[153] Thurston, _Ethnographic Notes in Southern India_, p. 114. Polyandry has flourished not only among the primitive races of India. The Hindoo populations also adopted it, and traces of the custom may be found in their sacred literature. Thus in the _Mahaebhaerata_ the five Pandava brothers marry all together the beautiful Druaupadi, with eyes of lotus blue (_Mahaebhaerata_, trad. Fauche, t. II. p. 148). For an account of polyandry in ancient India the reader should consult Jolly, _Gundriss der Indo-Arischen Philologie und Altertumskunde_. [154] Davy, _Ceylon_, p. 286; Sachot, _L'Ile de Ceylon_, p. 25. [155] Turner, _Thibet_, p. 348, and _Hist. Univ. des, Voy._, Vol. XXXI. p. 434; Dalton, _Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 36. [156] Hartland, _op. cit._, Vol. II. p. 164. [157] This is the opinion of Bernhoeft, quoted by Iwan Bloch. Marshall points out that among the Todas group-marriages occur side by side with polyandry. Bloch also notes that in the common cases where the husband has a claim on his wife's sister, and even her cousins and aunts, we find polygamy developed out of group-marriage. The practice of wife lending and wife exchange is also connected with the early communal marriage (_Sexual History of Our Times_, pp. 193-194). It is possible that prostitution may be a relic of this early sexual freedom. What is moral in one stage of civilisation often becomes immoral in another, when the reasons for its existing have changed. [158] Havelock Ellis writing on this subject ("Changing Status of Women," _Nineteenth Century_, Oct. 1886) says: "It seems that in the dawn of the race an elaborate social organisation permitted a more or less restricted communal marriage, every man in the tribe being at the outset the husband of every woman, first practically, then theoretically, and that the social organisation which had this point of departure was particularly favourable to women." [159] It is a matter of dispute whether a woman may have more than one husband at a time. The older accounts state this, while later it has been denied. The probability is that this was the custom, but that it is dying out under modern influences. Hartland, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 267. [160] In north Malabar a custom has arisen by which after a special ceremony the bridegroom is allowed to take the bride to live in his house, but in the case of his death she must at once return to her own family. [161] _J.A.I._, XII. p. 292; Hartland, _op. cit._, p. 288. Letourneau, apparently quoting Bachofen, says that the women control property. This was probably an earlier custom, when the power was more truly in the hands of women, and had not passed to their male relatives. [162] Wilken, _Verwantschap_, p. 678; _Bijdragen_, XXXI. p. 40.