HENOGAMY, a term used to denote the custom by which one, and only one, member of a family or stock is permitted to marry, or is required to marry according to definite rules which are not binding on other members of the family. Thus, among the Nabuthiri Brahmins of Malabar "the eldest son alone marries. The accepted practice, as well as the recognized principle among them, seems to be in consonance with the directions expounded by Manu, viz., immediately on the birth of his firstborn male child, a man is the father of a son, and is free from the debt to the Manes. That son is, therefore, worthy to receive the whole estate. That son alone, on whom he throws his debt, is begotten for (the fulfilment of) the law. And the next they consider the offspring of desire. . . . Should a Nambuthiri eldest son die, the next marries and so on." (E. Thurston, Tribes and Castes of Southern India, 1909, vol. v., p. This custom, it is observed, has long been in force to keep the family property intact and to prevent its disintegration by par tition which the marriage of the younger sons might necessitate (A. N. Krishna Iyer, The Cochin Tribes and Castes, 1912, vol. ii., p. 183) . Polygamy "is often indulged in by the Nabuthiris, owing partly to their desire to have a son to perform funeral and other ceremonies for the spirits of the departed, and partly to dispose of the superfluous number of girls." (I bid, p. 210.) The younger males contract alliances with Nayar women. Their children belong to the Tarwad, a matrilineal group of their mothers and pollute their Brahmin fathers. This dislocation of the social order extends far down in Malabar society, and is ultimately traceable to the practice of henogamy among the patrilineal Brahmins. The belief in direct and specific reincarnation which is embodied in the teach ing of Manu is connected with customs in t e Punjab, where "the position of the firstborn is probably due to the fact that, if a son, his father is born again in him, so that the father is supposed to die at his birth, and in certain Khatri sections, e.g., the Kochhar, his funeral rites are actually performed—in the fifth month of the mother's pregnancy. Probably herein lies the explanation of the dev-kaj, or divine nuptials, a ceremony which consists in a formal re-marriage of the parents after the birth of their first son" (Punjab. Census Report, 1901, part I. p. 215).
Among the matrilineal Garos (q.v.) the youngest daughter is reserved for marriage with her father's brother's son, after he has married her own mother who, under the dual system, is also his paternal aunt (A. Playfair, The Garos, 1909, p. 67; Assam Census Report, 1891, p. 229). The elder daughters make their own arrangements for marriage.
There are other instances in India and elsewhere of rules by which special status—as regards inheritance and succession—is conferred by marriage between specified persons, as if one mode or set of rites gave peculiar dignity and validity. These devices mark decisively a change from a social order in which inheritance and succession are determined by the principle of social equiva lence, as in the levirate (q.v.) or sororate (q.v.), which is ex pressed in terms of a classificatory system, to that order in which one line is selected, one son preferred, for transmission. The eco nomic results which in history have accrued from the emergence of the principle of unilinealism have been, and still are, con siderable. The custom of henogamy, if extended to cover the case where special rites and conditions are used for the marriage of the eldest son, is of wide occurrence, and the survival in India of the strict logical form has, therefore, special interest.