“In the Urabunna tribe every woman is the special Nupa of one particular man, but at the same time he has no exclusive right to her, as she is the Piraungaru of certain other men who also have the right of access to her....  There is no such thing as one man having the exclusive right to one woman....  Individual marriage does not exist either in name or in practice in the Urabunna tribe.”

“Occasionally, but rarely, it happens that a man attempts to prevent his wife’s Piraungaru from having access to her, but this leads to a fight, and the husband is looked upon as churlish.  When visiting distant groups where, in all likelihood, the husband has no Piraungaru, it is customary for other men of his own class to offer him the loan of one or more of their Nupa women, and a man, besides lending a woman over whom he has the first right, will also lend his Piraungaru.”

In the Arunta tribe there is a restriction of a particular woman to a particular man, “or rather, a man has an exclusive right to one special woman, though he may of his own free will lend her to other men,” provided they stand in a certain artificial relation to her (74).  However (92): 

“Whilst under ordinary circumstances in the Arunta and other tribes one man is only allowed to have marital relations with women of a particular class, there are customs which allow at certain times of a man having such relations with women to whom at other times he would not on any account be allowed to have access.  We find, indeed, that this holds true in the case of all the nine different tribes with the marriage customs of which we are acquainted, and in which a woman becomes the private property of one man.”

In the southern Arunta, after a certain ceremony has been performed, the bride is brought back to camp and given to her special Unawa.  “That night he lends her to one or two men who are unawa to her, and afterward she belongs to him exclusively.”  At this time when a woman is being, so to speak, handed over to one particular individual, special individuals with whom at ordinary times she may have no intercourse, have the right of access to her.  Such customs our authors interpret plausibly as partial promiscuity pointing to a time when still greater laxity prevailed—­suggesting rudimentary organs in animals (96).

Among some tribes at corrobboree time, every day two or three women are told off and become the property of all the men on the corrobboree grounds, excepting fathers, brothers, or sons.  Thus there are three stages of individual ownership in women:  In the first, whilst the man has exclusive right to a woman, he can and does lend her to certain other men; in the second there is a wider relation in regard to particular men at the time of marriage; and in the third a still wider relation to all men except the nearest relatives, at corrobboree time.  Only