420 SYSTEMS OF CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY 



discriminations made in the former, with Ego a female, are not applied in the 

 latter with Ego the same. Without any reason for supposing that any part of this 

 intricate system escaped the critical attention of Mr. Hart, to maintain its con- 

 sistency with itself the principles of classification adopted in the first collateral 

 line should be carried into the second, third, and even more remote. Wherever a 

 collateral brother and sister are found, however distant in degree, their children 

 should fall into the same relationships of consanguinity as those of an own brother 

 and sister, but distinguished from each other by the class terms. Notwithstanding 

 the apparently arbitrary character of the system, it rests upon definite ideas which 

 stand to each other in fixed relations; and the relations thus created must con- 

 stantly assert their integrity, or the system becomes blemished. 



Irrespective of the sex of Ego, I call my mother's brother mo-kew = my mother- 

 uncle, or commonly kew, uncle. Sometimes kew-fu = uncle-father, is used. The 

 relationship of uncle, restricted to my mother's brother, is a sixth indicative charac- 

 teristic of the Turanian system. It was the presence of this relationship, together 

 with that of aunt, which is equally positive, followed, but with much less distinct- 

 ness, by the correlative relationships of nephew and niece, that furnished the pre- 

 ponderating reason for placing the Chinese in the Turanian rather than in the 

 Malayan connection. When the Malayan form is presented it will be found that 

 the Chinese system stands on the confines between the Malayan and Turanian 

 forms. In determining the question of its true position the terms of consanguinity, 

 which represent the original as well as the radical parts of the system, must govern ; 

 and the qualifying terms, which represent the afterwork of scholars, must be laid 

 out of view. If this is done, the Chinese form, with the exception of the relation- 

 ships named, will be seen to affiliate more closely with the Malayan than with the 

 Turanian. On the other hand, with those relationships which mark the transition 

 from the former to the latter stage of development, the preponderance of internal 

 evidence is in favor of the Turanian connection. When the systems of relation- 

 ship of the remaining Asiatic nations, as well as of the assemblage of nations 

 inhabiting Oceanica, are collected and compared it is not improbable, as elsewhere 

 intimated, that the rightful position of the Chinese nation will be in the Malayan 

 family. This subject will be referred to again. To resume : my mother's brother's 

 son and daughter I call peaon-lieung-te and peaon-isze-mei, my external brother and 

 sister, or my brother and sister of the peaon class. I call them also my elder or 

 younger brother and sister, according to our relative ages ; the son and daughter 

 of this collateral brother peaon-cJiih and peaon-c7iih-neu, my son and daughter of 

 the peaon class, and the children of the latter my grandchildren of the same class. 

 The son and daughter of this collateral sister I call ivae-peaon-chih, and wae-peaon- 

 c7dh-neu, my son and daughter of the wae branch of the peaon class. Mr. Hart 

 renders this phrase as equivalent to nephew and niece of the same branch and 

 class. Their children are my grandchildren of the pcaon-chih class. 



Mr. Hart remarks in a note that " relationship on the father's side transmitted 

 from male to male is of the tong class ; the moment it passes out, by the marriage of 

 a female to another family, it is characterized as peaon; and if it passes from that 

 to another family, by the marriage of another female, it becomes wae-peaon" 



