The Fijians: A Study of the Decay of CustomThomson, Basil
History
The Fijians: A Study of the Decay of Custom
Thomson, Basil
Ethnology -- Fiji; Fijians
G. and H. are concubitant, born husband and wife, as were their
grandparents A. and B., but they grow up and take a dislike to one
another and each marries some one else. Yet the system takes no account
of such petty interruptions as likes and dislikes. They were born
married, and married they must be so far as their children are
concerned. They have each married outside the tribe, yet their children
L. and J. are tabu just as much as if G. and H. had married and they
were the offspring of the marriage. G. and H. have in fact dislocated
the system for all posterity, but the system goes on, refusing to admit
the injury done to it. The most striking feature in the system is this
oppressive intolerance. It is so indifferent to human affections that if
a man dares to choose a woman other than the wife provided for him his
disobedience avails him nothing. His concubitant is still his wife, and
her children are his children. It will, it is true, give way so far as
to recognize as his wife the woman he has chosen, but only on the
condition that she becomes his fictitious concubitant, and that all her
relatives fall into their places as if she had actually been born his
concubitant.
This brings us to a fresh starting-point from which the concubitous
relationship is established. Since a man who is the concubitant of a
woman is necessarily also the concubitant of all her sisters, by a
natural evolution, if he marries a woman unrelated to him by blood, and
_ipso facto_ makes her his concubitant, all her sisters become his
concubitants also. In the past they would have been his actual wives,
for a man could not take one of several sisters--he was in honour bound
to take them all. In the same way a woman and her sisters became the
concubitants of all her husband's brothers, and upon his death, she
passed naturally to her eldest brother-in-law if he cared to take her.
This does not imply polyandry or community among brothers, but rather
what is known to anthropologists as Levirate, a woman's marriage to her
brother-in-law being contingent on her husband's death.
_Tabu Relationships._--Hitherto we have dealt with persons sprung from
the respective marriages of a brother and sister, and have not touched
upon the offspring respectively of two brothers or two sisters. These
are tabu to one another, being, as I have said, regarded as being as
closely consanguineous as actual brothers and sisters.
A. B. brothers
| |
X.(m) = C.(f) tabu D.(m) = Y.(f)
| |
G.(f) = H.(m) Concubitant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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