Kinship and marriage in early Arabia / by W. Robertson Smith.

  • Smith, W. Robertson (William Robertson), 1846-1894.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Kinship and marriage in early Arabia / by W. Robertson Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    at this point would be very unsatisfac- tory both to the author and to the reader, and that, to round off my results even in a provisional way, it was absolutely necessary to say something as to the ultimate origin of the tribal system. And here it is not possible to erect a complete argument on the Arabian evidence alone. But it is, I think, possible to shew that the Arabs once had the system which McLennan has expounded under the name of totemism (chap, vii.), and if, as among other early nations, totemism and female kinship were combined with a law of exogamy, it is also possible to con- struct, on the lines laid down in Primitive Marriage, a hypothetical picture of the deve- lopment of the social system, consistent with all the Arabian facts, and involving only verae causae, i.e., only the action of such forces as can be shewn to have operated in other rude societies in the very way which the hypothesis requires (chap. viii.). I have thought it right to limit myself, in this part of the subject, to the briefest possible outline. The general principles of the hypo- thesis, as laid down by J. F. McLennan, are