The evil of prostitution is very great. The women are in some districts given up to promiscuous intercourse with the youths at certain seasons.
Relationships are very intricate, and difficult to unravel. They have the Tamilian system, which obtains amongst North-American Indians, and the Telugu and Tamil tribes in the East Indies.
A man looks upon the offspring of his brother as his own sons and daughters, while he only considers those of his sister in the more distant relationship of nephews and nieces. So, also, a woman counts her sister’s children as her own, but those of her brother by a kinship similar to nephews and nieces.
Thus, children look upon their father’s brother in the light of a father, but his sister as their aunt merely; whilst their mother’s sister ranks as a female parent, but her brother as only their uncle.
The scale of relationship is as follows:—Nanghai is my father; Nainkowa is my mother; Ngaiowe is your father; Ninkuwe is your mother; Yikowalle is his father; Narkowalle is his mother.
Widow is Yortangi; widower is Randi; fatherless is Kukathe; motherless is Kulgutye.
One who has lost a child, Mainmaiyari; one bereaved of a brother or sister, Muntyuli.
From this scheme of relationship it seems possible that some came from Southern India—were driven southward by the Malays. Names are changeable, the parents sometimes bearing the name of the child. They are also significant—Putteri is the end; Ngiampinyeri, belonging to the back or loins; Maratinyeri, belonging to emptiness.
Property always descends from father to son.
Mr. Taplin observes that the general idea that there is a law by which the savage must disappear before civilized man is not true, and instances the South American and Dutch colonizations as still preserving the aboriginal races.