Himalayan polyandry : structure, functioning and culture change a field study of Jaunsar-Bawar

OVER a large area of the Himalayan region, both trans-Himalayan and cir-Himalayan, it is customary for a man to share his wife or wives with his brothers. This is known as fraternal polyandry, as distinguished from matriarchal polyandry, once commonly practised in Malabar, where husbands of a woman were not necessarily related to one another by kinship or by consanguinity. In fraternal polyandry, the wife comes to live with the group of husbands in their house; in matriarchal or maternal form, she remains in her own house, and her husband or husbands come to live by turn as casual visitors. Property under the fraternal type of polyandry passes from father to son or sons, while in the maternal form, the woman or her parents or guardians own the property and pass it on to successors in the uterine line.

Polyandry appears to have been a widely practised form of marital relationship. Though many nail it down to non-Aryan, Dravidian or Tibetan peoples, there is no doubt that the Indo-Aryans, particularly those who followed the foothills of the Himalayas on their entry to India, and settled down in the ais-Himalayan parts, did practise this form of marriage. Some of them still do so.

Marital life in the ci-Himalayas shows unmistakable signs of deviant sexual preferences. The Naiks of Kumaon brought up their girls for a career as courtesans and dancers. In Manali, in Kulu, a high incidence of divorce has been reported; also, the absence of formal marriage in cases of union between divorced men and women. In the Simla hills and Rawain and Jaunsar-Bawar, the practice of polyandry and absence of any vocal resistance against it indicate the marital climate of the cis-Himalayas even today. In Tibet and the tra Himalayas the incidence of polyandry has been reported by competrut scholars.