SORORATE. This term was introduced by Sir James Frazer to designate all marriages with a wife's sister, whether in the life time of the first wife or after her death. In his view it is comple mentary to the custom of the levirate and both "are offshoots from one common root, a system of group marriage in which all the husbands were brothers and all the wives were sisters to each other, though not to their husbands; and that system in its turn originated in a simple desire to get wives as easily and cheaply as possible." (Folklore of the Old Testament, vol. ii., p. 317.) It is to be noted that in cases where fraternal polyandry is permitted, the wife of the eldest brother is the common wife while the wife of the youngest brother belongs to him alone, and that in societies where a definite relation as the cross-cousin, is prescribed for the eldest son, the youngest son is free to marry whom he will or can, within the more general rules of exogamy, so that the wives of the younger brothers in such cases do not or may not possess the status required for the wife of the eldest brother, while the younger sister of the late wife would possess that status. In the case of the matrilineal Garos, marriage with a prescribed relative, the cross-cousin, the son of the woman's mother's brother, is bind ing only on the youngest daughter. No rights are conferred by marriage with the elder daughters. It is further to be noted that as with the Ba-Ila (The Ila speaking peoples, vol. i., p. 391) a
woman though married may be called to leave her husband and her children to become the wife of her late sister's husband under the I sororate regulation. In India it is generally the wife's younger sister who is taken as a second wife when the first wife is barren or suf fers from an incurable disease. In advanced communities' marriage with the deceased wife's sister occurs for practical reasons when there are young children to be brought up. In primitive communi ties the relationship created by the first marriage between the two families is marked by a series of obligations of an economic, relig ious and social nature so tliat there is clearly an advantage in main taining the existing mode of relationship over the creation of a new series of analogous obligations. Thus in Ashanti "in the case of chiefs when a wife dies, the family are expected to replace the deceased woman by giving her sister in marriage to the chief" (R. S. Rattray, Ashanti, p. 34, 1923). In the case of societies organized on the dual basis (see DUAL ORGANIZATION), each moiety acts as a reservoir of spouses for the other moiety and is obliged to find mates.
See Frazer, Folklore of the Old Testament, vol. ii. (1918) ; Wester marck, History of Human Marriage, vol. iii. (1921).