Group Marriage - Non-European Cultures

Non-European Cultures

  • Among the Sandwich Islanders, the relationship of punalua involved "the fact that two or more brothers with their wives, or two or more sisters with their husbands, were inclined to possess each other in common".
  • In some parts of Melanesia, there are "sexual relations between a group of men formed by the husband's brothers and a group of women formed by the wife's sisters".
  • Friedrich Ratzel in The History of Mankind reported in 1896 that In Hawaii a kind of incipient polyandry arose by the addition to the marriage establishment of a cicisbeo, known as Punalua.
  • Toda people, who live on the isolated Nilgiri plateau of Southern India practiced adelphic polyandry for centuries, but no longer do so. Adelphic polyandry occurs when brothers share the same wife or wives. Such arrangements has happened in Himalayian tribes too.

The following instances are cited in Thomas 1906.

  • In North America there is "group marriage as existing among the Omahas … adelphic polygyny."
  • Among the Dieri of Australia exist forms of spouse-sharing known as pirrauru, in two categories "according as the man has or has not a tippa-malku wife. In the first case it is, taken in combination with the tippa-malku marriage, a case of bilateral dissimilar adelphic (M. and F.) polygamy. In the latter case it is dissimilar adelphic (tribal) polyandry". The pirrauru "relation arises through the exchange by brothers of their wives".
  • Among the Kurnandaburi of Australia, "a group of men who are own or tribal brothers are united … in group marriage".
  • Among the Wakelbura of Australia, there is "adelphic polyandry."
  • Among the Kurnai of Australia, "unmarried men have access to their brothers' wives."

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