46 



SYSTEMS OF CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY 



possession of several special terms for collateral relations, wliich were evidently 

 indigenous in the Welsh dialect. Tlie nse of these terms, as a part of the nomen- 

 clature, modified the method of describing kindred in the same manner as it did 

 in other Aryan dialects. They were evolved by generalizing certain persons into 

 classes, and were used as common terms to express the corresponding relationships. 



In the first collateral line, male, the series is as follows : brother, nephew, and 

 grandson of hrother ; in the second, uncle, male cousin, son of male cousin, and 

 grandson of male cousin. The cousin, as in other forms, is made a second start- 

 ing-point. Which uncle, or which cousin is intended, does not appear; and the 

 defect in the statement could only be corrected by resorting to the Erse method, 

 or general words explaining the line and branch to which each person belonged. 

 The prevalence of a concurrent as Avell as anterior descriptive method, is plainly 

 inferrible.^ 



VII. Persian. The modern Persian dialect of the Aryan language has a remark- 

 able history : not so much from the changes through which it has passed, as from 

 its having been a literary language from the earliest period, nearly, of authentic 

 historj\ After passing through several forms of speech, the Zend, the Pahlevi, 

 and the Parsee, each of which is permanent in written records, it stiU remains a 

 lineal descendant of the Zend, as well as a closely allied dialect of the Sanskrit. 



' In the " Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales," there is a curious diagram illustrative of the 

 Welsh system of consanguinity, of which the following is a copy. ( Vide British Records, Com- 

 mission Series, Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales, book xi, ch. iv, p. 605.) 



If Ego is placed between the father and son the lineal and first collateral lines would become 

 intelligible, and would be in the same form as the Holland Dutch ; but the remainder would be 

 unintelligible. The same result follows each change of Ego upon the lineal line. But it shows that 

 the arrangement of the lines was correctly apprehended. — G. = (?or/ie?!fZad=great-grandfather; H. = 

 ZZtjntZad = grandfather ; T.= Ta(Z = father ; M. = i)/a& = son ; W.= TF;/r = grandson ; B.=Braiot = 

 brother ; K. probably represents -either Nat, nephew, or Nghfnder (pronounced hcveuder), cousin, 

 under a different orthography. C. probably Goroyr = great-grandson. 



