There are unfortunately many points in Dr Howitt’s narrative which demand elucidation.  He says, for example, that noa individuals become “tippa-malku for the time being[158].”  This suggests, probably erroneously, that the tippa-malku relation is merely temporary; but I am unable to say whether it in reality means that the tippa-malku relation is terminated by the capture of the woman, or that divorce is practised and may terminate the relationship at the will of the man only or of both parties.

Another point on which we have no information is the position of the unmarried girls and widows.  Free love is permitted, the only limitation[159] given by Dr Howitt being that the man (who must of course have passed through the Mindari ceremony) must not be tippa-malku to the girl, but must be noa-mara.  It would be interesting to know whether girls in the tippa-malku relation before actual marriage are at liberty to have sexual relations with any men of the right status or only with unmarried men, or whether the privilege is restricted to those who are not yet tippa-malku to any one, and how far the same restriction applies to the men.

Any man who has been duly initiated, whether he is married to a tippa-malku wife or not, and any woman who has a tippa-malku husband[160], can enter or be put into a relation termed pirrauru with one or more persons of the opposite sex.  The effect of the ceremony—­termed kandri—­is to give to the pirrauru spouses the position of subsidiary husbands and wives, whose rights take precedence of the tippa-malku rights at tribal gatherings, but at other times can only be exercised in the absence of the tippa-malku spouse, or, when the male is unmarried, with the permission of the tippa-malku husband of the pirrauru spouse.

The pirrauru relation is, for the woman, a modification of a previously existing tippa-malku marriage; that being so, it cannot be quoted as evidence of a more pristine state of things in which she was by birth the legal and actual spouse of all men of a certain tribal status.

The pirrauru relation falls under two heads of the classification I have given above, according as the man has or has not a tippa-malku wife.  In the first case, it is, taken in combination with the tippa-malku marriage, a case of bi-lateral adelphic dissimilar (M. and F.) polygamy.  In the latter it is dissimilar adelphic (tribal) polyandry, adelphic being taken here, be it noted, in the sense of tribal, and possibly, but not necessarily, own brother.