KINSHIP (Among Primitive Peoples). - Primitive peoples too distinguish a threefold kinship: by blood, by affinity, and legal-spiritual cognation, founded respectively on descent from a common ancestor, on legitimate marriage, and on adoption.
Kinship by blood and by affinity exists among all peoples; its extent and therefore its effects vary; close kinship is ordinarily bound to the law of exogamy, which obliges a man to seek a wife outside his own group of relatives. One can further distinguish the kinship of the clan and the extended family (German Sippe) and of the tribe.
The most restricted form of kinship is the one that Man observed among the Andamanese, in the Andaman Islands (Indian Ocean). They did not recognize and did not know how to count kinship beyond the third generation. Marriage between first cousins was forbidden. Likewise a man and a woman were forbidden to marry within the family of the brother-in-law or sister-in-law. Kinship, counted in both lines, was for them of the greatest importance in daily life and in contracting marriage, which was never permitted between persons even distantly related. There was no prohibition against marrying a person of the same name, whether he belonged to another tribe or to one's own community. Besides consanguinity and affinity, the matrimonial impediment of adoption was also in force. The closest relatives were held to be parents, children, brothers and sisters, which corresponds to the distinction the Romans made among blood relatives, that is, the distinction of agnates. Nevertheless the Andamanese were conscious of belonging to the tribe and believed they descended by generation from a first human couple. This system of kinship, which is very close to our Western one, exists more or less also among other peoples called in ethnology "collectors."
Another type of kinship, opposed to this one, is that of nomadic pastoral peoples, who have the principle of consanguinity at the basis of their social organization. Among the Mongols, for example, every tribe traces itself back to an ancestor. Since the tribes are nine, so that from the different color of each tribe they are called by the name of the "Nine Colored," the Mongols believe they descend from nine ancestral brothers. The head of the tribe is assisted by a tribal council. There are various manifestations that keep kinship alive, yet the Mongols observe clan exogamy. But they also observe, according to the information of some authors, tribal exogamy, or exogamy of the tribal name. This type of kinship of nomadic pastoral peoples also belongs to other peoples: Turks, ancient Indo-Europeans, Semites, Tungus, Manchus, ancient Mexicans, nomadic Tibetans, noble tribes of the Kachin, Tai, Lolo, etc. While kinship with clan exogamy comprises many generations, that is, until the necessity arises of forming a new exogamous social unit, kinship by affinity, on the other hand, ends at the first or second degree, marriage between cousins, children of brothers and sisters, being permitted and among some peoples preferred. Such a type of kinship also existed in ancient China, attributed however to the Chou, held to be a Turkish people, cattle breeders, who continued or founded the feudal Empire in the 12th century B.C. They observed, in fact, the law of exogamy of family name, by which they could not unite in marriage even after a hundred generations, that is, never. Among all these peoples there exists the belief in a common origin of all men. Therefore they have the consciousness of belonging to a particular family, to a clan, to a tribe, to a people, to the human race, believing in a "universal brotherhood," as indeed a disciple of Confucius said in consoling an orphan.
Another type of kinship is that of totemistic peoples, characterized by the strange belief that the individual clans of the tribe descend from a totem, that is, from an animal or a plant, or, more rarely, from a thing. All the members of a clan who have the same totem are bound to exogamy. The children belong to the father's clan and kinship is counted through the paternal line, as in the types of kinship considered previously. Opposed to the preceding ones appears the type of kinship in which the tribe is divided into two exogamous groups, that is, the members of each group must seek a wife in the other group of the tribe. It is the marriage called in ethnology "exchange of cousins" or "exchange of women" between two clans, facilitated by their living together in the same place; they are therefore very bound to kinship by affinity. The children belong to the mother's group; hence one has the kinship proper to matriarchal civilization, in which the woman enjoys a privileged situation with respect to the man (v. MATRIARCATO; primitivi*). Exogamy is here called "class exogamy."
In the crossing of totemistic civilization with matriarchal civilization a very complicated system of kinship arises; the tribe is subdivided into four, or six, or even eight exogamous classes, called in ethnology phratries. The children do not belong to the class of the father or the mother, but to that of the grandfather or grandmother. Kinship is counted through the maternal line.
Despite the diversity of types of kinship, there are relatives who are everywhere held to be the closest. Among blood relatives in the direct line: parents and their offspring; grandfathers and grandmothers and their grandsons and granddaughters, the offspring of their sons and daughters; in the collateral line, brothers and sisters, first cousins, that is, the sons and daughters of the brother or sister of the father and mother (except however the peoples who contract marriage between cross-cousins); among relatives by affinity are the father-in-law and mother-in-law, the son-in-law and daughter-in-law. Generally among these relatives incestuous relations are regarded with the greatest horror and punished even with death (v. INCESTO).
Among the Bambuti of the Ituri, in Africa, for example, there exists clan exogamy, but ordinarily that of the extended family is observed. Yet Father Schebesta noted that when for some reason an extended family (Sippe) divides and two exogamous groups are thus formed, the matrimonial impediment of consanguinity does not immediately cease, but one waits for the passage of some generations and especially for separation of place. The Lolo, scattered in southwestern China, Indochina and Burma, likewise have clan exogamy, yet they do not contract marriage between collateral relatives until the feeling of consanguinity has completely vanished. For according to the Lolo, as Father Martin pointed out, if the common male ancestor is not sufficiently remote, then the same tribe (= clan) is practically still the same family. Until the name of a sufficiently numerous group of families comes to be equivalent to another tribe, they still consider themselves too closely related, and marrying within the same tribe would be as if a brother took his own sister to wife.
Naturally kinship is regulated by the tradition of the people and by the laws of the ancestors, but it is clear that certain laws are founded in the nature of things and have a supernatural sanction: for example, among the inhabitants of the Trobriand Islands in Melanesia their explorer Malinowski noted that exogamy and incest are traditional precepts (they say: "from antiquity it was ordained"), but it is further believed that they are rooted in the primordial nature of things, and the transgression of the taboos of kinship entails a supernatural penalty, that is, a disease that covers the skin with sores and produces pains and a malaise throughout the whole body, a punishment that one seeks to avoid with a specific magical practice.
There are peoples, such as the Tungus, the Manchus, the Chinese, the Annamites, the southern Tibetans, the Tai, the Koreans, the Japanese, who in case of necessity form a new exogamous group, or clan, basing it on the principle of five generations, that is, the new group is constituted by all the patrilineal descendants who can be traced back to a common ancestor within the five degrees of kinship. Among other peoples, on the other hand, such as the Yakuts, the Manchus themselves, and certain peoples of ancient China, a new exogamous group is formed according to the principle of nine generations.
There are peoples, such as the Tungus, the Buryats, the Manchus, the Koryaks, the Chukchi, the Aleuts, the Amerindians, the ancient Xianbei and Xiongnu, who observe particular rules bearing upon kinship, such as the levirate, the sororate, and the inheritance of the father's wives as one's own concubines. Among the Tungus, for example, in the case of the widow of an elder brother, the levirate is obligatory; the son inherits the wives of the father, with the exception of his own mother. Among Tungus tribes that breed herds of reindeer, a junior relative may inherit the wives of a senior relative, that is, of elder brothers and of the ascendants of his clan, as the Buryats do and as the Xianbei and Xiongnu did in ancient times.
Among the Koryaks and the Chukchi the levirate is permitted only with the younger widow, the younger cousin, or with the niece, the daughter of the brother or of the sister of the deceased wife, and not vice versa, except among the Koryaks of Kamenskoye. The levirate is considered a right, and even without exercising it one becomes the father of the deceased's children and the husband of his wife.
Among the ancient Chinese there existed the custom that, when a prince gave his daughter in marriage to the emperor or to another feudal prince, nine or twelve women had to be given respectively, of whom one had to be the younger sister of the bride, another the niece, the daughter of the brother of the bride, and all the others had to belong to the family of the same name, and they came to form part of the bridegroom's harem.
Among the particular duties of kinship is that of vendetta, which in the lower societies supplies the place of the weak authority of the State. The manner of conceiving this duty varies from people to people; sometimes the obligation of vendetta lasts for several generations. Among the Bambuti of the Ituri the vendetta falls to the head of the group, and the causes that provoke it are various.
The nomenclature of kinship naturally reflects the different types of kinship. At one time the greatest importance was given to the so-called "Malayan system of kinship," which was observed among the inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands, in Micronesia and then in Melanesia, according to which one calls father not only one's own father but also every other man who could be so by his age, that is, all the men of the same clan belonging to the generation immediately preceding, and one calls mother not only one's own mother but all the women of the clan who by their age could be so. And the men and women of one's own generation are called brothers and sisters; the persons of the generation following one's own are called sons and daughters, and so on up to the degrees of kinship of grandfather and grandmother and of grandson: the ancestor and the great-grandson are named like the grandfather and the grandson. The whole system embraces five generations. Arbitrarily the American ethnologist Lewis Morgan deduced from such nomenclature that it could only derive from a preceding period of promiscuity or general agamy.
For many years this argument was held valid, together with that of matriarchy, for supporting the evolutionist theory, which denied for the first epochs of humanity the existence of marriage and of the family. It was later demonstrated that such a system of nomenclature referred to the age relations of the members of one and the same clan, relations founded on the conditions of social life. It was also noted that, in the Malayan languages and in Polynesia, the relations of kinship are sometimes even more subtly distinguished than in ours. But one could, moreover, call into doubt the seriousness of the argument by reflecting that even if it had been possible to ignore paternity, maternity could not be ignored, whereas the nomenclature turned out to be the same for the two sexes (v. FAMIGLIA).
For canon law and moral theology, v. AFFINITÀ; COGNAZIONE: I. c. legale, II. c. spirituale; CONSANGUINEITÀ.
BIBL.: sources