In Tibet and the adjacent countries there exists polyandry of the fraternal type, i.e., several brothers share the wife in common. All the husbands live together with their common wife as mem bers of the same household, and cohabit successively with her. Children born of these marriages are sometimes regarded as the legal descendants of the eldest brother-husband only; in other cases it appears that when a child is born it is attributed to him by whom the mother asserts that she has conceived it.
Among the Nayars of S.W. India there is a so-called form of polyandry which has played an important though rather deceptive part in the theories of marriage. A girl goes through a form of marriage with a man, but then really consorts with a number of men who need not be related to one another. She lives apart from her partners, who cohabit with her successively by agreement among themselves. Owing to the matrilineal institutions of this people, the children of such marriages inherit from their mother's brother, but the social importance of fatherhood is seen in the fact that the woman, when pregnant, always nominates one or other of the men as the father of the child, and he is obliged to provide for it and to educate it.
Another account is that by Dr. Rivers, of the Toda polyandry, which can be taken as the representative of the simpler type of this institution in S. India. Among the Toda, several men, usually two or three brothers, share the wife, but it is the rule that they cohabit with her in succession. Again, the children are not owned in common by the husbands, but each child is allotted individually to one, not with reference to any presumption of physical pa ternity, but in virtue of a ritual act performed by the man over the child, an act which establishes social paternity and confers legitimate descent on the child (see above, 4).
Polyandry is thus a compound marriage, in which cohabitation is usually successive, and not joint, while children and property are not shared by the husbands.
27. Polygyny.—This is a form of marriage in which several wives are united to one man, each having the status of legal con sort, while her offspring are regarded as the legal descendants of the husband. As an institution polygyny (q.v.) exists in all parts of the world. There are very few primitive tribes about whom we are informed that a man is not allowed, if he can, to enter into more than one union. Many peoples have been said to be monogamous, but it is difficult to infer from the data at our disposal whether monogamy is the prevalent practice, the moral ideal, or an institution safeguarded by sanctions. It must be
remembered at once that polygyny is never practised throughout the community : there cannot exist a community in which every man would have several wives, since this would entail an enormous surplus of females over males (cf. however the important con tribution to this subject by G. Pitt-Rivers, The Clash of Cultures and the Contact of Races, 1927). The second important point with regard to polygyny, which is seldom brought out clearly, is that in reality it is not so much a form of marriage fundamentally distinct from monogamy as rather a multiple monogamy. It is always in fact the repetition of a marriage contract, entered in dividually with each wife, establishing an individual relationship between the man and each of his consorts. As a rule each relation ship is little affected legally or economically by the others.
Where each wife has her separate household and the husband visits them in turn, polygynous marriage resembles very closely a temporarily interrupted monogamy. In such cases there is a series of individual marriages in which domestic arrangements, economics, parenthood as well as legal and religious elements do not as a rule seriously encroach on each other. The polygyny with separate households is more universally prevalent. Among the great majority of the Bantu and Hamitic peoples of Africa, where the number of wives, especially in the case of chiefs, is often considerable, each wife commonly occupies a separate hut with her children, and manages an independent household with well-defined legal and economic rights. Where, on the other hand, as among many N. American tribes, two or more wives share the same household, polygyny affects the institution of matrimonial life much more deeply.
In most cases the motive for polygyny is economic and political. Thus in the Trobriand Islands (Melanesia) the chief's income is due to his wives' annual endowment. In many African communi ties the chief derives his wealth from the plurality of his wives, who by means of the produce of their agricultural labour enable him to exercise the lavish hospitality upon which so much of his power rests. A multitude of wives, however, may increase not only a man's wealth but also his social importance, reputation and authority, apart from the influence of the number of his children. Hence we find in many Bantu communities of Africa that the desire to have many wives is one of the leading motives in the life of every man ; while the fact that in many Melanesian and Polynesian communities polygyny is a prerogative of the chief testifies to the social prestige attaching to it.