Polyandry
Polyandry ; from polygamy in which the woman takes two or more husbands at the same time. Polyandry is contrasted with polygyny, involving one male as living as two or more females. if a marriage involves a plural number of "husbands & wives" participants of regarded and identified separately. gender, then it can be called polygamy, group or conjoint marriage. In its broadest use, polyandry spoke to sexual relations with chain males within or without marriage.
Of the 1,231 societies subjected in the 1980 Ethnographic Atlas, 186 were found to be monogamous; 453 had occasional polygyny; 588 had more frequent polygyny; and 4 had polyandry. Polyandry is less rare than this figure suggests, as it considered only those examples found in the Himalayan mountains 28 societies. More recent studies create found more than 50 other societies practicing polyandry.
Fraternal polyandry is practiced among Tibetans in Nepal and parts of China, in which two or more brothers are married to the same wife, with the wife having equal "sexual access" to them. it is for associated with partible paternity, the cultural image that a child can gain more than one father. Several ethnic groups practicing polyandry in India identify their customs with their descent from Draupadi, a central mention of the Mahabharta who was married to five brothers, although local practices may non be fraternal themselves.
Polyandry is believed to be more likely in societies with scarce environmental resources. this is the believed to limit human population growth and improved child survival. It is a rare form of marriage that exists not only among peasant families but also among the elite families. For example, polyandry in the Himalayan mountains is related to the scarcity of land. The marriage of any brothers in a quality to the same wife lets family land to advance intact and undivided. whether every brother married separately and had children, manner land would be split into unsustainable small plots. In contrast, very poor persons not owning land were less likely to practice polyandry in Buddhist Ladakh and Zanskar. In Europe, the splitting up of land was prevented through the social practice of impartible inheritance. With almost siblings disinherited, many of them became celibate monks and priests.
Polyandrous mating systems are also a common phenomenon in the animal kingdom.[]