| caption: |
Chapter Three. Phases of Life |
| caption: |
limitations on sexual partners by clan and ward |
| text: |
Yet, not all the young people of a Konyak village were potential sexual partners. The rules of exogamy, which prohibited marital unions between members of the same clan and ward, applied also to premarital love- making. In Wakching, which consisted of five wards each with its own morung, the wards were grouped together in wider exogamous units. Thus, all the people of the Oukheang and Thepong considered themselves as agnatic kin, and a similar "brother" relationship prevailed among the inhabitants of the Balang and Bala ward. The Ang-ban, however, formed an exogamous unit without affiliation to any other ward. Consequently, a young man of the Oukheang morung had to find his partners among the girls of the Balang, Bala, and Ang-ban, whereas a man of the Ang-ban could choose among the girls of the other four wards. We shall see presently that there were special relations of reciprocity between the Oukheang and the Balang, on the one hand, and between the Thepong and Bala, on the other, whereas the Ang-ban stood outside the system of preferential intermarriage, demonstrated in the figure on page 72. |
