LEVIRATE. In ancient Hebrew usage when a man died without sons, his brother was required to marry the widow and get a son by her, who was counted the son of the dead man and so carried on the line. An analogous custom existed in Vedic times for it appears clearly "in the burial ritual of the Rigveda, that the brother-in-law of the dead man should marry the widow, probably only in cases where the dead had left no son and it was therefore imperative that steps should be taken to secure him offspring; for the Rigveda recognizes to the full the keen desire of the Vedic Indian for a child to perform his funeral rites" (Cambridge History of India, vol. i., p. 89, A. B. Keith, 1922).
In the view of Sir James Frazer, the levirate is complementary to the sororate (q.v.), and originated in a particular form of group marriage, namely, in the marriage of a group of brothers to a group of sisters, but survived and assumed a different charac ter in changed surroundings. (Folklore of the Old Testament,
vol. ii. p. 339.) This view has been examined by Professor Wester marck who admits that it is very widespread but is so easily explained by existing conditions that it ought not to be regarded as a survival at all, for wives are inherited like other belongings.
This is in accord with the view of people practising the custom: and in the beliefs attached to the importance of male issue, both on religious and on social grounds, we may find the explanation and the justification of the custom, without hypothetical recon structions of the social history of mankind from the distorted, imperfectly understood and even, it is feared, inaccurately recorded customs of backward peoples whose chequered history is hid from us.