Page:Next-of-kin Marriages in Old Iran.djvu/118

It is very likely, indeed, that the ancient Persians, like other nations, before their emergence from the savage state, looked without disfavour on connexions that we now cannot think of without a shudder. The prevalence of family polyandry is as well authenticated as any fact in Anthropology. The ancient Britons had one or more wives for a group of brothers, so had the Spartans. A similar arrangement prevails among some of the Himalayan tribes, and traces of it are to be found in the Hindu law literature. The children in such cases are formally attributed to the eldest brother. A communal system under which all the females were common to the tribe, seems in many cases to have preceded the family polyandry on the arrangements that we may see still amongst the Nairs. Where such a system prevailed it would very often be impossible to say whether a young woman about to be taken by a young man, was or was not his sister. If she had been borne of a different mother, she could not be more than his-half-sister, and as civilization advanced and the family was founded on the basis of single known paternity, the half-sister in Greece continued to be regarded as a proper spouse for her half-brothers. A marriage of such persons furthered the policy of the Greek statesmen by keeping the family estates together. Amongst the Jews also, who, as we know, recognized the levirate