Note 95 — Chapter VI

The Matriarchate. 32. According to Baudhayana “there is a dispute regarding five practices both in the South and in the North. Those peculiar to the South are to eat in the company of an uninitiated person, to eat in the company of one’s wife, to eat stale food, to marry the daughter of a maternal uncle or paternal aunt. He who follows these in any other country than the one where they prevail commits sin.”95 There is some want of moral perspective in the classification of these prohibitions: but they chiefly concern us in connection with the matriarchal theory. The prohibition of marriage with a cousin on the mother’s side has been accepted as an indication of the uncertainty of male parentage. There can be no doubt that in Northern India there is some special connection between a boy and his maternal uncle, as is shown by many instances drawn from the usages of the inferior tribes, such as the Agariya, Majhwâr and other Dravidian races. We also find among the Doms and Dharkârs that it is the sister’s son who performs the duties of priest at the cremation and worship of the sainted dead, which follows it. He is not, however, regarded as an heir to the deceased to the exclusion of his sons. Similarly though a foster-child has no rights to succeed,96 the relationship is universally recognised as a bar to intermarriage. There is thus some evidence for some of the tests of female kinship as laid down by Professor Robertson Smith.97