Conflicting Theories/ideas/myths About Milk Kinship
One particular theory mentioned by Peter Parkes is an Arab folk-analogy that breast milk is supposed to be “transformed male semen” that arises from Hertiers Somatic Scheme. There is no evidence that Arabs ever considered a mothers milk to be ‘transformed sperm’. Another suggested analogy is that breast milk was a refinement of uterine blood. It is also suggested since that milk is of the woman, her moods and dispositions are transferred through the breast milk. Peter Parkes mentions that milk-kinship was “further endorsed as a canonical impediment to marriage by several eastern Christian churches”. This gives us evidence that this was widely practiced among numerous religious communities, and not just Islamic communities, in the early modern Mediterranean.
Hertiers Somatic Scheme
Hertiers Somatic Scheme states that marriage between milk kin is forbidden because ‘the milk is from the man’. However, the rules of Sunni marital incest show that this is in fact incorrect as these rules apply through a standard of adoptive kin relations. Hertiers Somatic Scheme is where the misconception that milk is considered transformed sperm comes from. This idea is incorrect, and was deduced generally from an Arab saying that the milk is from the man.
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—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914)
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“The little lives of earth and form,
Of finding food, and keeping warm,
Are not like ours, and yet
A kinship lingers nonetheless....”
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