Kachin - Kinship

Kin Groups and Descent. Descent is agnatic and there are eponymous clans with fixed correspondences between clan names in the different languages. The five aristocratie clans are descended from the sons of Wahkyet-wa, youngest brother among the ancestors of the Shan, Chinese, and other peoples. These brothers were descendants of Ningawn-wa, eldest brother of the Madai nat, chief of the sky spirits. The aristocratie clans are, in order of precedence, Marip, Lahtaw, Lahpai, N'Hkum, and Maran. The clans are divided into major lineages and these into lesser segments and local lineage groups, and it is especially to the last that exogamy strictly applies, although all the clans are exogamous in theory. In some regions a form of marriage called hkau wang magam is practiced, which prohibits marrying into a lineage from which a wife has been taken until the fourth generation, and requires a marriage with a mother's brother's daughter's daughter's daughter (MBDDD). In such cases the MBDDD may turn out to be in one's own lineage, and the requirement must still be met. Some traditional lineage genealogies recited by bards are very long, though the number of generations back to the common ancestor seems to be a fixed number (i.e., genealogical telescoping). Clans are sometimes spoken of as if they were tribes because major chiefly domains have a majority of their residents in the chief's clan, which owns the village tract. In Jinghpaw proper, the wife acquires no membership in her husband's clan and lineage, but in Gauri she acquires it to some extent, and this difference corresponds to differences in the ease of divorce and in the recovery of marriage payments in such cases; in Jinghpaw proper, recovery is made from the wife's family, while in Gauri it is made mainly from her seducer, if any.

Kinship Terminology. Kinship terminology is bifurcate-merging, with Omaha-type cousin terminology. The members of the lineage from which wives are taken and given, respectively, are referred to (by male speakers) with affinal terms (save that in the second descending generation the members of one's wife-taking groups are called by grandchild terms and the members of the second ascending generation of the wife-giving group are given grandparent terms). On the other hand, the wife takers of one's wife takers are all "grandchildren" and the men of one's wife givers' wife givers are all "grandfathers," regardless of generation. Furthermore, a male Ego calls the men in his own generation, whether wife giver or wife taker, by the same "brother-in-law" term ( hkau ); he calls the women in nonascending generations and men of descending generations of his wife-giving group "wife's younger sibling" ( nam ); and he calls the members of the three central generations of his wife takers, exclusive of the men of his own generation, by the term hkri , meaning "sister's children." Women of ascending generations of one's own lineage are "aunts by consanguinity" ( moi ) and the men of corresponding generations of wife takers are "uncle-by-marriage" ( gu ); women of the three central generations of wife givers' wife givers are ni, etymologically an "aunt" term, which has primary reference to the wives of classificatory mother's brothers ( tsa, first ascending male wife giver). There are terms for actual husband and wife, and real/classificatory siblings are distinguished by age relative to the speaker.