so much of the animal, or is rising so far towards the Homeric standard, as to fight rather than let his wife be allotted to another man, or at least to thump that other man afterwards.
The Dieri case of the feast of license, just mentioned, is notable. "The various Piraurus (paramours) are allotted to each other by the great council of the tribe, after which their names are formally announced to the assembled people on the evening of the ceremony of circumcision, during which there is for a time a general license permitted between all those who have been thus allotted to each other." But persons of the same totem among the Dieri may not be Piraurus to each other, nor may near relations as we reckon kinship, including cousins on both sides.
In this arrangement Mr. Howitt sees "a form of group marriage," while I see tribe-regulated license, certainly much less lawless than that of the more advanced Fijians or the Arunta. Mr. Howitt did not state that the Pirauru or Piraungaru unions are preceded (as marriage is) by any ceremony, unless the reading the banns, so to speak, by public proclamation among the Dieri is a ceremony.51 Now he has discovered a ceremony as symbolic as our wedding ring (1904).
Little light, if any, is thrown on these customs of legalised license by philology. Mr. Howitt thought that Pirauru may be derived from Pira, "the moon," and Uru, "circular." The tribal feasts of license are held at the full moon, but I am not aware that, by the natives, people are deemed peculiarly "moonstruck," or lunatic, at that season. If Urabunna Piraungaru is linguistically connected with Dieri Pirauru, then both Piraungaru and Pirauru may mean "Full Mooners." "Thy full moons and thy festivals are an abomination to me!"52
Among the Dieri, "a woman becomes the Noa of a man most frequently by being betrothed to him when she is a mere infant… In certain cases she is given by the Great Council, as a reward for some meritorious act on his part." "None but the brave deserve the fair," and this is "individual marriage," though the woman who is wedded to one man may be legally allotted as Full Mooner, or Pirauru, to several. "The right of the Noa overrides that of the Pirauru. Thus a man cannot claim a woman who is Pirauru to him when her Noa is present in the camp, excepting by his consent." The husband generally yields, he shares equivalent privileges. "Such cases, however, are the frequent causes of jealousies and fights."53
This evidence does not seem, on the whole, to force upon us the conclusion that the Urabunna Piraungaru custom, or any of these customs, any more than the custom of polyandry, or of legalised incest in higher societies, is a survival of "group marriage" – all men of certain social grades being actual husbands of all women of the corresponding grades – while again that is a survival of gradeless promiscuity. We shall disprove that theory. Rather, the Piraungaru custom appears to be a limited concession to the taste, certainly a human taste, for partner-changing —which can only manifest itself where regular partnerships already exist. Jealousy among these tribes is in a state of modified abeyance: like nature herself, and second nature, where, among civilised peoples, things unnatural, or contrary to the horror of incest, have been systematically legalised.
I have so far given Mr. Howitt's account of Pirrauru (the name is now so written by him) among the Dieri, as it appeared in his works, prior to 1904. In that year he published his Native Tribes of South-East Australia, which contains additional details of essential importance (pp. 179-187). A woman becomes Tippa Malku,54 or affianced,55 to one man only, before she becomes Pirrauru, or what Mr. Howitt calls a "group wife." A "group wife," I think, no woman becomes. She is never the Pirrauru of all the men who are Noa to her, that is, intermarriageable with her. She is merely later allotted, after a symbolic ceremony, as a Pirrauru to one or more men, who are Noa to her. At first, while a child, or at least while a maiden, she is betrothed (there are varieties of modes) to one individual male. She may ask her husband to let her take on another man as Pirrauru; "should he refuse to do this she must put up with it." If he consents, other men make two adjacent ridges of sand, and level them into one larger ridge, while a man, usually the selected lover, pours sand from the ridge over the upper part of his thighs, "buries the Pirrauru in the sand." (The phrase does not suggest that Pirrauru means "Full Mooners.") This is the Kandri ceremony, it is performed when men swop wives (exchange their Noa as Pirraurus), and also when "the whole of the marriageable or married people, even those who are already Pirrauru, are reallotted," a term which suggests the temporary character of the unions.
I am ready to allow that the Kandri ceremony, a symbol of recognised union, like our wedding ring, or the exchanged garlands of the Indian Ghandarva rite, constitutes, in a sense, marriage, or a qualified union recognised by public opinion. But it is a form of union which is arranged subsequent to the Tippa Malku ceremony of permanent betrothal and wedlock. Moreover, it is, without a shadow of doubt, subsequent in time and in evolution to the "specialising" of one woman to one man in the Tippa Malku arrangement. That arrangement is demonstrably more primitive than Pirrauru, for Pirrauru is unthinkable, except as a later (and isolated) custom in modification of Tippa Malku.
This can easily be proved. On Mr. Howitt's theory, "group marriage" (I prefer to say "status marriage") came next after promiscuity. All persons legally intermarriageable (Noa), under phratry law, were originally, he holds, ipso facto, married. Consequently the Kandri custom could not make them more married than they then actually were. In no conceivable way could it widen the area of their matrimonial comforts, unless it enabled them to enjoy partners who were not Noa, not legally intermarriageable with them. But this the Kandri ceremony does not do. All that it does is to permit certain persons who are already Tippa Malku (wedded) to each other, to acquire legal paramours in certain other wedded or Tippa Malku women, and in men either married or bachelors. Thus, except as a legalised modification of individual Tippa Malku, Pirrauru is impossible, and its existence is unthinkable.56
Pirrauru is a modification of marriage (Tippa Malku), Tippa Malku is not a modification of "group marriage." If it were, a Tippa Malku husband, "specialising" (as Mr. Howitt says) a woman to himself, would need to ask the leave of his fellows, who are Noa to his intended fiancée.57 The reverse is the case. A man cannot take his Pirrauru woman away from her Tippa Malku husband "unless by his consent, excepting at certain ceremonial times" – feasts, in fact, of license. Pirrauru secures the domestic peace, more or less, of the seniors, by providing the young men (who otherwise would be wifeless and desperate) with legalised lemans. By giving these Pirrauru "in commendation" to the young men, older men increase their property and social influence. What do the Tippa Malku husbands say to this arrangement?
As for "group" marriage, there is nothing of the kind; no group marries another group, the Pirrauru literally heap hot coals on each other if they suspect that their mate is taking another of the "group" as Pirrauru. The jealous, at feasts of license, are strangled (Nulina). The Rev. Otto Siebert, a missionary among the Dieri, praises Pirrauru for "its earnestness in regard to morality." One does not quite see that hiring out one's paramours, who are other men's wives, to a third set of men is earnestly moral, or that jealousy, checked by strangling in public, by hot coals in private, is edifying, but Pirrauru is not "group marriage." No pre-existing group is involved. Pirrauru may (if they like jealousy and hot coals) live together in a group, or the men and women may often live far remote from each other, and meet only at bean-feasts.
You may call Pirrauru a form of "marriage," if you like, but, as a later modification of a prior Tippa Malku wedlock, it cannot be cited as a proof of a yet more pristine status-marriage of all male to all female intermarriageable
Howitt,
What the Dieri call
At Port Lincoln a man calls his own wife
Mr. Howitt says that the pair are
Will any one say, originally all Noa people were actual husbands and wives to each other? Then the Kandri ceremony and
Or his seniors would hare to ask it. But his kin could not possess the tight to betroth him before kinship was recognised, which, before marriage existed, it could not be.
