only barely given way to the paternal system, and the
form of marriage reflects both systems. The suitor sends a messenger
with blankets, and the number sent is doubled within three months,
making in all about one hundred and fifty. These are to be returned
later. He is then allowed to live with the girl in her father's house.
Three months later the husband gives perhaps a hundred blankets more
for permission to take his wife home.[144] Among the Makassar and
Beginese stems of Indionesia the purchase of a wife involves only
a partial relinquishment of the claim of the maternal house on the
girl; the purchase price is paid by instalments and all belongs to
the mother's kindred in case full payment is not made. A compromise
between the two systems is made on the Molucca Islands, where children
born before the bride-price is paid belong to the mother's side, after
that to the father's.[145]

So long as a wife remained in her group, she could rely upon her
kindred for protection against ill-usage from her husband, but she
forfeited this advantage when she passed to his group. An Arabian girl
replies to her father, when a chief seeks her in marriage: "No! I am
not fair of face, and I have infirmities of temper, and I am not his
_bint'amm_ (tribeswoman), so that he should respect my consanguinity
with him, nor does he dwell in thy country, so that he should have
regard for thee; I fear then that he may not care for me and may
divorce me, and so I shall be in an evil case."[146] The Hassanyeh
Arabs of the White Nile region in Egypt afford a curious example of
the conflict of male and female interests in connection with marriage,
in which the female passes by contract for only a portion of her time
under the authority of the male:

When the parents of the man and woman meet to settle the price
of the woman, the price depends on how many days in the week
the marriage tie is to be strictly observed. The woman's
mother first of all proposes that, taking everything into
consideration, with a due regard for the feelings of the
family, she could not think of binding her daughter to a due
observance of that chastity which matrimony is expected to
command for more than two days in the week. After a great deal
of apparently angry discussion, and the promise on the part
of the relatives of the man to pay more, it is arranged that
the marriage shall hold good, as is customary among the
f