Interesting Paper Read Before the Royal Asiatic Society To understand what constitutes exogamy, that primordial custom among certain tribes which piohibits a man from marrying a woman of his own clan, is the aim of all interested in the origin of family society.
At a meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society on Thursday, Mr. H. P. Wilkinson in the course of a lecture on the question as to whether exogamy in China is founded on name-avoidance, advanced the theory that the study of the records and usages of the oldest existing, living civilization, leads towards the solution of this ethnological riddle.
"Exogamy was, and is," declared Mr. Wilkinson, "'the first great commandment observed as to marriage by the Chinese race. In China one cannot marry a wife, or take a concubine, of the same family name as oneself."
"Why did the primitive man shun his hearth mate as a wife? Was it in obedience to the consciously imposed restriction of some enlightened leader of a horde, or waa it in obedience to instinct—that is to say race-memory Chinese family could not be shown. to have been, at any time, other than patriarchal. There was nothing to show that E-Yin, chief minister of the first four sovereigns of the Shang dynasty, was mistaken when, in B.C. 1539, in advising King T'ae-koali, he said: "The commencement is in the family and state; the consummation of the Empire." The rule of exogamy in China was shortly and clearly stated in the words of the "Summary of the Rules of. Propriety,"—the first hook of Li Ki. There was a strong taboo on the use of the personal name, and assuming that all surnames must have been when first used, in a sense personal names, one might have thought that the answer to the riddle of exogamy in China was to be found in the avoidance of a name common to both the intended husband and wife, and to the families of which they were members.
The exogamy of the Chinese race was a recoil from an early house mate, and a great deal more as well. It was also an avoidance of blood, enforced under the dread sanction of Jharm, spiritual and physical, to those who offended. An innate aversion to marriage with one with whom a person has lived from childhood—a desire to marry some one else—would account for a custom of marrying outside one's immediate kin. But it does not explain why marrying one's near kin should be held—as it was held by exogamous races—to be an offence against the spirits of one's fellow men.
was likely that the "avoidance of blood'? was the impelling motive of exogamy. The exogamy of the Chinese race did not appear to_be due to a conscious reformation.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.