4:i6 SYSTEMS OP CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY 



cousins are my nephews and nieces, and the children of these nephews and nieces 

 are my grandchikh'en. 



The three remaining brandies of this Une are the same in all respects as the one 

 just described, with a change of the first person in thg line. My father's sister' 

 is my aunt, my mother's brother is my uncle, and my motlier's sister is my aunt ; 

 and the relationships of the children of each, and their respective descendants, 

 is such as to make each branch of the line a counterpart of the other, with the 

 single exception of changing uncle to aunt, or the reverse. 



The marriage relationships in the first and second collateral line are also peculiar 

 in the Karen. By courtesy the wife of a nephew becomes a niece, the husband 

 of a niece becomes a nephew, and the husband and wife of a female and male 

 cousin in like manner are regarded as cousins. These deviations from uniformity, 

 even in slight particulars, will be found to subserve an important purpose when the 

 systems of many nations are brought together for comparison. These forms are 

 not taken up and laid aside inconsiderately, but tend, when adopted, to become 

 permanent, and to perpetuate themselves in all of the off-shoots of a particular 

 branch of a family which become detached from the parent connection after these 

 deviations were made ; and thus they will often reappear in the separate subdi- 

 visions of such a branch after long intervals of time. 



The third and more remote collateral lines, so far as they are extended in the 

 Table, are counterparts, in their several branches, of the corresponding branches of 

 the second collateral line ; and it will not, for this reason, be necessary to consider 

 them in detail. My father's father's brother is my grandfather ; his son is my uncle, 

 the son of this uncle is my male cousin, and the remainder of the line is the same 

 as the second. My father's father's sister is my grandmother ; her daughter is my 

 aunt, the daughter of this aunt is my female cousin ; and the remainder of this 

 line is the same as the corresponding part of the second. The male and female 

 branches, on the mother's side, are counterparts of those on the father's side. 



The close approximation of that part of the system of a portion of the Aryan 

 family, which is classificatory, to the corresponding part of the Karen will at once 

 be noticed ; but when we pass beyond such portion, the remainder of the Karen 

 system continues classificatory, while that of the Aryan nations referred to is 

 descriptive. 



We have now considered in this, and in previous chapters, the series of Asiatic 

 schedules, contained in the Table, which fall under the classificatory form. They 

 are much too limited in number to represent fairly the great body of the Asiatic 

 nations, considered with reference to the number of nationaliiies ; but they are 

 abundantly sufficient to establish the existence of one most remarkable form, the 

 Turanian, as exemplified by the system of the people of South India, who speak 

 the Dravidian language. This form, of which the Tamilian is selected as the type, 

 rises to the rank of a domestic institution in the highest sense of that term, by 

 reason of its elaborate and complicated character, and of itf uses for the organiza- 

 tion of the family upon the broadest scale of numbers. This remarkable system of 

 consanguinity and affinity embodies important testimony concerning the ethnic 

 affinities of nations among whom its fundamental conceptions can be definitely traced. 



