ADVERTISEMENTS:
While the family denotes a relationship between the spouses and their children, who are described as ‘siblings’, the kin includes within the bound a large number of persons; and what creates a kinship will necessarily depend upon the social organization in the context of which the term is applied.
A distinction has to be made for this purpose between the biological parent and the sociological one; and in some communities the person who is called father may not be the biological parent. For example, in Malagasy, among the Tanala tribe there is a practice that the husband may claim as his own the first three children that may be born to his wife after he divorces her on the ground of adultery.
We have seen earlier that some tribes have a classificatory system of relationship according to which men of certain age groups will be called ‘father’ or ‘brother’ and women of particular age groups will be addressed as ‘mother’, ‘sister’ etc., and many of them may be very distantly related by blood.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Among Australian tribes there is a system of dividing society into certain classes, and a child’s class is determined by his birth into a family; and he would be permitted to marry into a class that is not the one to which his parents belong. Certain tribes have a four-class or an eight-class classification, and marriage between uncle and niece is prohibited, although the one between cross-cousins is allowed and even encouraged.
The rules relating to formation of kin relations may vary but, once the relationship is established, it standardizes the different duties, responsibilities and the privileges of the members who fall within its range. The terms and conditions of such relationship may also be distinctive. Among the Thado Kuki of Assam, there is a practice that a man would use the term ‘hepu’ to denote his relationship with his mother’s father, mother’s brother as also his mother’s brother’s son.
Any of these persons can claim from him his mother’s bride-price and, when she dies, her ‘bone- price’. Among the AO Naga tribes of Nagaland, there are three exogamous groups in society, and a man’s wife’s mother may belong to his mother’s group, to his grandmother’s group or even to his own group. Among the Australian tribes, there is a system of having classificatory relationships and kinship systems generally fall into four categories.
The Yeruba tribe in Nigeria have a system under which the actual father, the father’s brothers as also the mother’s brothers will all be addressed as ‘baba’, and the term ‘iya’ is used for the mother as also for any women who belongs to a generation that stands immediately above that of the child concerned. In Polynesia, the Hawaians use the term ‘makua’ for both the parents and for all their parents’ brothers and sisters.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Besides the ‘classificatory’ relationships among kins, there are also others which have been described as the ‘lineal’ ‘descriptive’ and the ‘bifurcating’ types of relationship. In the lineal type, a difference is made between the ascending and the descending generations, like ‘father’, ‘mother’, ‘son’, ‘daughter’ etc; but in each generation, the collaterals are grouped together, as uncles, cousins, brothers in law etc.
The descriptive type however distinguishes the collaterals also from each other and from the lineals, such as we have in India or the Arabs have for their relationships. The American Indians have the ‘bifurcating’ type of relationship and, according to this system, each generation is distinguished from the other and collaterals on the male side are also differentiated from those on the female side.
The same term may be used by them for the father and the father’s brother, and a different term will be applied to the mother’s brother. Tribes and classes exist in which some sort of combination of any of these three types of relationship may be made.
McIver observes that kinship principles are not fast decaying and, at least, the classificatory relationship system continues under some disguise or the other. When persons of a locality are addressed as ‘aunt’ or ‘uncle, traces of such system can well be recognized and understood.
In the world of today, the family has assumed more of importance than the kinship system, but kins at times claim a right of living in a joint family, and in this regard the Indian society has a built-in system of security offered to widows claiming any shade of relationship. Visits by married girls to their kins’ places are also common and frequent, and social occasions like that of the wedding or the sradh ceremony demand that no kin shall be left out of the privilege of being invitees.
In some relatively unenlightened families, too, in villages, kins even have a say upon questions relating to the education or the marriage of a relative’s son or daughter. In urban centres, however, the role of the kin in one’s own life has been reduced to a little more than a mere formality, for siblings too are unable to exercise much of influence upon each other’s lives.