Classification and alliance among the Karo: an appreciation

Abstract

According to customary law a single agnatic group, no matter how large, may not found a village; for a settlement to be regarded as "structurally complete" it must be occupied not only by the ruling lineage but by members of at least diree other lineages as well, viz. by that lineage's anakberu, kalimbubu, and senina (23). [...]there is a portion of the marriage payment that is especially reserved for agnatic kin of the bride's mother's mother, who are kalimbubu by birth of the groom's puang kalimbubu by marriage (109). [...]the preponderance of asymmetric features in the modern form of the terminology gives no reason to think that the Karo mode of classification was previously symmetric and that the asymmetric aspects are signs of a gradual transformation in the direction of asymmetry. [...]although the modern terminology is, to judge by Singarimbun's account, a workable form of social classification, wherever we meet. a terminology that contains inconsistencies with what in other sectors of the classification are general principles there is special occasion to consider an explanation in the possibility of categorical change.