customs connected with the father's sister, and an investigation of these in the less advanced islands of the group, such as Vanua Lava, may throw much light on their nature.
Although, however, no decisive opinion can be expressed, there is so much that is suggestive in the customs I have described that I cannot forbear from putting forward some alternative hypotheses which may serve the useful function of assisting the course of future inquiry.
It may be well first to point out again that the special matter which has to be explained is the existence of this close relationship between a person and the father's sister in communities with matrilineal descent. According to some the father's sister is not even to be regarded as the kin of her nephew, and nevertheless we find between them ties which indicate the closest bonds of relationship.
One of the features which will have struck everyone in hearing of these customs is the very close resemblance between them and those which are found to exist in so many peoples between a man and his maternal uncle. When the latter customs are found in a people with patrilineal descent, we have been accustomed to look upon them as a survival of a previous condition of mother-right, the close relation naturally existing in this latter state between a man and his mother's brother having persisted after the mode of descent has changed. That this has been the explanation in many cases, as in that of the peoples of North East Africa described by Munzinger,[1] and in many other instances, there can be little doubt. We have in these cases clear evidence of transitional states which entitles us with the greatest confidence to explain the one condition as the survival of the other.
The possibility is naturally suggested that the relation
- ↑ Ostafrikanische Studien, 1864, and Sitten und Recht der Bogos, 1859. For a discussion of this evidence, see Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits, vol. v., p. 151.
