Levirate marriage
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Levirate marriage is a type of marriage in which a woman marries one of her husband's brothers after her husband's death, if there were no children, in order to continue the line of the dead husband. The term is a derivative of the Latin word levir, meaning "husband's brother".
Levirate marriage has been practiced by societies with a strong clan structure in which exogamous marriage, i.e. that outside the clan, was forbidden. It is or was known in societies including the Punjabis, Jats, Israelites, Huns (Chinese "Xiongnu", "Hsiong-nu", etc.), Mongols, and Tibetans.
Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Levirate marriage" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.
