POLYANDRY

marriage of a woman to two or more men at the same time; the term derives from the Greek polys, "many," and aner, andros, "man." When the husbands in a polyandrous marriage are brothers or are said to be brothers, the institution is called adelphic, or fraternal, polyandry. Sometimes in the latter form of union the children are said to be descended from the eldest brother only, whereas in other cases the role of father is established by special ceremony, or the children are said to belong to all brothers equally. A related form of marital union, sometimes called secondary marriage, obtains when a woman cohabits with a man other than her first husband but without having terminated the first marriage by annulment or divorce. Polyandry must be distinguished from the privileged sexual access to a woman by several men, a practice not uncommon and often associated with customs of kinship or hospitality. True polyandry is, in fact, so rare a phenomenon as to be considered a curiosity and a response to peculiar localized conditions, but not a survival of an earlier polyandrous stage of civilization, as was contended by the early cultural evolutionists.