Kinship and Social OrganisationRivers, W. H. R. (William Halse Rivers)
General
Kinship and Social Organisation
Rivers, W. H. R. (William Halse Rivers)
Anthropology; Consanguinity; Ethnology -- Melanesia; Marriage
In Tubetube there is yet another piece of evidence. Mr. Field[31]
has recorded the existence in this island of three named categories
of persons, two of which comprise relatives with whom marriage is
prohibited, while the third groups together those with whom marriage
is allowed. The grandparents and grandchildren are included in one of
the two prohibited classes, so that we can be confident that marriage
between these relatives does not now occur. The point to which I call
your attention is that the class of relative with whom marriage is
allowed is called _kasoriegogoli_. _Li_ is the third person pronominal
suffix, and we do not know the meaning of _kasorie_, but _goga_ is
the term used in Wagawaga and Wedau for the grandparents, its place
being taken by the usual Melanesian term _tubu_ in Tubetube. The term
_kasoriegogoli_ applied to marriageable relatives thus contains as one
of its constituent elements a word which is probably the ancient term
for grandparent in the island, since it is still used in this sense in
the closely allied societies of the mainland.
[31] Rep. Austral. Ass., 1900, viii., 301.
We have thus a number of independent facts among the Massim, all of
which would be the natural outcome of marriage between persons of
alternate generations. To no one of them standing alone could much
importance be attached, but taken in conjunction, they ought at least
to suggest the possibility of such a marriage, a possibility which
becomes the more probable when we consider that the Massim show clear
evidence of the dual organisation of society with matrilineal descent
which is associated with the granddaughter marriage of Pentecost and
the Dieri of Australia. It adds to the weight of the evidence that
indications of this peculiar form of marriage should be found among a
people whose social organisation so closely resembles that in which the
marriages between persons of alternate generations elsewhere occur.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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