POLYANDRY, the system under which a woman is married to several men at the same time (Gr. roXbs, many, and avip, man). Cases of it have been noticed among certain South Ameri can Indians, and in North America among some Eskimo, the Tlingit, the Aleut and the Kaniagmiut on the Alaskan coast. In an old description of the conquest of the Guanches in the Canary islands in 1402 it is said that in the Island of Lancerote most of the women have three husbands, "who wait upon them alternately by months." Sporadic cases of polyandry have been found in Madagascar, among a few peoples on the African continent, in some places of the Malay archipelago and among certain South Sea islanders ; while in the Marshall islands and the Marquesas it has been practised on a much larger scale. In Tibet polyandry has prevailed from time immemorial, the husbands being as a rule brothers, who live together with their common wife as members of the same household. Fraternal polyandry is more or less fre quent in vast districts of the Himalayan region from Assam to the dependencies of Kashmir, chiefly among people of Tibetan affinities, and in South India, where its prevalence among the Todas of the Nilgiri hills has attracted special attention; and it existed throughout the interior of Ceylon until it was prohibited by the British Government about the year 1860. Among the Nayars or Nairs of Cochin, Malabar and Travancore we meet with polyandrous unions of a different, non-fraternal type, the prevalence of which has been testified by a large number of travellers from the beginning of the 15th century onwards. Ac cording to Nayar usage every girl, before she attained puberty, was subjected to a certain marriage ceremony, after which the nominal husband went his way and she was allowed to cohabit with any Brahman or Nayar she chose ; usually she had several lovers, who cohabited with her by agreement among themselves but did not live with her. Strabo asserts that polyandry prevailed in Arabia Felix, and some modern scholars think that they have found confirmation of this statement in Sabian and Minaean in scriptions.
Very frequently polyandry is modified in a monogamous di rection, one, usually the first, husband being the chief husband ; nay, in various cases any other man with whom he shares his wife acts as husband and master of the house only during the absence of the true lord. Where fraternal polyandry prevails the
eldest brother is commonly regarded as the principal husband; he chooses the wife, and the contract he makes may implicitly confer matrimonial rights on all the other brothers. Among many polyandrous peoples the various husbands live or cohabit with their common wife in turn; and if they are brothers the eldest one is sometimes expressly said to take the lead.
Among many polyandrous peoples there are said to be more men than women, and their polyandry has in several cases been directly attributed to this fact ; and even if some of these state ments, in the absence of statistical data, are more or less hypo thetical, there are others the accuracy of which is past all doubt. But polyandry has also been traced to economic motives. In Tibet it has been said to obtain as a necessary institution, serving the end of checking the increase of population in regions from which emigration is difficult and also keeping the family property together ; and similar reasons have been assigned for polyandry in Ladakh, Bhutan, South India and Ceylon. The polyandry of the Tibetans, the Himalayans and some peoples in the south of India seems also to be partly due to the dangers or difficulties which would surround a woman left alone in her home during the prolonged absence of her husband. The peculiar polyandry of the Nayars is most probably connected with their military or ganization, which prevented them living the ordinary life of a husband and father of a family.