A marriage form, and the rarest of the recognized plural-marriage systems, in which one woman is married concurrently to two or more husbands, documented in both fraternal (brothers sharing a wife) and non-fraternal arrangements. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Descent RuleSourced to the subject's own accountA marriage rule rather than a descent rule proper: one wife holds concurrent marriages to two or more husbands, most often brothers (fraternal polyandry); a 1980 cross-cultural survey of 1,231 societies found only four practicing it, making it the rarest of the recognized plural-marriage systems. 1 Typical RegionSourced to the subject's own accountThe Himalayan region, especially Lahaul-Spiti in the high Himalayas of India, with further documented cases in Tibet, Nepal, and scattered communities in Africa, Oceania and South America. 1 FAQs
Why is polyandry the rarest recognized form of marriage?
A 1980 cross-cultural survey of 1,231 societies found only four practicing polyandry, against hundreds practicing polygyny, making it by far the least common of the recognized plural-marriage systems.
Polyandry, one woman married concurrently to two or more husbands, most often brothers under fraternal polyandry, is documented as the rarest of the recognized plural-marriage systems. A 1980 cross-cultural survey of 1,231 societies found only four practicing it, compared with several hundred practicing some form of polygyny. Documented cases concentrate in the Himalayan region, especially Lahaul-Spiti in the high Himalayas of India, with further cases recorded in Tibet, Nepal, and scattered communities in Africa, Oceania and South America. Its rarity is usually explained by the arrangement working best where land is scarce and dividing it among multiple sons would leave a family unsustainable, so brothers instead share one wife and keep the family landholding intact across one generation rather than several.
Connections
Associated With
Group marriage, in which several men and several women are simultaneously married to one another, shares its departure from strict monogamy with polyandry, though group marriage combines plural husbands and plural wives at once.
A rare variant form (4 of 1,231 surveyed societies) within the institution of marriage.
Source Wikipedia: Marriage
Fraternal polyandry, in which brothers jointly marry one wife, is a well documented traditional marriage form among Tibetan communities, particularly in agrarian and pastoral highland households.
Source Wikipedia: Polyandry
Held Differently
Both are recognized forms of plural marriage (polygamy); polyandry is the far rarer variant, with one wife and multiple husbands rather than one husband and multiple wives.
Source Wikipedia: Polyandry
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Polyandry
WikipediaOpening section, description
Polyandry...is a form of polygamy in which a woman takes two or more husbands at the same time.
Introductory paragraph, prevalence
Of the 1,231 societies listed in the 1980 Ethnographic Atlas...four had polyandry.
Asia subsection, region
Polyandry was widely (and to some extent still is) practised in Lahaul-Spiti situated in isolation in the high Himalayas in India.
View the Source Wikipedia: Marriage
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