The reader may perhaps be disposed to reproach me for selecting only
such instances as are in favour of my theory; but statistical data
will show that such an imputation would be groundless. In speaking of
the “classificatory system of relationship,” I pointed out that this
system springs, to a great extent, from the close living together
of considerable numbers of kinsfolk. Now it is most interesting to
note that Dr. Tylor, by his method of adhesions, has found the two
institutions, exogamy and classificatory relationship, to be in fact
two sides of one institution. “In reckoning,” he says, “from the
present schedules the number of peoples who use relationship names more
or less corresponding to the classificatory systems here considered,
they are found to be fifty-three, and the estimated number of these
which might coincide accidentally with exogamy, were there no close
connection between them, would be about twelve. But in fact the number
of peoples who have both exogamy and classification is thirty-three,
this strong coincidence being the measure of the close casual
connection subsisting between the two institutions. The adherence is
even stronger as to cross-cousin marriage (_i.e._, that the children
of two brothers may not marry, nor the children of two sisters, though
the child of the brother may marry the child of the sister), of which
twenty-one cases appear in the schedules, no less than fifteen of the
peoples practising it being also known as exogamous.”[1956] Among
the Reddies, a father’s elder brother and a mother’s elder sister
are called, respectively, “great-father” and “great mother,” and a
father’s younger brother and a mother’s younger sister, respectively,
“lesser-father” and “lesser mother”; whereas the father’s sisters and
the mother’s brothers are denoted by quite different terms. Mr. Kearns
remarks that they consider the difference as well as the distance of
relationship between these two groups of relations to be so great
that they think it unlawful and incestuous to marry the daughter of a
father’s brother or of a mother’s sister, she being equal to a sister,
whilst it is perfectly legal to marry the daughter of a father’s sister
or of a mother’s brother.[1957]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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