Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/31

FAMILY 21 It must be noticed that, though the members of a gens were of no recognizable kin to eacli other in one sense, yet they showed a certain solidarite putting on mourning when one of the kin was in disgrace (Livy, vi. 20), sharing common religious rights peculiar to themselves, and at one time having a right to inherit property. All these things point to consciousness of distant blood-relationship. Still one feature of the ghotra seems absent. It is hardly proved that there was a time when Romans might not marry within the gens. Indications of the past existence of the rule are found in the fact that Roman genealogies do not, as it is said, show us examples of marriages between persons of the same gens. More to the point is Plutarch s statement (llept amW Pw/mucwi ), " In times past it was unlawful for Romans to marry women of their own kin (a-vyycviSas) ; .... nay, they did not wed ladies in any degree connected with them by blood, just as now they do not take sisters or aunts, and it was long before they ventured to take cousins to wife." It seems then that, just as in the case of the contemporary ghotra of the Hindus, an ancient and wide prohibition to marry in the gens was thrown off by the Romans. Here it must be uoted that the ghotra of the Hindu law of inheritance is not identical with the ghotra in which marriage is pro hibited by custom. It is rather a body composed of all the cognates within certain large limitations. lu the example of the Greek yeVos we again find the common name a patronymic, generally thought to be derived from a hero. We find that all who bore the name shared certain religious rights, and before Solon s date were co-heirs to property, and took up the blood feud if one of the yeVos were slain. Yet the yevr^rai are often defined as not akin in blood, so entirely did the old sense of relationship dwindle, in Greece as in Rome. The lexico graphers supposed that the yiv^ were constituted by legis lative enactment, I/O/AO> rvi t^ovTes KotvamW. (See Meier, De Gentibns Aft ids; Philtppi, Der Areopag und die Epheten, Berlin, 1874, p. GS ; Schoemann, Griechische Alterthumer, Berlin, 18G1, vol. i. p. 329, with Schoemann s theory of the growth of the yeVos; F. Ilaase, Die Athenische Stamm- verfassung ; also Grote s History of Greece, iii. 53.) Now, hard as it is to ascertain the exact nature of the yeVos, and of its relation to the tribe, it seems, on the whole, more analogous to the totem-kin than to the caste or joint family of the modern Hindus. (See Sir Henry Maine, "South Slavonians and Rajpoots," Nineteenth Century, December, 1877.) A common name, co-heirship, the duty of avenging a member, all point to the idea of kinship, As to exogamy, a Greek could certainly marry in his own yeVo?, for the common name went by the- father s side, and a Greek might marry his father s though not his mother s daughter. It has been argued that the prohibition to marry a uterine sister, though kinship in historic Greece went by the male line, indicates a past when the maternal tie was more strict, when, in fact, a man who married his uterine sister married within the ye vos, and a man who took his half-sister by the father s side married outside the yeVos. Here it may be observed that Aristotle (Pol., 1, 2, 5, 6) gives as very ancient synonyms of yo/v^rat the terms o/xoyaAaKre? (nourished on the same milk), 6/xoo-/7n;oi (eating from the same vessel), O^OKO-TTVOL (warmed by the same fire). These terms speak of a time when motherhood or fosterage, when community of shelter, not blood kinship, were the bonds that kept members of the same kin together. The words may be compared with Gaelic teadldocli and cocdiche, " Gaelic names for family, signifying, the first, having a common residence, the second those who eat together " (M Lennan, Prim. Mar., p. 154). It has been usual, almost universal, to explain the Greek yeVos and Roman gens by simply saying, like Mr Freeman (Comparative Politics, Macmillan, 1873, p. Ill), "The family grew into the clan, the clan grew into the tribe." Mr Freeman says we can trace this process best " among men of our own blood." But when we examine the early associations of the English (Kcmble s Saxons in England, vol. i. p. 458), we find, just as in America, just as in Australia, groups of kindred of the same name, tak;; Billing, by way of example, scattered from north to south through all the local tribes. We have seen how this happens in America and Australia, we have seen that there the family, in Mr Freeman s sense, does not grow into the clan. Did it do so in Attica and Italy, and, if so, how did a tribe, which was ex hypothesi but a swollen clan, contain so many stocks which claimed distinct origin and distinct mythical ancestors ] How did these stocks come to be scattered through local tribes, not grouped in one J The growth of savage tribes is not a development of the family; tribes singularly like those of savages are found in early civilizations. Had the two kinds of kindred different; origins ? There remains a point to notice. The thoroughly savago totem-kindreds revere the animal, plant, or other object from which they take their name and claim descent, and they use it as a badge. For Greek and Roman survivals of this usage see Plutarch, Theseiis; M Leunan, " The wor ship of plants and animals," in the Fortnightly Review, 1869, 1870; and the Antiquities of Heraldry, by W. 8. Ellis, 1869. If the ordinary theory, that the tribe and clan are overgrown families, be rejected, the converse theory may be stated thus : The totem-kindreds of savages grow up through exogamy and female kin. The change to male kinship (a change which is demonstrably taking place in America and Australia) produced something like the Chinese circle of relationship. The substitution of the name of a fictitious ancestor for that of the sacred plant, animal, or natural object produced a circle of affinity like the Hindu ghotra of customary religion. 1 The decay of th j prohibition to marry within the kin united by the family name, like the growing laxity of rule in the ghotra, pro duced something like the Greek yeVos and the Roman gens. Nothing remained but joint religious rites, a common place of burial, a common name, a vague feeling of connexion, traditions of the prohibition to marry within the gens, the duty of taking up the blood-feud, and vestiges of the joint- heirship. In process of time the intenser affections of the family caused the old gentile ties to disappear, and gentile law became an empty memory. It has been shown that arrangements ruder than the modern family exist among contemporary savages, and have existed among ancient peoples. It has been shown that these rude institutions produce large associations of men, tribes and totem-kindred, among savages, and that, by a series of changes, every one of which is exemplified in experience, the Greek and Roman gentes, the units of early political society, may have been developed out of barbarous groups. There are next certain customs to be examined, which tend, as far as they go, to show that civilized society passed through savage stages. The chief of these customs are the ceremony of capture and bridal etiquette. As to the ceremony of capture it is superfluous to say much, as the subject has been handled, with complete originality and copious illustrations, in M Lennan s Primitive Marriage. The classic example of the ceremony of capture is thus stated by C. O. Miiller, (History and Antiquities of the Doric Race, English translation, Oxford, 1830, vol. ii. p. 298) : " Two things were requisite as an introduction and preparation to 1 We have examples in Zulu-land of the declining belief in animal ancestry (Callaway s Religion of the Amazulu), and in Greek history we have frequent instances of the fictitious adoption of eponymous heroic ancestors.