whether the associated husbands are brothers, or are not related to each other. Wherever, therefore, we find the custom of "raising up seed" to a deceased brother, we are justified in holding that the people who observe it were once polyandrous. It could not be feigned spontaneously that the children born of the new union were the offspring of the deceased brother. Such a practice could not come into being unless the people who observe it had formerly passed through a phase of polyandry, and had been accustomed to feign all the children born to the associated brothers to be the offspring of the eldest brother. The following are examples of this custom:
Among the Makololo, when an elder brother dies, the brother next in age takes his wives, "as among the Jews, and the children that may be born of these women he calls his brother's also. He thus raises up seed to his departed relative."[1] Among the Gallas, says Bruce,[2] "when the eldest brother dies, leaving younger brothers behind him, and a widow young enough to bear children, the youngest brother of all is obliged to marry her; but the children of the marriage are always accounted as if they were the eldest brother's." Among the Zulus, when a son inherits his father's property, if any of his father's widows are young enough, his uncles are appointed to raise up seed to the heir's house that is, the brothers take the wives of the deceased brother, and the offspring of these unions are reckoned as children of the deceased. This custom, called ukeengena, is now, however, modified, and the widow may, if she chooses, marry some other man; but, in this case, the new husband pays a certain sum in cattle to the estate of the deceased.[3] The Kirghis used strictly to observe this custom, but among them, as among the Zulus, it is now dying out; though, should a widow marry a man in her late husband's tribe, other than her brother-in-law, the man has to pay her brother-in-law a fine for the slight done him by her preferring another to himself.[4]
The case of the Jews must be familiar to everyone. In Deut. xxv, 5, we read, "If brethren dwell together, and one of them die and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger: her husband's brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an husband's brother unto her." 6. "And it shall be, that the first-born which she beareth shall succeed in the name of his brother which is dead, that his name be not put out of Israel." That this was an old custom of the Jews we know from the case of Onan (Genesis, xxxviii), where, after Onan has avoided raising up seed to his
- ↑ Livingstone's Travels in South Africa, p. 185.
- ↑ Travels, etc., vol. ix, p. 225.
- ↑ Incwadi Yami, p. 39.
- ↑ Russian Central Asia, vol. i, pp. 329-330.
