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Primitive Law in Eastern Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2012

J. H. Driberg
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Extract

Generalizations based on insufficient or inaccurate data have in the past contributed to many anthropological fallacies. Instances of such hasty generalizations will come to mind readily enough, and it will be recollected that whole theories have been so formulated and, after leading anthropological enquiry down sterile labyrinths of thought to dogmatical culs-de-sac, have had to be jettisoned with all their accumulated impedimenta of false inferences and falser conclusions. There is no room as yet for broad generalizations in cultural anthropology: our reliable information is still too fragmentary and unrelated.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , January 1928 , pp. 63 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1928

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References

page 63 note 1 The details of primitive law are characterized by extreme logicality, and even in this instance what appears to be illogical proves on examination to be the reverse. The essence of marriage is the payment of a dowry by the husband to the bride's family. Without the dowry there is no legal marriage and any children born to such a union are illegitimate, and for each child so born the father has to pay specified damages to the woman's family. On divorce the husband's dowry, consisting of live-stock, is returned to him with their increase, and the woman returns to her family with her children. As, therefore, there is now no dowry and consequently no marriage the status of the children is that of illegitimacy—though this carries no stigma—and the man has to pay the indemnity prescribed for illegitimacy, which results from the nullity of the marriage.