This system, which is the most archaic yet discovered, will now be taken up for the purpose of showing, from its relationships, the principal facts stated. This family, also, is the most archaic form of the institution of which any knowledge remains.

Such a remarkable record of the condition of ancient society would not have been preserved to the present time but for the singular permanence of systems of consanguinity. The Aryan system, for example, has stood near three thousand years without radical change, and would endure a hundred thousand years in the future, provided the monogamian family, whose relationships it defines, should so long remain. It describes the relationships which actually exist under monogamy, and is therefore incapable of change, so long as the family remains as at present constituted. If a new form of the family should appear among Aryan nations, it would not affect the present system of consanguinity until after it became universal; and while in that case it might modify the system in some particulars, it would not overthrow it, unless the new family were radically different from the monogamian. It was precisely the same with its immediate predecessor, the Turanian system, and before that with the Malayan, the predecessor of the Turanian in the order of derivative growth. An antiquity of unknown duration may be assigned to the Malayan system which came in with the consanguine family, remained for an indefinite period after the punaluan family appeared, and seems to have been displaced in other tribes by the Turanian, with the establishment of the organization into gentes.

The inhabitants of Polynesia are included in the Malayan family. Their system of consanguinity has been called the Malayan, although the Malays proper have modified their own in some particulars. Among the Hawaiians and other Polynesian tribes there still exists in daily use a system of consanguinity which is given in the Table, and may be pronounced the oldest known among mankind. The Hawaiian and Rotuman[450] forms are used as typical of the system. It is the simplest, and therefore the oldest form, of the classificatory system, and reveals the primitive form on which the Turanian and Ganowánian were afterwards engrafted.

It is evident that the Malayan could not have been derived from any existing system, because there is none, of which any conception can be formed, more elementary. The only blood relationships recognized are the primary, which are five in number, without distinguishing sex. All consanguinei, near and remote, are classified under these relationships into five categories. Thus, myself, my brothers and sisters, and my first, second, third, and more remote male and female cousins, are the first grade or category. All these, without distinction, are my brothers and sisters. The word cousin is here used in our sense, the relationship being unknown in Polynesia. My father and mother, together with their brothers and sisters, and their first, second, and more remote cousins, are the second grade. All these, without distinction, are my parents. My grandfathers and grandmothers, on the father’s side and on the mother’s side, with their brothers and sisters, and their several cousins, are the third grade. All these are my grandparents. Below me, my sons and daughters, with their several cousins, as before, are the fourth grade. All these, without distinction, are my children. My grandsons and granddaughters, with their several cousins, are the fifth grade. All these in like manner are my grand-children. Moreover, all the individuals of the same grade are brothers and sisters to each other. In this manner all the possible kindred of any given person are brought into five categories; each person applying to every other person in the same category with himself or herself the same term of relationship. Particular attention is invited to the five grades of relations in the Malayan system, because the same classification appears in the “Nine Grades of Relations” of the Chinese, which are extended so as to include two additional ancestors and two additional descendants, as will elsewhere be shown. A fundamental connection between the two systems is thus discovered.

There are terms in Hawaiian for grandparent, Kupŭnă; for parent, Mäkŭa; for child, Kaikee; and for grandchild, Moopŭnă. Gender is expressed by adding the terms Käna, for male, and Wäheena, for female; thus, Kupŭnă Käna = grandparent male, and Kupŭnă Wäheena, grandparent female. They are equivalent to grandfather and grandmother, and express these relationships in the concrete. Ancestors and descendants, above and below those named, are distinguished numerically, as first, second, third, when it is necessary to be specific; but in common usage Kupŭnă is applied to all persons above grandparent, and Moopŭnă is applied to all descendants below grandchild.

The relationships of brother and sister are conceived in the twofold form of elder and younger, and separate terms are applied to each; but it is not carried out with entire completeness. Thus, in Hawaiian, from which the illustrations will be taken, we have:

Elder Brother, MaleSpeaking,Kaikŭaäna.FemaleSpeaking,Kaikŭnäna.
Younger Brother, ””Kaikaina.””Kaikŭnäna.
Elder Sister, ””Kaikŭwäheena.”” Kaikŭaäna.
Younger Sister, ””Kaikŭwäheena.”” Kaikaina.[451]

It will be observed that a man calls his elder brother Kaikŭaäna, and that a woman calls her elder sister the same; that a man calls his younger brother Kaikaina, and a woman calls her younger sister the same: hence these terms are in common gender, and suggest the same idea found in the Karen system, namely, that of predecessor and successor in birth.[452] A single term is used by the males for elder and younger sister, and a single term by the females for elder and younger brother. It thus appears that while a man’s brothers are classified into elder and younger, his sisters are not; and, while a woman’s sisters are classified into elder and younger, her brothers are not. A double set of terms are thus developed, one of which is used by the males and the other by the females, a peculiarity which reappears in the system of a number of Polynesian tribes.[453] Among savage and barbarous tribes the relationships of brother and sister are seldom conceived in the abstract.

The substance of the system is contained in the five categories of consanguinei; but there are special features to be noticed which will require the presentation in detail of the first three collateral lines. After these are shown the connection of the system with the intermarriage of brothers and sisters, own and collateral, in a group, will appear in the relationships themselves.

First collateral line. In the male branch, with myself a male, the children of my brother, speaking as a Hawaiian, are my sons and daughters, each of them calling me father; and the children of the latter are my grandchildren, each of them calling me grandfather.