This paper is based on field work carried out in two villages
among the Eastern Paiwan from October to December 1971 and
from July to September 1973. The Paiwan family and kinship
have been studied by Japanese and Chinese scholars in prewar
and postwar times. However, few of them have dealt with the
family and kinship in relation to the whole social structure. Furthermore,
the symbolic or ritual aspect of kinship behavior among
the people has been neglected. The aim of this paper is to analyze
the native concepts of kinship and kinship behavior among
the people not only from a social-legal point of view but also
from a symbolic-ritual one.
1) In general, the people employ two different terms for
"family" : ta-tsukulan and ta-umagan. Ta-tsukulan literally means
"a husband and wife couple" . It is extended to include not
only the children living in the same house but also those who
have married out, this referring to the "relationship between
parents and children" (mar-alalak). On the other hand, taumagan,
which means "one house", is a residential family group.
It contains a husband and a wife with or without their children
as the core, sometimes joined by kinsmen or non-kinsmen living
under a single roof, while excluding the children who have married
out. In both social and economic aspects, it functions as a
basic unit of the society. The conceptual difference between tatsukulan
and ta-umaqan is rather clearly recognized by the people :
the former refers to a family as viewed from personal relation-ships and the latter as a residential group.
2) The first-born child, regardless of sex, is given a special
status. Such a child is called vusam, which is primarily the word
for millet seed. Among the Paiwan, millet is the ritual crop
par excellence. It is believed that the spirit (tsumas) of millet
dwells in the seed. Somewhat in parallel with this, the firstborn
child (vusam) holds a special symbolic status. There is a
custom of ritual gift presented to the eldest sibling from younger
siblings. It is called mali-vusam (to seek vusam) in which the
married-out siblings bring to the eldest sibling a bundle of the
finest millet (also called vusam) selected from the annual harvest.
The first-born child continues to dwell in the natal house along
with the parents after marriage and inherits-legally at birth-
the family property such as the usufruct of arable land, the house,
iron tools, etc. Younger children either marry a first-born child
(vusam) of other famliy or establish a new household by marrying
some non-vusam. Such ways of kinship and marital relations,
however, do not bring forth any institutional differentiation between
a "stem family" and its "branch families", because an
equal emphasis is laid on both male and female line in tracing
kinship relations among the Paiwan. Accordingly, the "eldest
side" and the "younger sides" for the husband and those for the
wife do not coincide with each other, and each of them presents
or receives the ritual gift mentioned according to their respective
status, though both of them are responsible to operate their
household as an economic and social unit. In these regards, the
situation is very different from this in the case of the chief's family.
3) Each village-not necessarily each settlement-is under
the ritual and secular authority of a single chief. The chief is
called to-vusam (one millet seed). The villagers believe that
they are genealogically related to the chief's family in some way or
other, as expressed in such a word as ta-djaran (one road). By
this term the villagers explain they have "descended" from the
chief's family, ni-apulu (the root) and thus they are ta-djaran.
Chart 8 indicates how the people of Coacoqo village recognize
such genealogies. There is found a remarkable tendency in
each generation to select some "intermediary" ancestor, among
other ones, who was more closely related genealogically to the
chief's family, along either male (husband's) or female (wife's)
line. Therefore, ta-djaran would imply "stem-centric network
of genealogical-multilineal lines."
東部パイワン族の家族と親族 : ta-djaran（1つの路）の概念を中心として
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