trate be dismissed. and haul him off to the prefect, decided to take revenge'.Chu men from two'districts'of the county came together and about a thousand people marched to seize the offending magistrate bouring county compiained to the members of the Chang River Chu 'and they definite organizarion.'They combine only in some extrordinary circumstance. Some fifty years ago a Chu with a grievancc against the magistrate of a neigh- Stone River clan of Chus with fifteen villages. 1 Cf.the south Chinese c ancestry. local magistrate reported that they contained genealogical records being destroyed by imperial order when the repression into play.Hsiao cites a late eighteenth-century case of of dangerous pretension the state might bring its machinery of ages (real or imagined)of antiquity.'2 If the genealogies smacked of claiming direct descent from well-known celebrated person- influcnce,these kinship groups resorted to the dubious expedient Apparently desiring to cnhance their prestige"or extend their clans was making "fraudulent One kind of undesirable bchavior exhibited by some In the first.place,the state of its organizational extension. who consented ro the demand that the magis. Chu lineage,descended from an ancestor (improbably in a book with this title)in 魔 claims" was suspicious of claims to high limited agnation was then converted into the wrathful disapproval danger might be sniffed in the air;the benign encouragement of If lineages took steps towards forming cffective clan-groupings seemed to be threatened.The useful could turn into the dangerous. alert,for the delicate balance between people and government strong a concentration of local power and the state was on the of social control.But let agnatic kinship social attitudes and relieved the state of a great part of the burden good and politically useful. They laid the foundations for proper The state cherished kinship.Family and lineage were morally may go beyor the limit of state tolerance.1 them.And it is at this point that the logic of Chinese genealogy clan groupings may furnish the basis for joint action between the genealogical arrangement of lineages into wider and wider a valid claim to it in genealogical terms.But,more significantly, cracy he may perhaps find it through a clansman and be able to cite VILLAGE,LINEAGE,AND CLAN The Chu county cian has no Wlch is one outrageous and concerning ancestry come to represcnt too tutions 8 Again, bid pp.354f.Hsiao also deals with genealogies at Pp. on the part of its members,then to the proliferation of clan inst- first to an increased sense of obligation towards the clan community respect for the clan organization which arose in Sung times ied clan'organization from Sung times on,has written: and its genealogy treason. 315:22.352 absurdity of many clans from Kwangtung and Kwangsi claiming what constituted the clan -a conception which ended in the gradually,to an ever-widening conception cf political threat.D.C.Twitchert,surveying the developmen:of them was unacceptable to officialdom only because it implied a and the invention or discovery of genealogical justifications for agnates is perfectly consistent with the logic of Chinese patriliny of the past.The attempts to form wrider and wider groupings of raged historical conscience wounded by the genealogical distortion to be political threats;they were not simply the cries of an out- to mc,best viewed as political reactions to what were imagined The official objections to'fraudulent'genealogies are,it seems could tolerate,the clan or higher-order lineage became criminal kinship having been carried a step further than a Confucian state versive of peace in the countryside.4 The Confucian values of organization:it was fraudulent,conducive to banditry,and sub- imperial edicts which thundered against large-scaie agnatic halls,official anger was the greater.3 Hsiao cites a number of who'did not actually belong to the same clan'set up ancestra base of their groups.'Worse still,if people of one surname but "common ancestral halls"as a visible symbol and operational kinship groups,by fraudulent means if necessary,and to build the clan organization,they were soon persuaded to extend their and that the extent of power varied proportionally to the size of inhabitants realized that organization spelled influence or power wcre made the foci of large higher-order lineages.'When loca cstates,good things in themsclves,ceased to be tolerable if they establishment of ancestral halls and common tion of status;it might be the first step towards making a politica claim on the basis of the status. To lay claim to great ancestry was not only an illegitimate arroga- question had its origin in the imperial family of the Han dynasty'. seditious"statements which implied that the kinship group in VILLAGE,LINEAGE,AND CLAN The new
I shouid divide up groups of terrace ants hav a charter,a map we can Estat conform to start from assum houses.*It is i the standar turn now to the question the villages of the ese panic in the VILLAGE,LINEAGE,AND CLAN was given o tve,var : 8 ow from this 1) ver rha 91 houses to lead an 3 008 of land cident tha e of the Kw orm of
shrine for e very unlikely rich and purchased an of the had eventually am from local gazetteers. the sig ement of their ca to have fallen neatly 2 s new out tha states there are fo 3 vas.as I have or be augmented,sc time organizati sale of mos 2 the in was lo nd on whic
owners. to be followed up in the field. (They are not by themselves adequate,but they offer a set of clues literature but only in a systematic collection of land records.Those in the land offices of the New Territories provide an opportunity. understand the differential development of minor segments within the lineage unless we take account of the perpetual ebb and flow of small'trusts'-a movement which cannot be studied in the were not attached to ancestral halls they lacked the ritual com- mitment which,in the case of the lands attached to halls,could act as some brake on dismantling.In other words,we cannot descended from a close common ancestor and subject to rapid disintegration.Precisely because these smaller common estates which land was held on other than individual tenure.Below the level of the lowest ancestral hall segment there might be many smaller land'trusts',designed to benefit small groups of pcople various published sources may well understate the extent to Nanching,but,having seen something of the land records of the New Territories,I would now suggest that the data given in the often very impressive,3 as in the case of the two villages near The figures for common lands in Fukien and Kwangtung are the point of dilapidation,and although still in use may wrongly suggest to a casual observer that it has ceased to be of interest to its next-the interval being determined by the need to accumulate the necessary funds-a hall gets shabbier and shabbier,even to and partly because-as my experience in the New Territories has suggested to me-the Chinese do not regularly maintain their halls but merely renovate them.Between one renovation and the as a further sign of lineage decay in the last century,?that derelict and apparently neglected halls must have been a permanent feature of the system,partly because some lineages always disappeared, (And I may add,since IIsiao speaks of the ruins of ancestral halls gration of lineage estates was an aspect of the decline of lineage organization in the nineteenth century.1 But I can see no reason for not assuming that common estates were always unstable. rose and fell.Hsiao seems to lean to the view that the disinte- old ones were constantly being reduced or dismantled.The fortunes of any estate-holding unit (a lineage or lineage-segment) VILLAGE,LINEAGE,AND CLAN 15:2.:2.35. [19602),Pp.114ff.;K.M.A.Barnert. 127f.And cf.Skinner.'Merketing and Social we must assume that it was the ambition of every local lineage to large local lincages came into existence.As I have already argued The suitabiliry of the terrain explains in some measure how tates were built up,as both the result and the cause of large local broader valleys.And in these fertile valleys the big common es- their hilly terrain and the larger ones able to spread out in the clearly how the smaller settlements may have been limited by New Territories is in fact so differentiated that one can see quite powerful New Territories local lineages.The topography of the favoured the growth on them of the traditionally largest and most often have wedged themselves in between larger neighbours;but the special agricultural advantage of the best lands has clearly place to later arrivals,as we have seen,and smaller lineages may Punti and Hakka,by and large on poorer Jand.The pictore is, however,only rough;original scttlers may have vielded their are connected in such a manner as to distribute the great Punti local lineages on the rice plains and the smaller local lieages,both first settlement,agricultural advantage,and size of local lineage could not normally expect to expand to great size,and the genera picture in the contemporary New Territories suggests how date of units.Once all the good land was taken up,a new local lineage difficult for Jater comers to build their villages into equally large early occupation of the best continuous strctches of land made it this argument that in the course of the settlement of the region the broken agricultural country,villages (and ultimately with them local lineages)must of necessity have been small.It follows from make new fields,they had to set up house elsewhere.And in cultivable land in the immediate village area,people wanted to economic time.Where,in the absence of large stretches only when it was possible to reach the furthest fields within an hitherto considered.Large settlements could continue to develop Land has a further bearing on lineage structure that I have not VILLAGE,LINEAGE,AND CLAN
asymmetrical when tiation in limits of the vicinage. 古 embraced groups of unequal social status.From what I have seen ot local lineages in the New Territories I thik my guess was evidence I was then using -that segmentation was likely to be the lineage was so differentiated that it hazarded the guess-it could not be more,given the nature of the return to the local lincage in order to deal with its internal differen- genealogical structure.In Lineage Organization I To conclude this discussion of agnatic grouping I want to selves into a higher-order lineage on a geographical scale much wider than that dictated for their humbler neighbours by the local lineages having prospered exceptionally,they formed them together in higher-order lineages.Movement far afield produced a definitive break which could be repaired only when,the scattered likely to lead to the multiplication of iocal lineages grouped mcmbers by fission.Naturally enough,we come back to the question of vicinages.Migration within a restricted area was in the home settlement,instcad of proliferating segments,lost over,the original scttlement was so poor that its anccstral property was not worth maintaining an intcrest in;then the local lineage impossible to keep in touch with those lcft behind;and if,more- meniation had taken place.But the very conditions leading to segmentation could also produce fission.If on leaving their home settlement men had to move so far that it was difficult or even tute a new local lineage on their own,now forming a higher- order lineage along with those in the original settiement.Seg- home lineage;a dispersed lineage had come into being.After a while,if they prospered,their descendants might come to consti- valley.For a time they probably remained members of their land became scarce,some men moved away,perhaps to the next land could not inhibit the growth of dispersed and higher-order lineages.On the contrary,it promoted it.When local lineage for their size on their terrain,the lack of large continuous areas of to the limits imposed on them by the extent of their agricultural land.But,of course,while in this fashion local lineages depended lincage were driven on by the desire to expand their strength (of which manpower for fighting was an important component)up tenants and clients.The members of a successfully installed local rid its territory of other such units,unless it needed them as VILLAGE,LINEAGE,AND CLAN appears. s97na,加恤ga鸣奶g E.E.Evans-Pritchard,The Nuer,A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and of the Chinese systen,it is not completely satisfactory.It assumes tion of a second major class of lineages catches some of che features the main line of descent.'It is clear that while this characteriza lineage is senior in wealth,status and rank,and the others hook into spinal-cord type,built around an office or a piece of property,one branch off;in an irregular fashion. which other lines branch off,and from which in tumn yet others illustrate the form of such a system,a main line is shown from piece of indivisible heritable property.s In the diagram used to tion usually centers around a kingship or around some other sublineages tying in at various points of the line. 'In the lineage system of the specific piece of property.It forms a single line with various this latter form of lincage, organization . centers around a trasted with that based on the principle of the spinal cord'.:In based on the principle of segmental opposition'is sharply con- In a recent textbook of social anthropology the 'lineage system is exercised from a centre,a different conformation af segments political systems has led to an understanding of how,when power were assimilated.But the newer work on lincages in 'centralized converted into a model to which the accounts of other peoples segments.The people who gave their name to the book were of political and legal order made possible by the balancing of political centralism could be shown to be associated with a kind with a society in which social homogeneity and the absence of inating influence on ideas about lineages.The Ner was concerned on systems of symmetrical segmentation and exercised a dom- classical work on the Nuer1 set anthropological minds working pological literature than it was a few years ago.Evans-Pritchard's mentary pattern now more clearly recognized in the anthro- in a formal segment.We are presented with an irregular seg- all,even though these other members are not lkewise organized other members of the larger segment which encompasses them marks out a special identity for its members in contrast to the Potter's analysis of Ping Shan.)A segment may emerge which substantially correct.(It certainly seems to be richly confirmed by The organiza-