r her family.[114] This is clearly a step towards
purchase marriage, as is proved by the Santals, where this service is
claimed when a girl is ugly or deformed and cannot be married
otherwise, while other tribes offer their daughters when in want of
labourers. This service-marriage must not be confused with the true
maternal form, where the bridegroom visits or lives with the wife and
any service claimed is a test of his fitness; it shows, however, the
power of the woman's kindred still curbing the rights of the husband.

[112] Hodgson, _Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal_, 1855,
Vol. XVIII, p. 707, cited by Starcke, _op. cit._, pp. 79,
285.

[113] Hartland, _op. cit._, Vol. II, pp. 155-157.

[114] This custom prevails, for instance, among the Kharwars
and Parahiya tribes, and is common among the Ghasiyas, and is
also practised among the Tipperah of Bengal.

The existence of mother-descent among the peoples of Western Asia has
been ascertained with regard to some ancient tribes; but I may pass
these over, as they offer no points of special interest. I must,
however, refer briefly to the evidence brought forward by the late
Prof. Robertson Smith[115] of mother-right in ancient Arabia. We find
a decisive example of its favourable influence on the position of
women in the custom of _beena_ marriage. Under this maternal form, the
wife was not only freed from any subjection involved by the payment of
a bride-price in the form of compulsory service or of gifts to her
kindred (which always places her more or less under authority), but
she was the owner of the tent and the household property, and thus
enjoyed the liberty which ownership always entails. This explains how
she was able to free herself at pleasure from her husband, who was
really nothing but a temporary lover. Ibn Batua, even in the
fourteenth century found that the women of Zebid were perfectly ready
to marry strangers. The husband might depart when he pleased, but his
wife in that case could never be induced to follow him. She bade him a
friendly adieu and took upon herself the whole charge of any children
of the marriage. The women in Jahiliya had the right to dismiss their
husbands, and the form of dismissal was this: "If they lived in a
tent they turned it round, so that if the door faced east it now faced
west, and when the man saw this, he knew he was dismissed and did not
enter." The tent belonged to the woman: the husband