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The historical causes of polygyny (2)

Sensuality and the indisputable domination of man cannot by themselves be enough to bring into being the custom of polygyny. Certainly other causes and factors must also have contributed to establishing it as a regular custom because there is an easier and less troublesome way available to the sensuous man for satisfying his fondness for change. He could have his favourite woman as a girl friend or mistress without entering into an engagement with her as a wife and without involving himself in any responsibility regarding her and regarding her children of uncertain parentage. Thus in communities in which there is ordinarily a practice of marrying several wives either there are moral and social checks on being openly given to lewdness and prostitution and a sensuous man is obliged to pay the price for his passion for variety by accepting his favourite woman as his legal spouse along with the responsibility of fatherhood of her children or in other cases we may suppose that there are some other causes geographical economic or social other than sensual ones and other than the fondness for variety.

Geographical factors:

Montesquieu and Gustave le Bon insist a lot on attributing polygyny to geographical factors. These thinkers believe that the climate of the east necessitates the custom of polygyny. Woman in the east attains puberty earlier and becomes old sooner and because of this man feels in need of a second and third wife. Besides that a man brought up in the climate of the east is in such state of sexual vitality that one woman cannot satisfy him.

Gustave le Bon writes: “Polygyny is simply the consequence of the climate of race and the various conditions of existence particular to the Orientals.  

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“The influence of climate and race is too obvious for it to need being emphasized. The physiological constitution of the (oriental) woman the necessity of child-bearing her sicknesses etc. force her to remain often at a distance from her husband and since this momentary widowhood is impossible in the climate of the Orient and with the temperament of the Orientals polygamy is absolutely necessary.” (La Civilization des Arabes p. 422)

On pages 270—271 of The Spirit of laws Montesquieu writes: “Women in hot climates are marriageable at eight nine or ten years of age thus in those countries infancy and marriage generally go together. (Prideaux in his Life of Mohomet says: ‘Mahomet (Mohammad) married Cadhisja (sic) (Khadijah) at five and took her to his bed at eight years old’) They are old at twenty: their reason therefore never accompanies their beauty. When beauty demands empire the want of reason forbids the claim; when reason is obtained beauty is no more… In temperate climates where the charms of women are best preserved where they arrive later at more advanced season of life the old age of their husbands in some degree follows theirs; and as they have more reason and knowledge at the time of marriage if it be only on account of their having continued longer in life it must naturally introduce a kind of equality between the two sexes and in consequence of this the law of having only one wife…..

“Thus the law which permits only one wife is physically conformable to the climate of Europe and not to that of Asia.”

This explanation is by no means correct. Firstly the custom of polygyny is not confined to the warm regions of the East. In Iran in spite of its having a temperate climate there was polygyny in the pre-Islamic period.

The observation of Montesquieu that in tropical countries women get old at the age of twenty years is a pure exaggeration. All the more extravagant is the statement which he makes citing that the Prophet of Islam married Khadijah when she was five years of age and that the marriage was consummated

when she was eight years old while it is a well-known fact

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that the prophet of Islam married Khadijah in his twenty-fifth year and that at that time she was forty years of age.

Secondly if it is true that eastern women get old earlier and that the excitement of men’s passions is the real cause of polygyny why did the men of the east not have recourse to the same way of life which western men of the Middle Ages and the present time adopted? Why instead of having several wives did they not succumb to the western pattern of free love promiscuity and licentiousness? For according to Gustave le Bon the custom of monogamy in western countries is a mere farce and a hollow formality which is inscribed only in law books whereas in actual social life there is no trace of it.

Again according to him polygyny has existed in the orient in a legal form that is an acceptance of a marriage contract with woman and of paternal responsibility for her children while in the west it has had a hypocritical and illegal form in the form of indulging in intimate associations with girl-friends and lovers without entering into a marriage contract with the woman and without having any responsibility as a father for her children.

The form of polygyny in western countries:

I think it necessary at this stage to give a brief account of the manner of polygyny according to the western pattern in the Middle Ages in the words of one of the eminent western historians. This is simply so that my worthy readers and all those persons who find fault with the east in the name of polygyny and who occasionally censure the east for the keeping of harems and consider these aspects of eastern life to be a source of disgrace before occidentals should know that whatever existed and happened in the east with all its evils and shameful aspects is a thousand times preferable to what took place in the west.

Will Durant in the 17^th volume of his The Story of Civilization has written a section on the decline of morals. He has

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given an account of the general condition of morals in Italy during the Renaissance. The whole of this section which is divided into eleven chapters is worth reading. I quote a summary of what he has written under the heading of “Sexual Morality”.

Firstly he gives a brief introduction containing certain items. For example he wishes beforehand to tender an apology.

To begin with he says: “Turning now to laic morals and beginning with the relations of the sexes we should remind ourselves at the outset that man is by nature polygamous and that only the strongest moral sanctions a helpful degree of poverty and hard work and uninterrupted wifely supervision can induce him to monogamy.

“It is not clear that adultery was less popular in the Middle Ages than in the Renaissance. And as medieval adultery was tempered with chivalry so in the Renaissance it was softened in the lettered classes by an idealization of the refinement and spiritual charms of the educated woman… Girls of good family were kept in relative seclusion from men not of their own household. They were sedulously instructed in the advantages of premarital chastity; sometimes with such success that we hear of a young woman drowning herself after being raped. She was doubtless exceptional for a bishop proposed to raise a statue to her.

“Nevertheless there must have been considerable premarital adventure; otherwise it would be difficult to account for the extraordinary number of bastards to be found in any city of Renaissance Italy. Not to have bastards was a distinction; to have them was no serious disgrace; the man on marrying

usually persuaded his wife to let his illegitimate

progeny join the household and be brought up with her

own children. To be a bastard was no great disability;

the social stigma involved was almost negligible; legit-

imation could be obtained by lubricating an ecclesiastical hand. In default of legitimate and competent heirs bastard sons could succeed to an estate even to a throne as Ferrante I succeeded

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Alfonso I at Naples and as Leonello d’ Este succeeded Niccolo III at Ferrara. When Pius II came to Ferrara in 1459 he was received by seven princes all illegitimate. The rivalry of bastards with legitimate sons was a rich source of Renaissance violence.

“As for homosexuality it became almost an obligatory part of the Greek revival…. San Bernardino found so much of it in Naples that he threatened the city with the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. Aretino described the aberration as quite popular in Rome. We may say likewise of prostitution. According to Inifessura - who liked to load his statistics against papal Rome- there were 6,800 registered prostitutes in Rome in 1490 not counting clandestine practitioners in a population of some. 90,000. In Venice the census of 1509 reported 11,654 prostitutes in a population of some 300,000. In the fifteenth century a daughter unmarried at fifteen was a family disgrace; in the sixteenth century the age of disgrace was deferred to seventeen to allow time for higher education. Men who enjoyed all the privileges and facilities of promiscuity could be lured into marriage only by brides bringing substantial dowries. In the Medieval theory of marriage it was expected that love would develop between man and wife through the varied partnerships of marriage in joy and sorrow prosperity and adversity; and apparently the expectation was fulfilled in the majority of cases. Nevertheless adultery was rampant. Since most marriages among the upper classes were diplomatic unions of economic or political interests many husbands felt warranted in having a mistress; and the wife though she might mourn usually closed her eyes - or her lips - to the offense.

“Among the middle classes some men assumed that adultery was a legitimate diversion; Machiavelli and his friends seem to have thought nothing of exchanging notes about their infidelities. When in such cases the wife avenged herself by imitation the husband was as like as not to ignore it and wear his horns with grace”.

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Yes. This was a specimen of the life of the men who always condemned polygyny as the unforgivable sin of the Orient and occasionally put the blame of this so-called inhuman conduct on the climate of the Orient whereas their own climate in no way allowed them to be unfaithful to their wives or to transgress the limits of monogamy.

By the way the point should also be made that the fact that there was no custom of polygyny in its lawful form among Occidentals whether it be good or bad had no relation with the religion of Christianity In the original Christian religion there is no commandment forbidding polygyny rather the matter is just the reverse. For it is an admitted fact that Christ confirmed the Mosaic Law and in Mosaic Law polygyny is formally recognized. Thus we may say that in the original Christian religion polygyny was permissible and that is why the ancient Christians had several wives. So the abstention of Occidentals from polygyny must have some other cause or causes apart from religion and its laws.

Menstruation:

Some others have attributed polygyny to the monthly period of woman and her inability to have sexual intercourse during that period and also to her exhaustion after child-bearing her abstention from the sexual side of life and her involvement in the feeding and upbringing of her children.

Will Durant says: “Also men like youth in their mates and women age rapidly in primitive communities. The women themselves often favoured polygamy; it permitted them to nurse their children longer and therefore to reduce the frequency of motherhood without interfering with the erotic and philoprogenitive inclinations of the male. Sometimes the first wife burdened with toil helped her husband to secure an additional wife so that her burden might be shared and additional children might raise the productive power and the wealth of the family.”

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Without any doubt the monthly period of woman as also her exhaustion from childbirth puts her and man in different sexual states and brings about a situation where man is more or less inclined to look for some other woman. But neither of the above two factors can by itself be a cause of polygyny unless there is actually some moral or social obstacle restraining the man from gratifying his passions by having free recourse to mistresses and lovers. So the above two factors were effective whenever there were such circumstances that prevented man from having complete freedom in licentiousness.

The child-bearing period of woman is limited:

Some people think that the fact that there is a limit to a woman’s as opposed to a man’s reproductive years that is the event of the menopause is one of the causes of polygyny. In certain cases a woman may have reached that age without having borne sufficient children or after the elder children had died.

The wish of a man to have children and his disinclination to divorce his first wife is then the cause of his marrying a second or a third wife just as the barrenness of the first wife is another cause for him to go on to marry a second wife.

Economic factors:

Economic causes have also be suggested for polygyny. It is said that in ancient times contrary to the present day having numerous wives and plenty of children was economically beneficial for man. Man used to set his wives and children to work like slaves and occasionally used to sell his children. The source of the slavery of many persons was not their being captured during wars; their fathers had brought them to the markets and had sold them.

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This thing may have been as a cause of polygyny because a man by merely acknowledging a woman as his formal wife could benefit from having many children. Prostitution and free love could not give man these advantages. Nevertheless as we know it cannot be generalised to a cases in which polygyny is practised.

Let us suppose that primitive communities had polygyny for this purpose; even then not all communities have been like this. In the ancient world polygyny was common in that class of society that had luxurious and splendid life-styles and generally kings princes’ aristocrats priests and merchants kept several wives. Obviously these strata of society never used to make any economic gain from their numerous wives and their large number of children.

Factor of number and tribe:

The interest in having children in large numbers and any addition to the number of family members was in itself another factor which contributed to the causes of polygyny. One of the things which put woman and man in different situations is that the number of children a woman can bear is very limited whether she has one husband or more but the number of children that a man can beget depends upon the number of women that he has under his control. It is possible for a man to beget thousands of children by hundreds of wives.

In the ancient world unlike the present number and tribe are regarded as important social factors. Tribes and communities used to try by every means to add to their numbers and to put a check upon all those elements which restricted any addition to their numbers. One source of pride for them was the large number of their tribe. Obviously polygyny could be the only source of the abundance in their numbers.

There are more women than men:

The last and the most important of all the factors has been the excess of the number of women over the number of men.

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The births of female children have not been and are not any more than those of male children. If it happens that in some lands the births of female children are in excess of those of male children in other lands it is the reverse and the births of male children are more. The thing which always causes the number of marriageable women to be more than the number of marriageable men is that the deaths of men have always been and still are more than those of women. The excess of the deaths of men has always been and still is the cause of a large number of women in monogamous societies remaining deprived of lawful husbands homes lives and lawful children.

There is no dispute about the fact that it was so in primitive societies. We previously quoted Will Durant who said that “ In early society because of hunting and war the life of the male is more violent and dangerous and the death rate of men is higher than that of women. The consequent excess of women compels a choice between polygamy and the barren celibacy of a minority of women.”

An analysis:

The causes that can be supposed to have been historically effective in initiating polygyny are no more than those that have been recounted above. Nevertheless as already observed some of these causes are not actually causes and have been put down for no good reason as the causes of polygyny: as for example the climate. After disposing of this one we come across three kinds of causes. In the first kind there is some effect from marrying a number of wives but no justification is put forward for the man to act in this way; it only stems from his force cruelty and tyranny. The economic cause mentioned before is in this class.

Obviously the selling of children is one of the most savage and most cruel of human activities and polygyny for this hideously criminal purpose is as detestable as the act itself.

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The second category containing those causes that are connected with rights is worth careful attention and may be reckoned as justifiable for man and society: such as when the wife happens to be barren or is too old and the husband wants children or it may be in the interest of the tribe or the country to increase its population. As a general rule natural causes when for example the husband and the wife are put in different situations concerning the satisfaction of sexual urges or as regards having children justify polygyny because or their connection with rights.

However among the causes detailed previously there is the third kind which if we suppose that it existed in the past or exists in the present day world is more important in itself in justifying man or society in resorting to polygyny. Not only that but it creates a right in favour of woman and a duty and responsibility for man and society. That cause is the excess of the number of women as compared to men. If we suppose that in the past or at present the number of women fit to be married is in excess of the number of men fit to be married and that monogamy is the only lawful form of marriage a group of women would be left without husbands and would remain deprived of any kind of family life. In that case polygyny should be considered the right of deprived women and the ‘responsibility’ of men and married women.

The right of marriage is the most natural human rigid. No person should be deprived of this right on any pretext or on any grounds. The right of marriage is a right which every individual can claim from his or her society. A society cannot do anything to deprive a group of this right.

Just in the same way as the right to work the right to food the right to a dwelling the right to education and instruction and the right to liberty are counted as the part of basic and fundamental rights of a human being and an individual cannot for any reason and on any ground be deprived of those rights so the right to marry is also a natural right. If the number of women

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fit to be married exceed the number of marriageable men the law restricting marriage to monogamy will be inconsistent with this natural right. So this law would he antagonistic to fundamental and natural human rights.

These things concern the past. What is to be said in respect of the present? Do the causes justifying polygyny which can give it official recognition as a right exist at the present time or not? Suppose these causes at present exist then what is to be said concerning the rights of women in the past? In the coming chapters’ replies to these questions will be given.