Kinship and Social Organisation

by W. H. R. Rivers

The features of terminology which follow from the cross-cousin marriage were known to Morgan, being present in three of the systems he recorded from Southern India and in the Fijian system collected for him by Mr. Fison. The earliest reference[9] to the cross-cousin marriage which I have been able to discover is among the Gonds of Central India. This marriage was recorded in 1870, which, though earlier than the appearance of Morgan’s book, was after it had been accepted for publication, so that I think we can be confident that Morgan was unacquainted with the form of marriage which would have explained the peculiar features of the Indian and Fijian systems. It is evident, however, that Morgan was so absorbed in his demonstration of the similarity of these systems to those of America that he paid but little, if any, attention to their peculiarities. He thus lost a great opportunity; if he had attended to these peculiarities and had seen their meaning, he might have predicted a form of marriage which would soon afterwards have been independently discovered. Such an example of successful prediction would have forced the social significance of the terminology of relationship upon the attention of students in such a way that we should have been spared much of the controversy which has so long obstructed progress in this branch of sociology. It must at the very least have acted as a stimulus to the collection of systems of relationship. It would hardly have been possible that now, more than forty years after the appearance of Morgan’s book, we are still in complete ignorance of the terminology of relationship of many peoples about whom volumes have been written. It would seem impossible, for instance, that our knowledge of Indian systems of relationship could have been what it is to-day. India would have been the country in which the success of Morgan’s prediction would first have shown itself, and such an event must have prevented the almost total neglect which the subject of relationship has suffered at the hands of students of Indian sociology.

LECTURE II

In my last lecture I began the demonstration of the dependence of the classificatory terminology of relationship upon social institutions by showing how a number of terms used in several parts of Melanesia have been determined by the cross-cousin marriage. I showed that in places where the cross-cousin marriage is practised there are not merely one or two, but large groups of, terms of relationship which are exactly such as would follow from this form of marriage. To-day I begin by considering other forms of Melanesian marriage which bring out almost as clearly and conclusively the dependence of the classificatory terminology upon social conditions.

The systems of relationship of the Banks Islands possess certain very remarkable features which were first recorded by Dr. Codrington.[10] Put very shortly, it may be stated that cross-cousins stand to one another in the relation of parent and child, or, more exactly, cross-cousins apply to one another terms of relationship which are otherwise used between parents and children. A man applies to his mother’s brother’s children the term which he otherwise uses for his own children, and, conversely, a person applies to his father’s sister’s son a term he otherwise uses for his father. Thus, in the following diagram, C will apply to D and e the terms which are in general use for a son and daughter, while D and e will apply to C the term they otherwise use for their father.

Diagram 2.

In most forms of the classificatory system members of different generations are denoted in wholly different ways and belong to different classes,[11] but here we have a case in which persons of the same generation as the speaker are classed with those of an older or a younger generation.

I will first ask you to consider to what kind of psychological similarity such a practice can be due. What kind of psychological similarity can there be between one special kind of cousin and the father, and between another special kind of cousin and a son or daughter? If the puzzle as put in this form does not seem capable of a satisfactory answer, let us turn to see if the Banks Islanders practise any social custom to which this peculiar terminology can have been due. In the story of Ganviviris told to Dr. Codrington in these islands[12] an incident occurs in which a man hands over one of his wives to his sister’s son, or, in other words, in which a man marries one of the wives of his mother’s brother. Inquiries showed, not only that this form of marriage was once widely current in the islands, but that it still persists though in a modified form. The Christianity of the natives does not now permit a man to have superfluous wives whom he can pass on to his sister’s sons, but it is still the orthodox, and indeed I was told the popular, custom to marry the widow of the mother’s brother. It seemed that in the old days a man would take the widow of his mother’s brother in addition to any wife or wives he might already have. Though this is no longer allowed, the leaning towards this form of marriage is so strong that after fifty years of external influence a young man still marries the widow of his mother’s brother, sometimes in preference to a girl of his own age. Indeed, there was reason to believe that there was an obligation to do so, if the deceased husband had a nephew who was not yet married. The peculiar features of the terminology of relationship in these islands are exactly such as would follow from this form of marriage. If, in Diagram 2, C marries b, the wife or widow of his mother’s brother, and thereby comes to occupy the social position of his uncle A, the children of the uncle, D and e, will come to stand to him in the relation of children, while he, who had previously been the father’s sister’s son of D and e, will now become their father. An exceptional form of the classificatory system, in which there is a departure from the usual rule limiting a term of relationship to members of the same generation, is found to be the natural consequence of a social regulation which enjoins the marriage of persons belonging to different generations.

The next step in the process of demonstrating the social significance of the classificatory system of relationship will take us to the island of Pentecost in the northern New Hebrides. When I recorded the system of this island, I found it to have so bizarre and complex a character that I could hardly believe at first it could be other than the result of a ludicrous misunderstanding between myself and my seemingly intelligent and trustworthy informants. Nevertheless, the records obtained from two independent witnesses, and based on separate pedigrees, agreed so closely even in the details which seemed most improbable that I felt confident that the whole construction could not be so mad as it seemed. This confidence was strengthened by finding that some of its features were of the same order of peculiarity as others which I had already found in a set of Fijian systems I have yet to consider. There were certain features which brought relatives separated by two generations into one category; the mother’s mother, for instance, received the same designation as the elder sister; the wife’s mother the same as the daughter; the wife’s brother the same as the daughter’s son. The only conclusion I was then able to formulate was that these features were the result of some social institution resembling the matrimonial classes of Australia, which would have the effect of putting persons of alternate generations into one social category.