her
family.[106]

[106] Starcke's _Primitive Family_, pp. 85-88. Letourneau,
_Evolution of Marriage_, pp. 80-81, 311-312. Hartland,
_Primitive Paternity_, Vol. I, pp. 269, 288.

Now, if we regard these customs in the light of what has already been
established, it is clear that they cannot be regarded as the first
stage in the maternal family. Such a view is entirely to mistake the
facts. The Nairs are in no respect a people of primitive culture.
Through a long period they have most strictly preserved the custom of
matriarchal heredity, which has led to an unusual concentration of the
family group, and it is probable that here is the best explanation of
the conjugal liberty of the Nair girls. However singular their system
may appear to us, it is the most logical and complete of any
polyandric system. If we compare it with the more usual form of
patriarchal polyandry we see at once the influence of maternal
descent. Here, the woman makes a free choice of her husbands; in no
sense is she their property. It is common for them to work for her,
one husband taking on himself to furnish her with clothes, another to
give her rice and food, and so on. It is, in fact, the wife who
possesses, and it is through her that wealth is transmitted. In
fraternal polyandry, on the other hand (as, for instance, it is
practised in Thibet and Ceylon), the husbands of a woman are always
brothers; she belongs to them, and for her children there is a kind of
collective fatherhood. But among the Nairs the man as husband and
father cannot be said to exist; he is reduced to the most subordinate
role of the male--he is simply the progenitor.

I know of no stronger case than this of the degraded position of the
father. And what I want to make clear is that in such negation of all
father-right rested the inherent weakness in the matriarchal
conditions--a weakness which led eventually to the re-establishment of
the paternal family. We must be very clear in our minds as to the
sharp distinction between the restricted family and the communal
clan. The clan as a confederation of members was opposed to the family
whose interests were necessarily personal and selfish. Such communism,
to some may appear strange at so early a stage of primitive cultures,
yet, as I have more than once pointed out, it was a perfectly natural
development; it arose through the fierce struggle for existence,
forcing the primitive hostile groups to expand and unite w