34 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF INDIAN LANGUAGES. 
woman are considered the potential wives of her husband, and the brothers 
of a married man are considered the potential husbands of his wife. This 
potential affinity has various meanings among the different tribes where it 
is found. In some, the right of the man to his potential wives is the right 
to decide to whom they shall be given in marriage, but from them he may 
first select whom he will for his own. If these women, having married other 
persons, become widows, he again has the prior claim. A more common 
form of potential affinity is this: A man having married a woman can there- 
after acquire a second or third wife in the practice of polygamy only from 
the group of potential affinities. 
Other customs of a similar nature appear, leading to the inference that 
these people have emerged from connubial society. 
Again, in Indian languages we sometimes discover that wives and 
wives’ sisters are designated by the same kinship term; and that brothers 
and male cousins are designated by the same term; and sisters and female 
cousins are designated by the same term; and many similar facts appear 
as linguistic phenomena. 
Such are the reasons that make this subject so attractive to the stu- 
dents of Indian society and language and call for its elaborate treatment here. 
In the seventeeth schedule of the next chapter there is presented a 
series of questions the answers to which will give the kinship terms used in 
any language for which the record is made. The answers will also afford 
all of the facts necessary to determine the system of kinship classification 
belonging to the language. 
To assist the student in filling out the schedule four charts have been 
prepared, and accompany this volume. 
In charts numbered I, IJ, and III, the kindred are grouped about a 
central person, designated as ‘ Self,” on Chart No. I. 
Chart No. II belongs properly on the left of Chart No. I and is a con- 
tinuation of it. In like manner Chart No. III is a continuation of Chart 
No. I to the right. 
With “Self” the following classes of kinships may exist: 
1. Revatives.—Consanguineal kindred, those which arise from genetic 
kinship. 
