28 VILLAGE,LINEAGE,AND CLAN VILLAGE,LINEAGE AND CLAN unit and only potentially forming with it a system of articulated 9 groups.The cracy he may perhaps find it through a clansman and be able to cite avalid caim But,more significantly, be):they presuppose commo origin and not joint interest;they the genealogical arrangement of lineages into wider and wider explain‘history and not 'sociology'.In con trast,within the clan groupings may furnish the basis for joint action betwcen local or higher-order lineage the genealogical justifications of them.And it is at this point that the logic of Chinese genealogy division refer to segmentation:how within the largest unit lesser and lesser units are contained in an unfolding series,all units imeage were morly being rate and distinct precisely because theyare part of good and politically useful.They laid the foudton fo r proper system of units.The significance of the gencalogical background cial attitudes and rclieved the state of a great part of the burden What motivates t the of social contro But let agnatic kinship com to represent too production of a panorama of fission? strong a concentration f local power and the state was on the There must be several answers to this question.The genealogy alert, for the delicate balance between people and government may look back to an ultimate origin of glory. (The Wu clan seemed to be threatened.The useful could tumn into the dangerous came from the ancient,mythical emperor Chuan-hsti'2 Gene- If lineages took steps towards forming effective clan-groupings alogies often begin thus proudly andremotely)I cronicing danger might be sniffed in the air:the ben many generations and enumerating vast numbers of men,the limited agnation was then converted into the wrathful disapproval genealogy must of necessity document some success for the clan: somebody,somewhere,at some time has been a scholar,held the frst place,the state was supicious of claims to high office,or otherwise brought honour to his agnates.(When lineage ancestry.'One kind of undesirable behavior exhibited by some ancestral halls put up boards showing high honours and examina- clans was making “fraudulent claims'”concerning ancestry. tion successes,they need not confine themsclves to the achieve- Apparently desiring to enhance their prestige or extend their ments of their own members;the general inHuence,these kinship groups resorte to the dubious expedient of claiming dircct descent from well-known celebrated person But the general gencalogy also makes a bid for prestigeon the grounds of sheer mbers spread So that while the scholars who edit and compile the genealogy ful- repression into play.Hsiao citesa late eighteenth-century case of fil a pious obligation in acknowledging the root from which the order when the clan they bask in the warmth of an ocal magistrate reported that they and for prestige,and scholarly appetitefor writing history cov H.J.Loc The produce the and edn. great genealogy. The need to form effective social relationships among them 8C e occupof Chus whichgo may stimulate the members of scattered lincages to produce a uth River clan of Ch his group general genealo once the gen Stone River cr ogy.Contrariwise genealogy is 9 villages.The Chune ages and the raordinary as no given it may lcad people to base their social relationships on it. Charter and grouping may interact.Individuals from lineages they linked in a clan framework may make political claims on one another;if a man needs protection or favour from the bureau- oenoiat Ebethard,op.cit.p.$8 op.cit.pp.351f
30 VILLAGE,LINEAGE,AND CLAN VILLAGE,LINEAGE,AND CLAN seditious"statements which implied that the kinship group in 分 question had its origin in the imperial family of the Han dynasty'. as cansmen all local residents with the same surname.It seems to me that what Professor Twitchett is discussing can be called absurd only if we start from assumptions about the need for claim on the basis of the status. gencalogics to be historically truer if we are infected across time Again,the establishment of anccstral halls and common e by the official Chinese panic in the face of massive social combinations. estates,good things in themselves,ceased to be tolerable if they were made the foci of large higher-order lineages.'When local The study of Chinese clan and lineage genealogies from sociological point of view has barely b a The few pcople and that the extent of power varied proportionally to the size of the clan organization,they were soon persuaded to extend their 。中 data kinship groups,by fraudnlent means if,and to build in short,as texts of social history.A genealogy is much common ancestral hallsas a visible symbol and operational more than that,as we can sec.It isa set of claims to origin and base of their groupsWorse still,if pcople of one surname but relationships,a charter,a map of dispersion,a framework for who'did not actually belong to the sa e clan'set up ancestra wide-ranging social organiation,a bueprintfor action It is a halls,official anger was the greater.Hsiao cites a number of political statement-and therefore a perfect subject for the anthro- pologist. pcral edicts which thundered agamst organization:it was fraudulent,condu ive to band I should like to return now to the question of lineage and versive of peace in the countryside.The Confucian values of settlement patterns.I have assumed that virtually all villages in kinship having been carried a step further than a Confucian state Fukien andKwangtung are highly nucleated.Except where post- could tolerate,the clan or higher-order lineage became criminal wahave ctterdtheir huts,the villages of the New and its genealogy treason. Territories nearly always conform to the standard pattern.The houses in the large o to be political threats;they were not simply the cries of an out- ture rectangular town.Even a small village usually has streets raged historical conscece wounded by the genealogical distortion which divide up groups of terrace houses It is interesting ofthe past.The attempts to form wider and wide er groupings of agnates is perfectly consistent with the logic of Chinese patriliny, heihedsCou David. them was unaccepta able to 设 The Bule Clan',Asia Major n.s Chinese Clan Rules eseCueOto B.van det Spreopand The respect for the clan organizati first to an increased sense of obligation towards the clan community on the part of its members,then to the proliferation of clan insti- et seen his gradually,to an ever-widening conception of what constituted the clan -a conception which ended in the 产c material is to be e found in Akigoro Tag absurdity of many clans from Kwangtung and Kwangsi claiming
32 therefore,to tung in whic In Shun-te w silk industry some way in was given ove region of ru latedI It w social organi lineage organ ot a diferent the home of in which yo themselves u existence. lack of contr lineage orgar closer to the informative, of course.sav Shun-te.Thi Han-seng's w area'was in f peculiar marr surrounded by m China Sec e.g.Olg
34 unequal status. was correlated in question were not likel with extensive correlation:b of its own est within a lineag status of their In Nanchin 'clan',cducat mow in extent land under cu some degree e the big clan some eighty m mere twenty Nanching was ing out that a of its total cul that'clan'lan land in the wh ,It would tates;but'acce more gencrall common land reasons of pre ‘cspecially by strength such a This last po estate was inte just as new esta 盖 an-yi,Kwangt
36 VILLAGE,LINEAGE,AND CLAN VILLAGE,LINEAGE,AND CLAN 37 Land has a further bearing on lineage structure that I have not hitherto considered.Large settlements could continue to develop rid its territory of other such units,uless it needed them as tenants and clients.The members of a successfully installed local oa”Rg economi c time. lineage were driven on by the desire to expand their strength (of 。 which manpower for fighting was an important component)up ewhere.And in to the limits imposed on them by the extent of their agricultural broken agricultural country,villages (and ultimately with them land.But,of course,while in this fashion local lineages depended local lineages)must of necessity have been small.It follows from for their size on their terrain,the lack of large continuous areas of this argum that in theoufsetofthe region the land could not inhibit the growth of dispersed and higher-order early occupation of the best continuous stretches of land made it lineages.On the contrary,it promoted it.When local lineage dificult for ater comers to build their villages intoqually large land became scarce, some men moved away,perhaps to the next units.Once all the good land was taken up,a new local lineage valley.For a time they probably remained members of their could not normally expect to expand to great sizc,and the general home lineage;a dispersed lineage had come into being.After a while,if the the contemporary New lerritories suggests how datc o advantage, of local lineage o。 are conected in such a manner as to distribute the great Punti order lineage along with those in the original settlement.Seg- mentation had take local lineages on the rice plains and the smaller local lineages,both place.But the very conditions leading to Punti and Hakka,by and large poorer land The pic segmentation could also produce fission.If on leaving their home is. however,only rough:origimal settiers may have yielded their settem men had tomoveso far that it was diffculor even impossible to keep in touch with those left behind;and if,more ace to later arrivals,as we have sccn,and smaner often have wedged themselves in betw en larger the special agricultural advantage of the best lands has clearly nie the favoured the growth on them of the traditionally largest and most in the home settlement,instead of proliferating segments,lost cm云2 topography of the members by fission.Naturally enough,we come back to the question of vicinages.Migration within a icted area was clearly how the smaller settlements may have been limited by likely to lead to the multiplication of local lineages grouped their hilly terrain and the larger together in higher-order lineages.Movement far afield produced a broader valleys.And in these fertile valleys the big common es- definitive break which could be repaired only when the scattered tates were built up,as both the result and the cause of large local local lineages having prospered exceptionally,they formed them- selves into a higher-order lineage on a geographical scale much eof the terrain explains in some measure how wider than that dictated for their humbler neighbours by the limits of the vicinage. large local lineages came into existcnce.As I have already argued, we must assume that it was the ambition of every local lineage to To conclude this discussion of agnatic grouping I want to retun to the local lineage inorder to deal with its internal differen- tiation in gencalogical structure.In Lineage OrgiztionI hazarded the guess-it could not be more,given the nature of the 957 and S.F.Balfour,'Hong Kong before the evidence I was then using-that segmentation was likely to be oly(Shanghai),vol.x nos.45,1941.And on the gen- asymmetrical when the lineage was so differentiated that it braced groups of unequal social status.From what I have seen a Structure.pp. of local lineages in the New Territories I think my guess was 1P.49