POLYANDRY (from Gk. roXvavdpia, poly ondrAa populousness, from polyandros. many men, from Much. many + am7r, man). That form of mar and the family in which a woman has more than one husband at a time. There are two well-marked types of polyandry, in one of which, called Nair polyandry, the husbands are usually not related to one another, and the Tibetan, or fraternal polyan(lry. in which the husbands are brothers. Either of these forms may shade into a relationship which would have to be described as a combination of polyandry and each husband more than One wife, as each wife has more than one hus band. A family scheme similar to this existed in the Hawaiian Islands when they first became known to Europeans. and was there known as the Punaluan family, and this name has been adopted into In one or another form polyan dry has been widely distributed. It has only late ly disappeared from Ceylon. New 'Zealand, Nev Caledonia, and elsewhere in the Pacific islands. It is still found in the Aleutian Islands. among the Koryaks north of the Okhotsk, and the Cossacks. In Africa it is found among the llottcntots. the Damaras, and mountain tribes of the Bantu race, and traces of it remain the novas of _Mada Ca.sar notes its existence in his day the l'icts and the Irish, and many evi dences of its bonnier occasional existence in other Aryan stocks and the Semitic and the Hamitic races have been by Ale Lerman, Spencer, and NV. Robertson :Smith.
'Hit' studies of -McLennan led him to the con clusion that polyandry, in poverty and female infanticide, was the first form of mar in a true sense of the word. (See MAR RIAGE.) Westermarck and Crawley ential writers have disputed MeLennall'S theories. bul the of Spencer and Gillen the native tribes of Central Australia have tended to confirm them in some important par ticulars. Apparently the earliest relations of men and women in primitive hordes were such that in a nominal sense all women were wives of all men, but that, so far from actual promiscuity the practice, a temporary was usual. That this was not in fact exclusive of polyandry, as Westermarek has it, is shown by Australian customs, where a wife who consorts with the elder of two or more brothers so as he is present in camp consorts with a brother during the absence of the elder, It is impossible to say with certainty whether the Nair polyandry of Southern India or the Tibetan polyandry is the older. Probably the Punaluan relationship preceded the polyandry in which one woman is shared by two or more men without any and. if so. fraternal polyandry is older than that in which husbands are The Jewish custom of the Levirate, or to marry a brother's widow. has been as a survival of poly andry, but, as Spencer has shown (Principles of it admits of another explanation. For sec MARRIACE.