[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]

I,
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Ii‘
64 MALEKULA
the mzhal temes are such as would naturally result from the
tradition of common ancestry. ]ust as marriage is prohibited
within the descent group in any one district, so is it forbidden
between people whose “parentâ€ù villages are joined in this
manner. The two clans, the one in Seniang, the other in Mewun,
thus form a single exogamous unit. For instance, a man of
Iumoran or its “ offspringâ€ù villages may not take as wife a
woman of Melpmes or of its " offspring " village, Lokhtemismokh.
Further, if a man of the village of, say, Ndavvu, goes on a visit
into the district of Mewun, he is regarded, while there, as a
member of the clan whose " parent" village is Timbriis, the
village to which Ndawu is joined. Here he will probably reside
during his stay, and he will extend to the people of Timbriis
the kinship terms by which he addresses his own clansmen in
Seniang. An actual example of such an extension of the kinship
terms is the practice of Gastog of Melpmes who addresses Ambong
Manggi of Dineur (a village belonging to the same clan as
Iumoran) as “father â€ù. Should a man of Ndawu visit Mewun
with the intention of seeking a wife thence,-he would generally
act through the men of Timbriis; he would, so to speak, com-
mission them to make inquiries, and one of the men of Timbriis
would go with him, or with his father, to make arrangements with
the girl's parents and settle the bride-price. The existence of
the nahnl temes thus provides a mechanism by means of which
an individual is given a deï¬Ånite status, as a member of a given
clan and given generation, in the other district. Since the
attitude of the two districts towards each other is one of
unconcealed hostility, the only media of social intercourse are
through these linked pairs of descent groups. Without the
mlhal temes any contact would be risky; the system gives a
man a kind of reasonably safe pied-d-tam: amid a hostile com-
munity. It seems, however, that during any period of deï¬Ånite
ï¬Åghting between Mewun and Seniang, the theoretical brother-
hood between linked villages is in abeyance and revives only
when hostilities have officially ceased. A "lasting peace â€ù
must then immediately be made between them, while villages
not thus associated with each other may carry on a guerrilla
warfare indeï¬Ånitely. It is signiï¬Åcant that linked villages do
not have a common gong-rhythm, which indicates that even in