Page 75 - DSOC402_SOCIOLOGY_OF_KINSHIP_ENGLISH

Unit 11: Changes in Land and Lineage Structure

Lineage structure may be regarded as a branching process, as when two or three founders of Notes
small lineages are represented as brothers or sisters. The groups thus constitute a single larger
lineage in which the smaller groups are segments. This structure may lend stability to a society;
the lineages are considered permanent groups and thus perpetuate concomitant political and re-
ligious relationships over time. In societies lacking central political authority, territorial groups
often organize themselves around lineages; as these are usually exogamous, or out-marrying,
marriage becomes a means of bringing together otherwise unrelated groups.

Lineage, descent group reckoned through only one parent, either the father
(patrilineage) or the mother (matrilineage). All members of a lineage trace their
common ancestry to a single person. A lineage may comprise any number of
generations but commonly is traced through some 5 or 10.

11.1 Inheritance of Status and Property

From one generation to the next, transmission of status and property takes place according
to certain rules. In North India, these generally pass in the male line. In other words, we have
a predominantly patrilineal mode of inheritance in North India. For this reason, composition
of patrilineage becomes very important. Thus, the lineage fellows cooperate for economic and
jural reasons. They share jural rights and therefore they cooperate in order to keep the rights.
However, they also fight among themselves about who is to get more benefits from those rights.
Pradhan (1965) has described how the Jats and other landowners of Meerut and other districts
around Delhi have a certain portion of the village lands and how it cannot be transferred out of
the lineage. To keep the land within the lineage, its male members have to remain united. Thus,
it becomes a main principle of their social organisation.
Transmission of property is not only the means by which a social system reproduces itself, it is
also the way in which interpersonal relationship are structured. Since inheritance generally takes
place between close kin and relatives, the emotional links and mutual rights are often influenced
by anticipation of inheritance. The modes of inheritance, whether lateral or line agnatic (de-
scendents from same male line) or uterine, (born of the same mother) to females as well as males
whether equal or unequal – all these factors influenced family structures and social arrange-
ments. The timing of transmission of property is also of critical importance. An endowment at
marriage is more likely to be of movable than of landed property itself. While the division of
the agricultural holding may be avoided, both in the case of peasant farms and of aristocratic
estates, this preservation is often achieved at the cost of burdening the productive units with
heavy debts. Out of future-proceeds of the farm the heir is obliged to service the mortgage en-
tered on behalf of his “non-inheriting siblings”. Despite the norms of primogeniture or the eld-
est son inheriting land, younger sons and even daughters sometimes received land. The pattern
of inheritance and its timing creates a particular constellation of bonds and cleavages between
husband and wife, parents and children, sibling and sibling, as well as between wider kin. The
mode of tenure and system of inheritance are linked not only to household structure but also to
a whole constellation of ‘demographic’ variables, factors that affect growth of population and
preferences for male or female children. Moreover, property was not an undifferentiated con-
cept in pre-modern times. Rights relating to material objects constitute a ‘bundle’ that vary over
time, vary with the object of rights, with the technology used in the productive enterprise, and
with the hierarchy of class or strata that dominates the social system.
One important feature of European inheritance was that even when a certain type of property
(such as land) was restricted to males, women were nevertheless seen as the residual heirs in
preference to more distant males. This became important because roughly 20% of all families

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