REMBAU HISTORY, ETC. 2a 
These corporations may accept additions to their num- 
bers, but with the sole end of thereby enhancing the value of 
tribal property. All customary rules relating to the sale or 
mortgage of property, or to division of property on divorce or 
death, tend to conserve the property in the tribes. Death is 
regarded by the custom as a diminution of tribal wealth. 
Hence, in the case of murder an equivalent return was exact- 
ed from the murderer’s tribe: not the death of the murderer 
but the transfer of the slayer’s blood relation to the tribe of 
the slain. The murderer cannot make restitution in person 
—his tribe must make good the damage inflicted. Hence his 
son—who cannot be a member of his father’s tribe —is exempt, 
and his nephew” suffers vicariously. 
Adoption of a child is subject to the consent not only of 
the maternal relations warzs of the adopted, but to the per- 
mission af his /émbaga and involves complete severance from 
the tribe of the child’s birth.’ 
Every marriage, under the exogamic custom, brings a 
new male adherent to the tribe, for the married man_ belongs 
to the place of his marriage. Marriage is regarded not sole- 
ly as a contract between individuals but rather is a circum- 
stance fraught with gain or loss to the tribe. Were the indi- 
viduals taken as the unit, not her chief, nor her uncles and 
cousins, but the lady herself, who has fallen victim to a sabine 
marriage, would profit by the penalties custom exacts from 
her mother-in-law.’ | 
This strict conservation of tribal possessions is based on 
the fiction by which all real property is held to have been 
acquired in the eleven immigrant tribes by purchase. In 
other states of the Negri Sembilan Federation the Batin—or 
(1) vide Sayings XXXIV and XXXV. app. I. 
(2) A member of the waris tribe is ineligible for adoption, how- 
ever, into any other tribe. 
(3) vide Seying XXXIX. app. I. 
(4) v. Saying II, app. I. 
(5)-vide chap. III, sub irregular marriages, 
R. A. Soc., No. 56, 1910. 
