POLIANDRIA. – From the Greek πολύς = much and ἀνήρ = man, it is the simultaneous marital cohabitation of one woman with several men.
I. MORAL THEOLOGY AND CANON LAW
P. directly contravenes: 1) the divine-positive precept, promulgated at the very beginning of humanity (Gen. 2:23) and solemnly confirmed by Jesus Christ (Mt. 19:4–6). From this it follows that, while it is true that the human will conditions the establishment of a new family, it cannot in any way determine its inner structure and purposes, which have a divine origin; 2) primary natural law, insofar as it is opposed to the primary end of marriage, namely procreation (the woman in this condition generally becomes infertile), and consequently to the education of children (the paternity of those who might be born would remain uncertain and it would therefore be more difficult to provide for their formation). Moreover, if p. were legitimate, this would easily lead to no longer recognizing offspring as the primary end of marriage and to ceasing to regard the matrimonial institution as serving life, viewing it instead merely as serving experiences without personal burdens or social responsibilities; 3) p. also contravenes natural law insofar as it harms the secondary ends of marriage, namely the mutual assistance and perfection of the spouses, the appeasement of concupiscence, and the peace and harmony of the family. It is not natural for the father to be unaware of his own son and the son of his own father; nor, given the jealousy and passion rooted in human nature, can it be supposed possible to prevent the seeds of discord and disorder from bearing fruit, even to the point of crime. Therefore the Church has always affirmed unity as one of the essential properties of the marital bond and has condemned polygamy in every form of p. and polygeny (cf. CIC, can. 1013 § 2, with the sources cited therein), and has imposed upon bigamists who, despite the continuance of the matrimonial bond already contracted, attempted a new marriage, even merely civil, the penalty of infamy, which in certain cases may extend to excommunication and personal interdict (can. 2356).II. ETHNOLOGY
Polyandry was considered by evolutionist ethnologists, such as Mc Lennan, one of the stages in the evolution of human marriage and the family; others, such as Corso, regarded it as a derivation from collective or group marriage. In order to understand polyandry in its true meaning and provide a correct explanation of it, it is necessary to examine its forms and its distribution throughout the world.1. Forms of polyandry. — A distinction must be made between sporadic polyandry and that which is systematic, having become the common form of marriage among a people, a regular institution. Systematic polyandry is of two kinds: matriarchal and patriarchal. Matriarchal polyandry is found in Tibet in the following form: two or more young men, after paying a fixed sum of money, become husbands of the same woman and live in her house. The children belong to the wife. When, however, one of the husbands wishes to have the common wife exclusively for himself, the children are divided among all the husbands. Those who leave the common wife and depart from the house receive the sum of money that they paid when entering the wife’s house. The woman’s situation is not a happy one, because the husbands, as Bonvalot observed, who encountered this form of polyandry during his exploratory journey in Tibet together with the prince of Orléans, make her work as hard as possible and extract the greatest profit from her.
Patriarchal polyandry is fraternal polyandry, in which the elder brother marries the sole woman on behalf of himself and his brothers. Indeed, in the wedding ceremony, for example among the Tibetans, it is the elder brother who performs all the nuptial rites. The marriage is provisional and does not become permanent until after the birth of the first child. In fact, after the wedding celebrations, and at the latest after about twenty days, the bride returns to her own home and visits her husband only for a few days during certain festivals of the year. Once her pregnancy has subsequently been established, the celebrations are held again: the bride comes to reside permanently in the husbands’ house and brings her dowry. The legal bridegroom, as Fr. Desideri, the Jesuit missionary who was in Lhasa from 1712 to 1727, notes, is considered to be the elder brother; but the bride is recognized, and considers herself, as the legitimate wife of all the bridegroom’s brothers. The sons and daughters are called the bridegroom’s sons and daughters and the nephews of his co-husband brothers, although, as the same missionary observed, some of them are certainly not sons and daughters of that same man. The right of primogeniture and exogamy exist for all generations of blood relatives.
Among the Toda (who are today experiencing a severe birth-rate crisis, according to information from the Spanish Jesuit missionary Fr. H. Heras, who visited them), the following characteristic custom prevails: in every social or legal matter, they recognize as the legal father only the man who has presented a bow and an arrow to the woman during the seventh month of her pregnancy. If the co-husbands are brothers, this ceremony is performed by the eldest, although the other brothers too are regarded as fathers. If the co-husbands are not brothers but more distant relatives, the man who presented the bow and arrow is considered the father not merely of one child but also of all the other children of the same woman, until another co-husband performs the same ceremony. This remains valid even when the man who performed the ceremony has been dead for a long time, provided that no one else has performed it with the same woman after him. In the feudal period of ancient China, the Emperor observed a similar rite, after the spring sacrifice to Cao Mei, protectress of marriages and births, with every pregnant woman in his harem.
2. Distribution of polyandry. — Polyandry is practiced by the Tibeto-Burmese tribes of Buthia in Nepal. It is practiced in Kashmir, in anterior India (the Toda of the Nilgiri Hills, the Kurumba, the Munduvar, the Naiar, especially among the Dravida, but also among the Munda), in southern Arabia (the Mot’a marriage), and among certain Hamitic tribes, the Bahima or Bancayole of Uganda. It also exists in the Chinese province of Fukien, in two districts. It existed among the Jephthalmites (also called Hoa and White Huns), formerly considered Turks, now regarded as Mongols and originating in Mongolia, who, after the invasion of Persia, had their principal centers at Bamiyan and Badabishan; among the Tocharians, an Indo-European people of Central Asia; and in Zabulistan. It was conjectured to exist among the Kazakhs in the north-west of the Ili region and among the Bolor to the west of Yarcand. It has been found sporadically in Shensi (China), among the Indians of America (Orinoco), in the Arctic regions (Aleutians), and among certain peoples of Oceania (New Zealanders).
3. Explanation of polyandry. — Given its limited distribution, polyandry cannot be considered an evolutionary stage through which all the peoples of the world have passed, as the evolutionists maintained. Frazer too, at a later stage, had to acknowledge that polyandry is rare and exceptional, and he also offered a biological reason for it: polyandry could exist permanently only if men numerically predominated over women, whereas this is not the case among any people in the world.
How has polyandry been explained? According to Eberhard, polyandry is originally connected with matriarchy. This is true. But polyandry did not arise from matriarchy as such, as Fr. Schmidt rightly observed; rather, it arose from the intermingling of markedly matriarchal peoples with strictly patriarchal peoples possessing the right of primogeniture. Indeed, this is what happened in southern India, for example among the Naiar, who subsequently adopted polyandry. They were matriarchal when they were subjugated by the Nambutiri Brahmins, who had emigrated from northern India and were patriarchal with the right of primogeniture. The Nambutiri first adopted successive polyandry, then simultaneous and fraternal polyandry, and finally free or non-fraternal polyandry. Among them, in order to keep the family property united, only the elder brother married one or more Brahmin women, with whom fraternal polyandry was impossible and, in fact, was also strictly prohibited. The younger brothers, remaining in the elder brother’s house, did with Naiar women what they could not do with the women of their own people: they compelled them to give themselves to them, thus entering into free unions that could be dissolved at any moment. The woman then gave herself to another man, and first successive polyandry and then simultaneous polyandry arose. From the latter they passed to free polyandry when, subsequently, each younger brother of the Nambutiri took several Naiar women in succession; these women thus had relations with brothers from several families, giving rise to non-fraternal or free polyandry. This was later adopted by the Naiar as well. The polyandry of Tibet, the classical land of polyandry, has been explained by the authors (P. Desideri, P. Della Penna, Williams, Grenard) in very different ways: by the poverty of the soil; by the insufficient number of women in relation to men, in a proportion of seven women to eight men; or by the right of primogeniture, the unity of the genealogical line, which does not admit a collateral line, and the indivisibility of family property. All these reasons are insufficient to explain Tibetan polyandry without admitting, as in the case of India, the intermingling of a patriarchal culture with a matriarchal one; remnants of both still exist in Tibet today, although the process may have been different. The same ethnological explanation may apply to polyandry among other peoples, whereas particular explanations are required for sporadic polyandry.
From what has been said, it is clear that polyandry is a relatively recent phenomenon, since the cultures from which it derives are not ethnologically archaic but primary cultures. This provides another reason for saying that polyandry cannot be considered either a general stage or the basis of the evolution of human marriage.