonged to the mother. "It was customary, however, for a man to buy and take to wife a slave, a friendless person ... and consecrate her to his Bossum or god." In this case the "children would be born of his kindred and worship."--BOSMAN, _Description of Guinea_, 161; MCLENNAN, _op. cit._, 235, 236. [254] MASON, _Woman's Share in Primitive Culture_, 222; ROCKHILL, _Land of the Lamas_, 213, 339; MARSHALL, _op. cit._, 210 ff., 217, 219. McLennan believes that Tibetan polyandry has been nearly, if not quite, universal, and that it is an "advance upon the Nair type." Many evidences of its alleged actual existence in present and former times are adduced; and where the institution is not found reliance is placed upon the presence of certain customs, such as the Niyoga, or the "appointed daughter," of the Hindus, the Hebrew levirate, and the inheritance by brothers, which are held to be its survivals.[255] 3. The disparity in the number of women would next produce the custom of wife-capture. The normal condition of primitive men is assumed to be that of strife.[256] Women would naturally be sought as the most valuable of the spoils of war. This would lead to polygyny. Since there can be no certainty as to fatherhood where the practice of seizing the women from hostile tribes obtains, wife-capture is the means of maintaining the system of counting kinship through the women only; and the existence of that system, at some time, must be inferred wherever wife-capture or its form in the marriage ceremony is discovered.