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Chapter Two. The Social Structure and its Units |
| caption: |
example of branching to four levels of clan , through gifts |
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A concrete example will demonstrate the manner in which the process of branching off from an ancestral house determined the interrelations between the members of a clan. In the Oukheang ward of Wakching there were one great house of the Khoknok-hu clan and fourteen "small houses." The latter, however, had not all been founded by younger brothers of a onetime owner of the great house; some had been established by men who themselves stemmed from small houses. Consequently, the great house received shares of meat from only six houses, which we may call A, B, C, D, E, and F. House A, in turn, received shares of the animals sacrificed by house a, which was an offshoot of A, and this house a, from which four more houses (a, b, y, d) had issued, received shares from these four houses. Finally, one of the latter four houses had, in turn, become the parent house of a more recently founded house. |
