| caption: |
Chapter Two. The Social Structure and its Units |
| caption: |
morung exogamy and incest rules , except for immigrants |
| text: |
The Wakching morungs were exogamous units, and sexual relations between members of the same morung were considered incestuous. An exception to the rule of morung exogamy was made, however, in the case of people who had either themselves come from other villages, or whose fathers and grandfathers had been immigrants. Though there was a tendency to absorb such aliens into Wakching clans, the process of incorporation took several generations, and first generation immigrants could intermarry freely with the inhabitants of the ward in which they had settled. Similar was the position of the men of the chiefly Angnok-pong clan which lived in the Balang morung. They could marry commoners of their own morung, which suggests that the chiefly clans stood in some respects above and outside the system of morung exogamy. |
