husband could
send her home, keep her property and kill the adulterer; but if
the man was guilty, or even suspected of the same offence, the
women of the neighbourhood destroyed his house and all his
visible property, and the owner was fortunate if he escaped with
a whole skin; and if the wife was not pleased with her husband,
she withdrew and a similar attack followed. On this account many
men were not married, preferring to live with paid women."[169]

A similar case of the rebellion of men against their position is
recorded in Guinea, where religious symbolism was used by the husband
as a way of escape. The maternal system held with respect to the chief
wife.

"It was customary, however, for a man to buy and take to wife a
slave, a friendless person with whom he could deal at pleasure,
who had no kindred that could interfere for her, and to
consecrate her to his Bossum or god. The Bossum wife, slave as
she had been, ranked next to the chief wife, and was
exceptionally treated. She alone was very jealously guarded, she
alone was sacrificed at her husband's death. She was, in fact,
wife in a peculiar sense. And having, by consecration, been made
of the kindred and worship of her husband, her children could be
born of his kindred and worship."[170]

This practice of having a slave-wife who was the property of the
husband became more and more common; and was one of the causes that
led to the establishment of father-right. How this came we have now to
see.

IV.--_The Transition to Father-right_

In the preceding sections of this chapter I have collected together,
with as much exactitude as I could, many examples of the maternal
family. I want now to refer briefly to a few further cases, which will
make clearer the causes which led to the adoption of father-right.

Many countries where the patriarchal system is firmly established
retain practices which can only be explained as survivals of the
earlier custom of mother-descent.[171] It must suffice to mention one
or two examples. In Burma, which offers in this respect a curious
contrast to India, the women have preserved under father-right most of
the privileges of mother-right. This is the more remarkable as the law
of marriage and the relationship of the sexes is founded on the code
of Manu, which proclaims aloud the inferiority of woman. It is
interesting, however, to note that the code recogn